Leaders: MSPs, not quangos, should face up to accountability | Pro-gun lobby’s absurd response

QUANGOS are an easy political target.

The very word – an abbreviation of quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation – summons up an image of a sluggish corner of the public service full of people pulling down comfortable salaries for doing not very much and probably wasting a lot of public money.

It may have been true in the past, but it is less so since the SNP came to power in 2007, took an axe to a lot of dead wood and piled it into a big bonfire.

Nevertheless, Reform Scotland, a think-tank, reckons that more could be done, advocating that the remaining quangos should be divided into two types – those which could be abolished and their functions taken into government, and those which could be made into proper arms-length bodies with a transparent contract with the government to do particular public work.

The argument is that quangos are not properly accountable for how they spend taxpayers’ money. The prime piece of evidence for this is spending of £113 million by the quangocracy on public relations, foreign travel, hospitality and entertainment, and external consultants.

This newspaper, particularly in current times of austerity, is among the first to criticise public waste. It is hard to see why the Scottish Qualifications Agency, for example, needs to spend £1.5m on public relations when its job is to supervise examinations and tell students the results.

But beyond these examples where questions need to be asked, the argument is questionable. The £113m figure is less than 1 per cent of a total £14 billion spend. And £33m, or just over a quarter of the spotlighted 
budget, is spent by VisitScotland, a quango whose job is nothing but public relations on behalf of Scotland’s tourism businesses.

Suppose VisitScotland was, as Reform Scotland advocates, abolished and turned into a government department. By making its work the direct responsibility of a minister, the think tank contends this would make the activity more accountable to the public.

Actually, the reverse might be true. When the Welsh Assembly did exactly that with the Welsh Development Agency, assembly members soon discovered that where previously they could quiz all the agency’s senior directors, they were reduced to interrogating the minister who, being a politician, was adept at not answering questions. More-over, as Scottish Enterprise officials privately, and gleefully, say, the Welsh became a lot less effective competitors for inward investment.

Perhaps the real questions exposed by Reform Scotland are some it has not asked: are existing scrutiny and accountability mechanisms – Holyrood committees, mainly – being used properly? Are MSPs doing enough probing and questioning? Why have they failed to produce the kind of report that Reform Scotland has?

Pro-gun lobby’s absurd response

According to America’s National Rifle Association (NRA), “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”. To most rational people, such a statement is incomprehensible. Is there any way to get some sense into these people’s heads?

After a week of silence following the horrific shooting of 20 little children and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut, the NRA, jealous guardian of every American’s right to possess weaponry, has announced its response to the tragedy.

Crushing any hope that it might at the very least support the banning of semi-automatic assault rifles, which ordinary citizens have no conceivable need to possess, it announced that its solution is to put a “good guy” gunman into every school. This is simply irrational. It is as though, faced with a wave of knife crime, authorities told everyone to carry a knife.

Why is it so impossible for the NRA to comprehend that the best way to stop bad guys with guns is to do everything possible to stop them having guns in the first place? Why, when faced with a dreadful trail of blood, from Columbine to Newtown, does it insist on reducing the debate to good/bad absurdities, when the reality has been a many-shaded grey with one simplicity – all-too-easy access to guns.

If the NRA’s bone-headedness can have one positive outcome, it should be to fortify Barack Obama’s resolve to bring in tighter gun controls. Despite the out-of-touch NRA, there are some signs that the rest of the United States has had enough of guns and the gun lobbyists. America needs to disarm itself, not engage in an insane domestic arms race.