Scottish Funding Council’s snub to MSPs over at-risk colleges is a democratic outrage
Scottish Funding Council’s refusal to identify four colleges at risk of insolvency underlines the lack of democratic accountability of this country’s many quangos
The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) is a quango responsible for spending more than £2 billion of taxpayers’ money a year. Their mission, they say, is to “sustain a world-leading system of tertiary education [colleges and universities], research and innovation that enables students to flourish, changes lives for the better, and supports social, economic and environmental wellbeing and prosperity”.
Its website specifically states that “as a non-departmental public body... we are directly accountable to Scottish government ministers and the Scottish Parliament [our emphases]”.
So it should be regarded as a considerable scandal that the Parliament’s Public Audit Committee has been forced to write a letter of complaint after SFC officials gave evidence that four colleges are facing insolvency but refused to say which ones, citing commercial sensitivities.
Over-mighty apparatchiks
The Scotsman has long argued that Scotland’s ‘quangocracy’ has been allowed to grow far too powerful and that some of these supposedly arms-length bodies have slipped beyond the reach of our democratically elected representatives.
A civil servant attempting to withhold such information from MSPs could find themselves in trouble. Instead, an important committee is reduced to signalling its displeasure in a letter of protest.
Will the over-mighty apparatchiks of the SFC relent and provide the sought-after information? Or will they continue to keep staff at the colleges concerned, the public and our parliament in the dark, while they. presumably, attempt to handle the situation to their own satisfaction behind closed doors?
READ MORE: Inside Scotland's Quangos
Bonfire of the quangos
If a Scottish college is about to go bust, that is a matter of national importance and absolutely not something that should be kept from politicians in a position to do something about it. It beggars belief to think that four could be lost.
This latest incident is yet another example of why the outsourcing of government functions to quangos must be reversed.
At present, the SFC is ‘sponsored’ by the Scottish government’s Lifelong Learning Directorate, a body with little impact on public discourse in Scotland because quangos do much of the heavy lifting.
It’s time to bring the SFC and others into a Scottish Education Ministry, under democratic control and with true democratic accountability, as part of a wider ‘bonfire of the quangos’.
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