Just how little power lies in local government was illustrated by a recent study carried out in 13 Council areas, likely to be typical of the rest of England. In these areas while £7,000 is spent on average on services like health, education and care for the elderly, only £350 is controlled by local politicians. In one area as many as 49 different organisations spend taxpayers money including the health service, the police, the probations service and benefits agencies.

Does this matter? I think it does and for two main reasons.

The first is that delivery by so many different organisations is bound to lead to inefficiency and lack of co-ordination. Each organisation will have their own financial systems, their own reporting structures, their own PR teams and so on. And the fact that there are so many of them makes ensuring they pull together to tackle the complex and different problems of different communities can be simply too difficult. 

The other, and to me more fundamental reason, is the issue of democratic control. Its simply wrong – in a democratic society – to have such a vast majority of day to day spending decisions made by quangos. Managers working for quangos, while no doubt doing the best they can, dont have the democratic legitimacy and can ignore local wishes with no practical redress. Ask the people and what do they say? Well the Local Government Association used ComRes to  do just that. They found that if cuts have to be made in services two thirds would like Councillors to take the decisions. Just one in 10 want MPs to do it and fewer than 3% of people would prefer officials in quangos to decide.