- Mon Feb 03, 2014 7:47 am
#357639
A ruthless Tory takeover of Quangoland? If only it were true!
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[O]ne Conservative ruefully admitted to me: 'Labour are brilliant at manipulating the appointments process in order to get their people into key jobs.'
Part of that is down to the fact that the panels which run the selection process tend to be dominated by people within the public sector; that is a world where support for Labour is much higher than in the country as a whole.
The criteria for these appointments are also cleverly arranged to favour what might be described as a Left-wing agenda.
I have seen the documentation for a number of such vacancies and it is clear that no applicant will be considered suitable unless he or she can point to a substantial record of 'encouraging diversity'.
This is the standard reference to the promotion of people from ethnic or sexual minorities — a feature much more of the public than the private sector.
Yet at a time of reduced public sector budgets, quangos desperately need people with private sector experience of running a tight ship, of improving services while simultaneously cutting costs.
This was brought home to me by a recent appointee from the private sector to a very large quango, who told me 'despite the big cut in our budget, there was nothing on the board meeting agenda about how to do things more efficiently with fewer staff.
'When I suggested we should make this a priority, it was as if I had sworn in church'.
This is why it is so important to have chairmen with some sense of urgency in such matters: he (or she) is in charge of the board, and hence the agenda.