rose to call attention to the role of non-governmental organisations delivering services on behalf of the Government, and related questions of accountability; and to move for Papers.

My Lords, I most grateful for the opportunity for this short debate. I am particularly looking forward to hearing the maiden speech of my friend—even if he is not my political friend—the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness. I will concentrate on accountability and control of quangos and will try to keep my remarks brief as I am sure that others will wish to explore the role which charities and voluntary organisations can play in delivering government objectives.

In 1995, the then shadow Chancellor, a Mr Gordon Brown, vowed to make a bonfire of quangos and sweep away the quango state. In fact, under the aegis of this Admninistration, the quango state has grown enormously since 1997, with more than 700 extra bodies created. Nor can this just be attributed to this Administration. The new Scottish Nationalist Administration, elected in May on a promise to have a Scottish bonfire of quangos, has managed to create 24 new quangos since taking up office despite that promise.

I have found it almost impossible to divine the extent of the quango state. The Economic Research Council has published The Essential Guide to British Quangos and has an excellent database on its website. According to it, gross expenditure grew from £146 billion in 2004 to £174 billion in 2006. The growth in staff numbers over the past decade has been impressive, with many quangos more than doubling in size. The Student Loans Company, for example, employed 984 people in 2007 compared with 432 in 1998 and its costs have increased from £19 million to £57 million, a threefold increase. Spending on government and quango press officers alone has been estimated at more than £330 million, and the Nolan rules on appointments have been good news for head-hunters and recruitment agencies.

In paragraphs 20 and 21 of its sixth report, the Select Committee on Public Administration recommended,

"that the Government brings together information about the range of organisations carrying out its policy in a single directory, combining the information given at present in Public Bodies with other, summary information about departmental roles, and how departments deliver policy through other bodies, and how all of these bodies relate to one another ... Such a publication would provide a comprehensive 'map' of the Government, and organisations which carry out functions on its behalf. It should more clearly classify such bodies; show how much each organisation spends in public money, and where this money comes from; what is the legal status of each organisation; who sets the policy of each organisation; who appoints its members, and how they are appointed; and what information each organisation publishes".

That was in 1999, and the Government have done nothing, more than eight years on, to implement that simple and very sensible recommendation that would shine a light on the extent of the growth of quangos.

Indeed, the Government have moved backwards. In 2006, they ended the publication of Public Bodies, the only—somewhat inadequate—directory of these bodies available, arguing that the information would be available by going to each department's website. I have tried that. You could spend a lifetime mining the data on those websites and get nowhere close to the extent of the quango state. Of course, the Government have something to hide. Far from abolishing the quango state, they have nourished it and allowed it to get completely out of control. Quangos are used or established to hive off difficult decisions by this Government. This Government have created hundreds of task forces, action teams and working parties and has more tsars than the Romanovs. The coincidental, I am sure, involvement of party supporters and donors does not help with its credibility.

The Minister has no idea how much the taxpayer spends on quangos or what is achieved by that expenditure. These bodies have now taken on a life of their own. The Electoral Commission, for example, which is directly accountable to Parliament, not to Ministers, did not exist 10 years ago and will spend more than £100 million between general elections. Noble Lords may be astonished by that figure; I was. I expected the Electoral Commission to spend perhaps a couple of million pounds a year at most, but it spent £21.5 million in 2005-06 and has a budget of £26.2 million for 2006-07. Expenditure by all the political parties on a general election campaign will amount to much less than half of the £100 million that the Electoral Commission will spend between general elections. Postal vote scandals, the tens of thousands disenfranchised in the Scottish elections and the confusion over donations suggest that its existence has not delivered value or improved the democratic system. Not that I am singling it out as being exceptional; I just thought it might be on Ministers' minds on this day more than most quangos.

Every post brings to Members of this House and the other place yet another glossy publication from yet another public body, most of which are, I suspect, often instantly recycled, unread, via the waste basket. The waste is absolutely prodigious and Ministers are accountable for it but unable to call the organisations concerned to account. In part, Parliament is responsible. How often do we see amendments in this place to legislation requiring the publication of an annual report or creating some new body or group? I have no doubt that all these bodies are staffed by committed people trying their hardest to do the right thing, but they have taken on a life of their own and they are the front-line troops in the growing intrusiveness and growth of the power of the state.

The Government promised in their response to the Select Committee eight years ago that a rigorous review of NDPBs will be undertaken every five years to establish whether the functions of the body are still required. It is a promise which has been broken. When can we expect the Government to act? They need to go further. Could the functions be carried out by the voluntary or private sector? Is it really necessary for the British Council—I am sorry the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, is no longer in his place as he is the chairman and might have been able to help the Minister—to be running education programmes which private firms could otherwise deliver at no cost to the taxpayer? Could some of the activities of some of these quangos be privatised? Is there scope for income generation, perhaps through Google advertising on their millions of website pages, as the excellent Dan Lewis of the Economic Research Council has suggested? I cannot understand why the BBC allows advertising on its web pages accessed from outside the UK but not on those accessed within the UK. Would it not be better to have the income and save the jobs of the news journalists currently under threat? Can quangos not be dispersed to the regions? Do they really need to be located in the most expensive parts of central London? I have quoted some astronomical costs of quangos but these annual costs are but a fraction of the long-term costs because many of the people employed are on Civil Service final salary pensions and conditions.

I wonder also whether government agencies have been a success. I accept that we invented them when we were in power. They appeared to shrink the size of the Civil Service, but in fact we have seen a growth in the numbers employed and less accountability. Their role often leads to confusion about who is in charge and to outbreaks of buck-passing. Disastrous flooding or a serious lapse of prison security are examples of events which can leave a hapless Minister doing the rounds of TV studios in a no-win position.

I do not make a habit of reading the Guardian very regularly, but David Walker writing in the Guardian's Public magazine in an article entitled "The watchdogs are barking up the wrong tree" highlighted a crucial point which, if no other, I would like to impress on the Minister today.

He said:

"Maybe there does need to be a process, open to external inspection, by which public bodies acquire chairs and board members ... But there also needs to be someone to ask bigger questions—such as why a particular function is being carried out by a quango rather than a government department".

He might have added, "or at all". He argues:

"If the Environment agency is carrying out agreed public policies then why does it need to be at arm's length from DEFRA? If it is meant to be independent, why is it so close, financially and managerially, to Whitehall? And, moreover, what is the point of worrying about who gets appointed to the board of a public body when there are no follow up procedures in place to see whether the board performs well?".

The people who should be asking these questions are not Guardian journalists but the Ministers responsible. I look forward to hearing the Minister's answers today. I beg to move for Papers.