Green quangos are out of control

Britain is a nation of quangos.

For decades, politicians have escaped responsibility by giving away their power to unelected bodies like Natural England. The result? We have a government elected on a promise to grow the economy, trying to pass a planning law to empower ‘the builders not the blockers,’ but being held up by a group of ‘nature organisations’ calling for ‘environmental protections.’

The problem with ‘government by quango’ is that NGOs, by their nature, have no stake in anything other than their pet issue. A cat charity doesn’t spend its money trying to cure cancer. It has a single cause to pursue. But good governance is not a single cause. It involves complex trade-offs and powerful interest groups. Putting NGOs in charge of policy (quangos, after all, are quasi-NGOs) is a recipe for very poor governance.

Natural England, for example, is interested in nature. That’s it. It has no stake in economic growth, house prices, transport infrastructure, or anything else. If you give Natural England the power to effectively set swathes of planning policy, such as designating large areas as building-free zones, you’re going to end up with pro-nature but anti-growth outcomes. In other words, nothing will get built.

Natural England’s chairman, Tony Juniper, who is about to begin his third term in the role, is an out-and-out eco-socialist and anti-growth activist. Perhaps it is unsurprising Natural England’s actions are diametrically opposed to growth under his leadership. Sadly, though, the problem runs deeper than Juniper. The real issue is politicians relying on quangos to exercise this level of power responsibly in the first place.

Even sadder than the state appointing a de-growther to a powerful position is the fact that Natural England would probably be doing the same things with a different chairman. Juniper is an ideologue, without doubt, but he is also doing his job – to protect nature, at the expense of everything else.

That is Natural England’s sole mandate. It is not charged with growing the economy. To that end, Juniper has apparently branched out to running the department of education by writing GCSE curricula, too (something he has been clamouring for since at least 2011). Why should he care if new housing gets built or if infrastructure development drives economic growth?

Since last year’s election, some Conservative MPs have begun reflecting on what went wrong. Jack Rankin, for example, expressed dismay that his party appointed Juniper, after he appeared on Channel 4 News to promote his new book by complaining about wealth inequality and decrying economic growth. Ex-MP Conor Burns chimed in to offer an explanation: “Because too many ministers don’t try to run the departments. They rely on officials to provide shortlists they won’t reject.”

Burns is certainly right about ministers eagerly vacating responsibility in favour of civil service appointees, but the problem is simpler than that, and it’s disappointing that he can’t see it, even when outside government. Natural England need not exist in the first place. By its nature, it is single-minded. It is both unwilling and incapable of considering trade-offs and making sensible policy decisions because its raison d’être is nature, bar none. Putting Natural England in charge of approving new building projects is like installing speed cameras on a Formula 1 circuit.

Natural England is just one of a huge number of green NGOs who are quietly governing Britain. It need not be this way. Only since the turn of the millennium have quangos (quasi-autonomous NGOs) wielded such unfettered power.