Ministers must stop outsourcing policymaking to NGOs

We vote and pay substantial taxes so that the government can staff itself with people equipped to make policy themselves.

via Number 10 Flickr

Modern Britain blurs the lines between government and charity. NGOs are inching closer to the heart of power, making policy on behalf of politicians. This is a worrying trend, for several reasons. We elect politicians to govern us. Ministers should put in the hard graft and make decisions themselves, not outsource policymaking to NGOs.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance has published its latest Quango Rich List, opening up the shadowy world of quangocrats to some much-needed sunlight. In an age of high borrowing costs and frequent spending cuts, quango spending seems to enjoy special status, with more money than ever slipping into the quango black hole.

The TPA says quangos, which cost the public purse at least £100,000 per year, now number a whopping 1,472. Countless quango bosses earn more than the prime minister.

More than the financial cost, the rise of the quangocracy is troubling for democracy. Quangos are quasi-NGOs, and NGOs ought to behave like charities, not lobbyists. Charities are built to advocate for a single, unobjectionable cause, like medical research or clean water supplies in the world’s poorest communities. They are not designed to make policy. Putting single-issue groups in charge of policy is a recipe for activism as government and for virtue-signalling over real-world results.

But that’s where we find ourselves. From Sport England branching out into “climate action” to Natural England adding millions to the cost of HS2, NGOs are consistently going beyond their remit and effectively pulling policymaking strings on the government’s behalf. Perhaps the most egregious example is the anti-obesity racket, in which a flurry of NGOs called things like “Action on Salt” and “Children’s Food Campaign” usher in harsh rules restricting advertising for foods it considers “unhealthy”, at the expense of economic growth, which the government touts as its core mission.

NGOs like these gobble up public money while lobbying the government which funds them. Near-identical organisations – the Food Ethics Council, Obesity Action, Jamie Oliver’s “Bite Back”, to name but a few – back up each other’s campaigns, creating an inauthentic impression of a grassroots movement. They engineer campaigns for their interventionist policies and weaponise other organisations, like the Advertising Standards Authority, to generate momentum for their anti-business manifesto.

The problem is quickly spiralling out of control. Marks & Spencer says it may be unable to launch its famous Christmas ad this year thanks to regulations pushed by these groups which risk banning showing mince pies on TV before the watershed. That’s what happens when you put single-issue NGOs in charge of complex policy trade-offs.

Behind the Children’s Food Campaign is a cutthroat group called Sustainweb.org, which exemplifies the NGO problem. It is at the heart of the anti-obesity grift. Sustain has made no secret of using the Advertising Standards Authority’s complaints procedure as a vehicle to generate opposition to inconspicuous food ads. This remorseless pressure, which Sustain claims is for the greater good of public health, creates a regulatory slippery slope which ultimately burdens poor families with less choice and higher costs.

Is it any wonder Rachel Reeves now wants to slap a new tax on milkshakes? Since Theresa May first dabbled in sugar taxes in 2017, there is ample evidence that they don’t work. Sugar consumption rates were evolving for years before the tax was introduced and obesity rates have not budged anyway, while shopping costs for the poorest families have ballooned.

Ordinary people find themselves paying more because of policies shaped not by democratic consensus, but by activist agendas. There is a climate of fear among regulators, who run scared from NGO pressure campaigns like this one. That undermines democratic governance. Charities are unelected and unaccountable. Allowing them to dictate behaviour change through regulatory capture is downright dangerous.

Thanks to this political turn in recent years, NGOs have seen a collapse in public confidence. Edelman’s Trust Barometer research suggests since NGOs have blurred the lines between traditional charity work and political lobbying, they enjoy much less trust than they once did. “While in 1999, NGOs were still the most trusted institutions globally, 20 years later, businesses have surpassed them,” says the report.

Ministers must stop integrating NGOs into the policy pipeline. We vote and pay substantial taxes so that the government can staff itself with people equipped to make policy. We do not need policymaking outsourced to the third sector. There is no need for ministers to frequently meet with lobbyists masquerading as charities so often, much less to cut-and-paste their policy recommendations into law. They should put their heads down and do the work of making policy themselves.

Jason Reed is a policy analyst and political commentator for a wide range of global media outlets. Read more on his website, jason-reed.co.uk