Scottish quangos spend £113 million of taxpayers’ cash on PR, consultancy fees and overseas travel
According to Reform Scotland, £113 million of taxpayers’ cash was spent by Scottish quangos on public relations (£66.8 million), consultancy fees (£40.2 million), overseas travel (£3.7 million) and hospitality (£2.5 million) in one year.
The newly released figures for 100 organisations have led to claims that the quangos are spending taxpayers’ money “without sufficient public accountability” and should either be “brought back into government” or “set apart entirely”.
VisitScotland plugged more than £33 million of its £44 million government funding into its marketing and PR budget.
The body responsible for drawing up school exams, the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), spent £1.5 m of its £17.3m budget to pay for its PR operation and £300,000 on overseas travel.
Creative Scotland spent £250,000 pounds on consultancy fees, more than £200,000 on PR and £42,000 on hospitality, as well as £50,000 on overseas travel.
Scottish Natural Heritage shelled out more than £4.7 million on PR, and £2.8 million on external consultants in an effort to “encourage people in Scotland to get out into Scotland’s outdoors”.
Learning and training quango Skills Development Scotland spent £1.5 million on PR and more than £1 million to hire consultants and Scottish Enterprise used £12 million for its PR, as well as spending £4 million on consultancy fees.
Reform Scotland director Geoff Mawdsley commented on the figures: “We have revealed significant sums of public money being spent without sufficient public accountability.
“Ministers who spend public money are accountable to the people at elections and to the parliament between them. Similarly, independent organisations performing work for public money must enter into an open and transparent contract.
“Spending by quangos sits in an accountability gap in between.”
“In some cases, the best option would be to devolve their functions to local government delivering the double benefit of accountability and real devolution.”
Helen Lennox, Scottish Water’s head of corporate affairs, rejected the report’s findings, stating: “No other public body is subject to such a demanding regulatory regime.”
A Creative Scotland spokesman said overseas travel is required to promote Scottish arts and culture while consultants are needed on schemes where “objective expertise” is required.
An SQA spokesman told the Telegraph that the quango is paid to help “the development of education and skills in a variety of countries.”