4/ This diagram from Dennis C Grube’s 2019 book, Megaphone Bureaucracy, which highlights the same trend internationally, helps to frame the necessary debate about what the knock-on impact on public leaders’ public profiles should be: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

2/ The response, quoted in the Times, implies – wrongly – that ministers happily take public accountability for everything officials do:

6/ … and noted that it had in the past been harder to reduce the functions performed by public body numbers than to reduce the number of bodies per se:

5/ I expressed concern that the current attempt to reduce public body numbers might prejudge its outcome…:

4/ I discussed the importance of the “three tests” for when public bodies should exist, but the need to update them to more closely resemble a business case for public bodies:

3/ We discussed the constraints that legislation can put on the flexibility of government agencies, and in that context the possibility of making them easier to reconfigure:

2/ Asked whether public bodies would be missed if they were gone, I discussed the independence required for some functions, but also the importance of delegation in government:

The spending review has committed to more "closures, mergers and consolidations" of public bodies, when the outcome of its review is announced. But no timeline was published - which is good, because acting in haste could be a mistake...