Quangos in the firing line

THE danger with any fire started deliberately is that it gets out of control. The coalition Government's bonfire of the quangos, much vaunted while in Opposition, will burn through much of the dead wood, but it also risks undermining vital work done to make Britain a greener, safer and more prosperous place.

Few tears will be shed over bodies like the Zoos Forum – as with many quangos, the advice it provides can be found elsewhere in Whitehall – but it looks like this unprecedented series of cuts will be made before there has been much time to consider the effect.

Yorkshire will be hit hard. The ill-thought abolition of the regional development agency will lead to hundreds of direct job losses, but it will also set back the economic recovery in scores of towns and cities where it has kickstarted enterprise.

With many more bodies who have staff in Yorkshire, such as British Waterways, due to be axed, the total number of jobs cut will have serious knock-on effects.

Labour's years of largesse, and particularly Tony Blair's love of setting up new agencies, makes the quangocracy an easy target for the coalition, but the changes are being introduced with unseemly haste.

As Labour becomes accustomed to life in Opposition, it will have to work out which of the coalition's measures to oppose. There are some, however, that it will have to accept. As more cuts emerge, voters will be able to distinguish between those MPs fighting genuine injustices and those whose "outrage" is artificial.

For that reason, Alan Johnson, the Hull West and Hessle MP, is right to warn against "kneejerk" strikes because unions will struggle to find sufficient public support. Politicians must accept that there are better ways to reduce the state, and save jobs, than cross-party squabbling.