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Business of the House

My hon. Friend raises an important point, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Geraldine Smith). I do think that we need to look at ways to strengthen the system of checking and approving appointments to quangos and holding them properly to account. Otherwise, we will have a culture in which people in such organisations—it applies to other public bodies as well—think that, because they are above politics, they are accountable to no one. That is dangerous. As Winston Churchill said, democracy has many flaws, but it is better than the alternative. Other countries understand that and go for elections in many more cases than do we, rather than appointments.