A bewildering thicket of commissions, panels, units, agencies and forums awaits the average citizen bold enough to venture into the land of the quangos.

In opposition Gordon Brown promised a “bonfire of the quangos”, yet in government Labour allowed quangos tendrils to continue to spread further throughout the public realm.

The NHS even boasts one quango that appoints members to other quangos. The Appointments Commission was set up in 2001 because the Government decided that without an independent body to stop them, ministers could not stop themselves from stuffing NHS Trusts and panels with party cronies.

There are now about 800 of these arms-length government bodies, officially known as “non-departmental government bodies”. In March we knew there were exactly 790. Since then new ones have mushroomed up, even as others were culled. No one will know the precise number until, like a farmer assessing the state of his flock, the Cabinet Office counts them all again next spring.

Mr Brown’s premiership has spawned numerous new bodies, including the Advisory Committee on Consumer Engagement, an offshoot of the Food Standards Agency to remind the agency to “put the consumer first”.

Last year also saw the birth of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, to advise on how “improved employment and skills systems can help the UK become a world-class leader in productivity”.

This is not to be confused with Working Ventures UK, which exists to “up-skill and recruit individuals” and “enhance employment and skills delivery systems”.

Both are of course entirely different from the calamitous Learning and Skills Council. No fewer than 14 of its employees had packages worth over £100,000 last year. Yet the entire organisation is being disbanded after overseeing a funding fiasco that left more than 100 college building programmes in jeopardy.

Other bodies cling on. The Football Licensing Authority was conceived after the Heysel tragedy in 1985 to administer ID cards for football fans.

But when the Government scrapped this scheme in 1989, it managed to carve out a role for itself helping spectators “to attend sports grounds in safety, comfort and security.” In a game awash with cash, it needs almost £1.3 million of taxpayers’ money a year to do so.

Trainspotters would be loath to do without the Railway Heritage Committee, a body charged with identifying rail-related records and objects of vital historical importance and ensuring that they are preserved for posterity.

Until last month it was chaired by Lord Faulkner of Worcester, a former Labour Party communications adviser. He stood down after being appointed a government whip in the Lords.

Quangos — the word is a portmanteau of Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisations - have long been attacked for providing “jobs for the boys”. In the late 1970s they were a common target for a Conservative Opposition criticising the Labour gravy train.

Yet they continued to mushroom under the Thatcher and Major governments, emerging as ad hoc policy responses despite central discouragement.

They became a live political issue in the mid-1990s as Labour slammed waste, patronage and sleaze in unaccountable bodies. But 12 years of Labour government have failed to consign them, as Tony Blair promised, to “the dustbin of history”.

Many have been eradicated. Last year we said goodbye to the Dairy Produce Quota Tribunal, a Sector Skills Development Agency and no fewer than two Agricultural Dwelling House Advisory Committees.

It was also decreed that we could do without an independent Wine Standards Board.

Oenophiles will be relieved to learn, though, that the Government Hospitality Advisory Committee for the Purchase of Wine - a Foreign and Commonwealth Office body charged with maintaining “appropriate standards of wines for use at government functions” - survived.

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