[timthorn]

Quasi-autonomous, to be completely accurate. They consult regularly with the industry and ministers but the Office of Communications Act established Ofcom to be independent of both Government and industry. They're accountable to Parliament.

[immibis]

Perhaps that's the reason this is getting misunderstood. The distinction between the government and parliament is technical within the UK political system. To everyone outside that system, the whole system is "the government".

It's the political version of someone pointing to a computer tower and saying "this CPU can hold all of your music" and then you (a computer technician) interject "actually the hard drive can hold all of your music".