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Onora O'Neill, in the first of her Reith Lectures, said she believes that trust in our public institutions has been undermined. Why?
| | |  Would Churchill have survived modern scrutiny? | |
She thinks that the problem is our new culture of accountability. 'We are imposing', she argues, 'ever more stringent forms of control. We are requiring those in the public sector to account in excessive and sometimes irrelevant detail to regulators and inspectors'.
Well, in a former life I was one of those inspectors, and I disagree: the culture of accountability is the best thing that has happened in decades. It is New Labour that is to blame. It cannot stop itself telling the public sector how it should manage its daily business. Our ministers and their bureaucrats are convinced they know best. They do not. It is the head teacher who should decide whether or not a child should be excluded from school, the local superintendent who should determine local policing priorities. Accountability is good, political interference bad. Our politicians do not seem to understand the difference, and neither, it seems, does Onora O'Neill.
Think about it. It is the taxpayer who foots the bill and who uses the service. We deserve to know what is happening, and for too long we have been kept in the dark. No decent school or well-run hospital or efficient police force has anything to fear from inspection. Indeed, they should welcome it, because when the inspectors report their positive findings, the institution's reputation in the eyes of the community it serves will be enhanced. And, if there are problems, then, surely, it is better that those problems are exposed and dealt with? In the past they have been left to fester and so individuals have suffered and public trust has collapsed.
It is the fact that the public sector has too often not delivered that explains the public's cynicism. To this extent, Onora O'Neill is right. We no longer trust doctors, policemen and teachers in the way we once did. The middle class mortgages itself to the hilt to buy a house in the catchment area of a successful school. We remember Alderhay and the scandal of the Bristol heart operations, and we shudder. We contemplate the smashed car window and we long for the comforting security of George Dixon's avuncular gaze. I couldn't agree more. The trust has gone.
If we had more confidence in the quality of the service it provides, we would trust and appreciate the public sector more. The better teachers teach, the more children learn. And the more children learn, the more the public will trust the teaching profession. So, too, with the police and the medical professions. Inspection and the transparency it brings can be unsettling, painful even. But, in the long run, it is good for the profession as well as the public. When there is nowhere to hide, something has to be done. Their unions whinge, but good doctors and teachers and policemen know this. They welcome accountability and the improvements it brings.
What they hate - and are right to hate - is the meddling arrogance of the politician who has no understanding of the day-to-day realities of the hospital ward or classroom or inner city beat. It is this meddling, this arrogance, that has undermined professional confidence, not inspection and regulation.
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RELATED LINKS | | | - The Learning Curve
- The Reith Lectures
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