Being irresponsible is passe

ACCOUNTABILITY is the watchword of the age in which we live. Particularly in the public sector, those delivering services are held to account by a proliferating body of regulators, inspectors, auditors and commissions. Public criticism of those held not to be operating at the right level is commonplace. Performance indicators have assumed an almost religious significance. Everything is measured, and action plans are demanded when things are deemed to need improvement.

If my presentation of this seems somewhat cynical, it is not because I would argue against accountability. Quite the reverse; I firmly believe that everyone with a job to do or duties to perform should be expected to do them well, and give value for money - and this is particularly important in the case of public sector workers because it is my money (in my capacity as a tax payer) which is at stake.

My touch of cynicism derives from the fact that there is too frequently a gap between formal structures of accountability and a sense of responsibility. Take, for example, some recent cases of failure on the part of senior medical practitioners. We have had a gynaecologist strongly criticised for his professional performance. During the course of the inquiry it emerged that he had been similarly criticised several years earlier when working overseas. The criticisms had been made known to the medical authorities in the United Kingdom but had been ignored. Another gynaecologist, also strongly criticised for his professional performance (and manner) had, it appeared, been notorious among colleagues and managers. They had failed to tackle the problem.

In a recent case before an employment tribunal, the Metropolitan Police paid a large sum to a former police officer who had complained of racial discrimination - without admitting formal responsibility.

The common tendency in such cases is for some senior official in the organisation concerned to announce that steps have been taken to ensure that there will be no repetition of the failure. A variation on this is to proclaim that "this happened X years ago - and of course things have changed since then".

It is clearly appropriate, and indeed highly desirable, to take steps to ensure that failure will not be repeated, and it may very well be true that changes in the past few years have made repetition less likely. There is nothing wrong with proclaiming this.

The trouble is that all too frequently the assurances implicitly distance the current management from what has gone wrong. "Things have changed, and under the present management this could not happen". The reality, however, is that often, many of the present management team were already in senior positions when the incident occurred. The failures, therefore, were in part their failures. It may be convenient to blame those who were, but no longer are, in charge, but if accountability is to be real, it will not wash.

It is proper for people at the top of organisations to recognise that the buck stops with them, but it is not proper for those slightly lower in the hierarchy, and well paid for what they do, to argue that their concern with the buck should be no more than passing it. In fairness, the General Medical Council, the professional medical regulatory body, has publicly recognised that it needs to put its house in order.

Distancing oneself from direct responsibility is not limited to the public sector. I was a member of a committee overseeing the planning and construction of a building in the village where I live. It is a fine

building but it has a major flaw: the heating system is ineffective. It was designed by a heating engineer whom we retained for an appropriate fee. Although the system is manifestly inadequate (in the view of ourselves and of other heating specialists whose opinions have been sought) he resolutely refuses to accept any responsibility.

Sometimes the evasion is institutionalised. Addresses and telephone numbers of railway stations, for example, are no longer published. Thus if one has a complaint (or even a question) it is difficult, even if one is by nature persistent, to find the people who are paid to run the railway.

When I ran a university service department, our policy was clear. If we made a mistake (as of course we sometimes did) we admitted the fact. It was not a particularly meritorious thing to do, merely realistic. Being prepared to say: " We were wrong" is surely part of accountability. It should be a matter of course if one takes one's responsibilities seriously.

BILL KIRKMAN

The writer is a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. E-mail him at wpk1000@cam.ac.uk

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Symbol of division
Next     : How much do we care?