<<<	articles
Missing the point Samuel Brittan: Financial Times 15/08/03 A recent report from the Commons public administration select committee contained some horrifying examples of the blind pursuit of government targets at the expense of genuine service. "Blind" is unfortunately more than a metaphor. One example that attracted attention was the report from Bristol Eye Hospital that 25 patients had lost some vision in the last two years because follow-up appointments had been delayed or cancelled to achieve government waiting-time targets for new outpatient appointments. Cutting patient waiting lists is far from the only example of the current obsession with targets. Maximum waiting times for accident and emergency have been circumvented by removing the wheels from trolleys or redesignating them as beds on wheels. There are also examples of straightforward cheating, such as ambulance trusts that claimed to be coming to the aid of patients in the near impossible time of less than a minute. Another example is that of "closing the justice gap" which apparently means putting more people in prison. Yet this makes it more difficult for the service "to meet its own targets on overcrowding and reoffending". The committee remarks that excessive attention may be given to what is easy to measure at the expense of what is hard to quantify, such as patient care, community policing or time devoted to a child's needs. Nearly everyone interviewed, from former ministers to local administrators, felt alienated by the system. Estelle Morris, former education secretary, remarked that the teaching profession felt "no ownership of the targets, none whatsoever". A director of education for Cornwall said that a national target "is of little relevance to a teacher in a school in Bodmin Moor". The committee puts the blame on a decade or more of so-called structural reform. This country has a complex system of government. A layer of Whitehall officials at the top pontificates on what needs to be done; in the middle is a set of bewildered local authorities and health bodies; and at the bottom are the unfortunate professionals who have to teach, attend to the sick or dispense library books. The result is "acrimonious dispute about where blame rests if a target is missed . . . It is a recipe for the growth of a blame culture". The government has, in principle, accepted some of the strictures. It has tried to cut the number of public service agreements between the Treasury and the spending departments, for example. But, as the committee concluded, "service deliverers are unanimous in saying that there has been no decrease in the total number of targets". None of the findings would be surprising to students of the Soviet Gosplan. New Labour's "third way" idea is to reject Gosplan for the commercial sector but to install it in the sector comprising health, education and, to an increasing extent, transport. The Commons committee remains in favour of target-setting. But it hopes, as Mikhail Gorbachev did with Soviet economic planning, to improve the process. It rejects the idea of "a cull of targets and tables". Instead it wants to bring together the measurement culture and performance culture. Its own proposals are, I am afraid, a parody of CommitteeSpeak. For instance, it calls for a willingness to "choose and communicate clear priorities" and for local providers "to understand the need for measurement while also innovating and improving". Moreover, "the grey zone between what is possible and is impossible is negotiable". The satirical television series, Yes Minister, could not have put it better. The committee would like a more mature political culture to assess targets but adds that this culture may "prove to be one target too many". It is, of course, easier to ridicule the control-freak culture than to suggest an alternative. One false solution is localism. Those who have noticed the stream of reports on abuse in local authority children's homes will know that local is not always better than national. Moreover, as the committee hints, a move to local autonomy would require a shift to local taxation. Onora O'Neill, the distinguished philosopher, gave a profound analysis of the defects of "the new accountability culture" in her 2002 Reith lectures*. But her remedy was based too much on trusting the professionals on the spot. Adam Smith wrote: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public." Public service professionals are not immune from such temptations. Some readers will suspect that I would like to return the activities in question to a private enterprise free-for-all. Alas, no such luck. A glance around the world shows that the state is inextricably involved. All I can suggest is that the government loosen up a little and curb its belief that there is a political solution to every human problem and nothing that will not yield to a regulator, a committee, Act of Parliament, a prime minister's special group, or all of them together. Moreover, where there is some opportunity for competition or direct payment by users, it should be embraced rather than spurned as "right wing". But I am not optimistic about either a Blair or a Brown government letting go to that extent. * A Question of Trust, Cambridge University Press
<<<	articles
Site designed and managed by Andrew Heavens - aheavens@ftnetwork.com