Reflexive fines

I have been pondering over the past few days about the merits of reflexive fining, that it to say one organ of government fining another organ of government for misbehaviour. This prompted by a story in the Guardian about how the police in Scotland have been fined £100,000 for their failure to properly deal with a 999 call following a road accident. A story in which we are told nothing about the reasons for the accident in the first place - quite possibly there is nothing to tell - but we are told a lot about the police failure to deal with its consequences.

Now suppose that the failure is itself mainly a consequence of successive budget cuts, of Tory style attempts to get first class service on third class wages. There are, no doubt, some of the low-hanging fruits that management consultants like to talk about - but if you keep it up, the pips are going to squeak. Or in plainer language, things are going to start to go wrong.

So if your problems in your service are caused by lack of money, what is the point of taking even more money away from the service provider? There will be even less money to go around than there was already. Things can only get worse.

I suppose the argument for fines is that it incentivises management to do better. Having to provide the odd unplanned £100,000 is a nuisance which hard pressed managers would rather do without. And they have been publicly pilloried, which they would much rather do without. Two arguments against. First, there may be no more efficiencies, no more savings to be made. Second, they might just bureaucratise the problem. Allocate £10,000,000 a year to this sort of thing and appoint a risk manager to manage the pot. Yet another central management type running around telling local management what to do.

A problem which is increasingly to be seen in the medical and social care arenas, where providers are often punished for failures caused, at root, by lack of provision. And where, sometimes at least, the punishment seems disproportionate: if someone has had the misfortune to suffer a care accident, is it really a good thing to throw a lot of money at that victim and their family? If that is, indeed, where the fine goes. Or does it just get poured into some central fund, managed by the Treasury on our behalf?

All terribly complicated.

Not having a solution to today's problems, I then wondered about this might translate to the days of kings and queens. Medieval and early modern kings exercised a more hands-on style than is normal now. They did have a civil service of sorts and there were organs of government, but a lot of what was done from the centre flowed directly from the top. It is also the case the kings - and occasionally queens - were into power and treasure. They wanted as much of it as they could get their hands on and they certainly did not want their subjects to be in the same league in those departments, although they quite often were. While looking after the needs of the people at large was very much a secondary consideration: kings did not have to be seen to be worrying about the wool farmers or the working conditions of plough teams - although they did have a vague understanding that prosperous wool farmers and contented plough teams did make, in the long run at least, for more revenue for the crown. But against this background they did levy fines on their servants. So Henry VIII confiscated Hampton Court Palace from Cardinal Wolsey who, inter alia, had made the mistake of being too rich. So there is precedent of a sort.

PS 1: in passing I notice our difficulties over fishing with the French, of which I was reminded by Microsoft News this (Saturday) morning, which flagged up a story in today's FT, from which the suitably incendiary image above is taken. Particularly given our combative and aggressive style in these matters, it seems inevitable that if you have a bunch of small islands which belong to the UK, at least after a fashion, just a few miles off the French coast, a good deal closer to France than the rest of the UK, there is bound to be trouble over something like fishing - unless you have a common market and manage it within a unified framework. It is a great pity we can't just wave a magic wand and return all these relics and enclaves to the big country on the spot. Just think of all the trouble they have all caused in the past and will continue to cause in the future. And the UK is still lumbered with lots of them, although we did manage to off-load Hong Kong to the Chinese.

PS 2: a little later I remembered about reflexive charging, where one bit of government charges another bit of government for services rendered. In particular, when I started in the civil service, the practise whereby all the mail sent out by government departments was marked 'OHMS' (for on her majesty's service) and carried by the Post Office, then another government department, free of charge. But gradually the accountants moved in and explained that it would be a good idea if the costs of all this service were properly accounted for, to appear in the books at both ends. And at some point, 'OHMS' vanished and government departments started using franking machines like any other big customer. Which, as it turned out, was one less thing to worry about when we came to flogging the service off. And then there are all the taxes paid by government departments; the left hand giving away what the right hand is taking in. It probably is sensible, but one does have to think about it.