The Governor’s Eyebrow
March 21st, 2009 | This post was written by Fiona MelvilleI love Matthew Parris’ articles. But I’m cross with him this morning – I was planning on writing something similar to his article in the Times. However, I think he’s said it much better than I was going to. Here is the key idea:
“The rule-based approach aims to capture what a regulation means in careful, comprehensive, exhaustively assembled words: an authoritative text. At its best this offers certainty to citizens anxious to know if they are complying with the rules. At its worst it leads to the letter trumping the spirit of regulation: to box-ticking and the recruitment of hordes of lawyers to help people to look for ways round the spirit of the rules while obeying their letter.
“The judgment-based approach is what is meant by the Governor’s eyebrow. At the Bank of England the Governor had the power to raise an eyebrow at a financial practice, murmur that he didn’t care for it, and wave it away without explanation. You could call it the “doesn’t look kosher” rule or the “this stinks” method of adjudication. Parents have their own version in responding to children who keep demanding reasons: “Because”.”
And that’s it. Trust judgement, not regulation.
There are some things that just don’t feel right; you probably couldn’t articulate why, but they feel wrong. It’s a really difficult thing for any organisation to allow – just as allowing proper local control over services, policing, the NHS or anything else is going to be difficult.
But trusting people is THE big Conservative idea. And we must trust our insinct that, while trusting people will inevitably still mean that people make mistakes, strict tick-box regulations mean that any sense of shared responsibility evaporates – ‘I followed the rules’ is the perennial defence of any official who is in charge of a failure of public policy .
It’s going to be hard to do. There will be failures. But people are stronger if they feel they have control over their lives, and the only way to do that is to allow they themselves to judge what is best for them.
Related posts
Tags: Accountability, Commentators, Responsibility
Posts
July 17th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
[...] realistically if someone is determined to get round the rules, they will, despite the theory of the Governor’s eyebrow or the smell test. So I think the best way is to get it all out in the open, be honest and [...]