Diary – 10 January 2013

There is a lesson to be learned from the Francis Report into the NHS in Mid-Staffordshire, and from the police force’s current travails. Nigel Lawson once said that the NHS had virtually become a state religion, and until recently, most of us held the British police in complacent esteem. This is dangerous. Left unchallenged, highly admired by the public, it is easy for any bureaucracy to drift into bad habits (cf. the Irish Catholic church), especially if it is immune to competition and market forces. But waste, inefficiency and corruption are no less acceptable when they are perpetrated by institutions with noble goals. Once their standards slide, these bodies can end up by killing people. Corruptio optimi pessima.

There is an exception. One large organisation, which often kills people, functions without market stimuli and does so superbly well: the army. There is a reason for this. Talk to any general about his trade, and within seconds, he will be stressing the importance of leadership, a quality which no senior officer takes for granted. There are no bad dogs, only bad owners: no bad squaddies, only badly led ones. So from the very fledgling stages of their career, young officers are assessed for their leadership skills. Can they grip the formation which they are commanding? As the officer is promoted and the formations become larger, the scrutiny becomes steadily more ruthless. Leadership is essential, to ensure that when ordered to risk their lives, the men will obey. This is not because they are automata. Modern troops cannot be led just by shouting at them. Their officers and NCOs have to win trust and respect, and a bit of inspiration always helps. There was no inspiration in mid-Staffs, where ‘leadership’ often meant criminal conspiracy.