Transparency doesn’t always work in practice

Self-regulation of ethical standards does not work, even when government organisations are involved. Invariably, ombudsmen, ethics advisers, monitoring officers, etc, are or feel that they are - under an obligation to provide cover for the organisation that employs them and to defend it from accusations of impropriety.

Recent revelations have demonstrated that this occurs at every level, from the United Nations, through the Prime Minister’s office down to local councils.

The recent BBC documentary, ‘The Whistleblowers Inside the UN’, reported that when the UN was faced with credible allegations of corruption, betrayal and sexual harassment, it dealt with the problems by firing the whistleblowers.

Boris Johnson’s problems with his ethics advisers were simply due to the fact that they had not understood what was expected of their role. When they realised that the rewards would not sufficiently compensate for the hit to their reputations, they had no choice but to resign.

At the local level, when the district council advertised for applicants to promote and maintain high standards of conduct by district, town and parish councils, the candidates were expected to be simultaneously ‘independently minded’ and ‘able to work as part of a team’. In an apparent Freudian slip, the job title, Independent Person, was put in inverted commas.

How things work in practice was demonstrated when the Monitoring Officer, supported by the Independent Person, ruled that there is no potential conflict of interest when a committee, chaired and controlled by representatives of a political party, adjudicates a planning application from a major donor to that party.

In this post-truth era, it is more important than ever for oversight to be truly independent.

Derek Wisdom