In The Times on Friday last week Matthew Parris argued that national Conservative politicians should think twice before abandoning the target culture. Local government and other public sector providers need to be made to perform by the setting of targets, he counters. Yes, he admits, targets are often a crude measure of performance and yes they can distort the behaviour of public servants in strange ways, guiding their actions so they reach targets but not achieve real improvements. But public sector monopolies can only be called to account by such means, he argues.
But at least for local government I think Matthew Parris is wrong. No where else in the democratic world is elected local government so tied up in a set of nationally prescribed targets. How do they call their public sector providers to account? Mostly through allowing citizens through elections and campaign groups to put pressure on providers to deliver. In the UK we seem to have lost faith in this form of accountability in favour of crude and distorting managerialism. We may still need targets but they should be locally set and monitored