By David Williams
16 July 2009
The language of government is blighted by meaningless jargon that must be fought with a ‘constant barrage of mockery’, an influential MPs’ committee has been told.
Commentator Matthew Parris told a public administration select committee hearing on official language, held on July 9, that politicians and public servants were damaging their credibility by using unnecessarily elaborate phrases.
‘The public are not fooled by this kind of thing,’ he said. He then criticised politicians who grab at ‘what sound like the vogue expressions, particularly from public relations’, in an attempt to appear knowledgeable.
Parris said ridicule was the only solution. ‘If we keep up a constant barrage of mockery, people will realise it’s not clever,’ he said.
Fellow pundit Simon Hoggart listed a series of offences committed in a single speech by the then health secretary Alan Johnson, including ‘quality and outcomes framework’, and ‘ensuring best practice flows readily to the front line’.
Committee member Kelvin Hopkins singled out Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne for condemnation. This led chair Tony Wright to suggest the minister’s tendency to spout technocratic gibberish came from his background in management consultancy.
Parris described Byrne as a ‘beacon of bad practice’, and pointed out that, like MPs, management consultancy is a ‘priesthood’, ‘inventing reasons for itself’.
Marie Clair of the Plain English Campaign told the hearing that language mattered because, when it was used badly, it could prevent public officials from being able to do their jobs, and made public information impossible to understand.
Linguistics expert Professor David Crystal argued that the government should establish an archive of examples of good, clear communication.
‘It’s easy to poke fun, given that the examples are so egregious,’ he said. ‘It is much more difficult to show examples of good practice.’
16 July 2009
The language of government is blighted by meaningless jargon that must be fought with a ‘constant barrage of mockery’, an influential MPs’ committee has been told.
Commentator Matthew Parris told a public administration select committee hearing on official language, held on July 9, that politicians and public servants were damaging their credibility by using unnecessarily elaborate phrases.
‘The public are not fooled by this kind of thing,’ he said. He then criticised politicians who grab at ‘what sound like the vogue expressions, particularly from public relations’, in an attempt to appear knowledgeable.
Parris said ridicule was the only solution. ‘If we keep up a constant barrage of mockery, people will realise it’s not clever,’ he said.
Fellow pundit Simon Hoggart listed a series of offences committed in a single speech by the then health secretary Alan Johnson, including ‘quality and outcomes framework’, and ‘ensuring best practice flows readily to the front line’.
Committee member Kelvin Hopkins singled out Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne for condemnation. This led chair Tony Wright to suggest the minister’s tendency to spout technocratic gibberish came from his background in management consultancy.
Parris described Byrne as a ‘beacon of bad practice’, and pointed out that, like MPs, management consultancy is a ‘priesthood’, ‘inventing reasons for itself’.
Marie Clair of the Plain English Campaign told the hearing that language mattered because, when it was used badly, it could prevent public officials from being able to do their jobs, and made public information impossible to understand.
Linguistics expert Professor David Crystal argued that the government should establish an archive of examples of good, clear communication.
‘It’s easy to poke fun, given that the examples are so egregious,’ he said. ‘It is much more difficult to show examples of good practice.’
