Very recent events suggest there is work to be done if Lord Nolan’s Seven Principles of Public Life are not to be taken for granted. But how do you go beyond tick-boxes?
Next year it will be 20 years since Lord Nolan first set down the Seven Principles of Public Life – honesty, openness, integrity, objectivity, selflessness, accountability and leadership. His original text stands the test of time. Nolan’s principles, now widely known across public life, are almost taken for granted; they have become a shorthand for ticking the organisational ethics box.
There was, for a while, a view that Nolan’s task had been completed. Even the continuing need for a Committee on Standards in Public Life itself was questioned. However, very recent events – not just in parliament but in banking, the police and the health service – make it abundantly clear that the job is not done. The common theme in these crises – once investigations are complete and reports published – is that despite codes and rules, there has somehow been a failure of ‘culture’.
In 2005 the committee said in its Tenth Report: ‘However intangible the issue of culture appears… it is critical to delivering high standards of propriety in public life in a proportionate and effective manner. Learning from good practice must play a central role.’ The committee identified training and development as one of the key areas for improvement in order to build that culture. Now, more than ever, we need public office holders and the organisations they work for to internalise and embed the Seven Principles into their individual and organisational psyches.
How best to build high ethical standards into the culture of organisations is something with which the current committee is wrestling. We hope to recommend effective, practical and proportionate ways to build these principles into organisational processes. The private sector and the professions have been looking at these issues recently. For instance, Sir Richard Lambert’s Banking Standards Review recognises that training is needed for conduct as well as competence and that it needs to go beyond a tick-box online offer. Similarly, the Legal Education and Training Review recommends a greater emphasis on legal ethics and values.
The reflections of the lay members of the House of Commons’ Standards Committee published in the wake of recent events suggest that induction programmes for all new MPs and refresher training for all MPs might be one way of embedding high ethical standards in Parliament. We’d like to hear from organisations with examples to share of how they embed ethical principles through education and training, to build an ethical culture. What works and what does not? Are there any differences in results when you outsource training, or keep it in-house? What role does leadership play in this process?
Stretched budgets and resources across the public sector are a fact of life, but the exponential costs of failure – both financially and reputationally – are plain to see. The costs of another Stafford or Plebgate mean that paying lip service to ethical codes and standards is simply not an option. That was what Nolan was trying to tell us.
Lord (Paul) Bew is chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. To contribute examples of ethical development, email the Secretary to the Committee at [email protected]
This opinion piece was first published in the May edition of Public Finance magazine
