Those who govern Britain are increasingly unaccountable – it’s making them corrupt

We still see ourselves as an honest nation – but we are far too soft on official wrongdoing

Some readers will think me naïve, but I used to believe that this was an uncorrupt country. In many ways, I still believe it, and it is a reason for legitimate pride. 
I would never expect to offer a bribe, or be offered one, however politely. I have never ever been asked to favour anyone applying for admission as a student to Cambridge, or to write a dishonest reference. I would not expect to give a box of chocolates to an archivist to get access to public records. 
But I know that in many countries, such practices are common, indeed normal, something of a joke. I have close connections with France, where le piston (string-pulling) is almost a national sport. 
But in recent months, my complacency has crumbled. Not because of experiencing petty corruption on a personal level – I haven’t – but because of institutional scandals which put questions of corruption on a quite different plane. 
We have a tainted blood scandal dating back to the 1970s, 80s and 90s. So does France. In 1999, the French charged the Prime Minister in office during the scandal, the social affairs minister, and the health minister with manslaughter, and the health minister was convicted, though not imprisoned. The director of the French blood transfusion service was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. 
And here? Twenty-five years after the French put their politicians in court, we finally had the report of a public inquiry, whose chairman stated that: “This disaster was not an accident … those in authority – doctors, the blood services and successive governments – did not put patient safety first.”
Shall we soon see the politicians and officials – those still alive – in the dock? I think we know the answer. 
If this was the only scandal we had lived through, we might think it an exception. But we have had a series of appalling failures, none of which was “an accident”. 
The grooming gangs who were ignored by local authorities, social workers and police. The Grenfell Tower disaster, when so many people knew that cladding was dangerous and hid it. The Post Office scandal, in which hundreds of innocent people had their lives ruined by a well paid but indifferent bureaucracy. 
Recently, there have been the plausible accusations of abuse of power made by Alan Halsall about his mistreatment by the Electoral Commission, egged on by anti-Brexit lawyers, politicians and newspapers to accuse a scrupulously honest Leave campaigner of dishonesty. This is fully documented in his recent book Last Man Standing. 
Now we have the disgusting behaviour of Mohamed al Fayed seemingly being overlooked by the police and perhaps by colleagues and senior employees. Readers will doubtless add to the list. 
This deplorable record displays corruption in a very different and more alarming form than the banal exchange of cash-filled envelopes. In some ways, each case is very different. 
Some concern local authorities, others the police, or independent public bodies, or officials, or private enterprise. But what they have in common seems to me more important than their differences. First, there is a lack of effective accountability to any outside body, whether Parliament or the public.
Second, the evident lack – or at least inadequacy – of people within these organisations who might have had the power and the courage to put a stop to what was being done at an early stage. Instead, there must have been a widespread culture of wilful ignorance or indifference. 
This is surely and sadly a cultural change. I am not saying that there was ever a golden age of honesty and public spirit. There have always been crooks and amoral careerists. 
But recent corruption has been on such a scale, and has involved so many otherwise decent people – one of the Post Office bosses had not only been publicly honoured, but had been considered for a bishopric – that I think something important has shifted. 
Was there no one to say “We can’t do this, it’s wrong”? Did they feel that no one would support them? Did they shrug and say “Not my business”? 
So many people running our institutions have the same background, the same opinions, the same ambitions. They progress from quango to quango, from boardroom to boardroom. Gamekeepers eagerly turn poachers. 
The result of failure or even misbehaviour is simply to move on. They are the epitome of the “anywhere” people, with little connection to place or community, and little loyalty to institutions that are merely stepping stones to something more lucrative. There are, fortunately, exceptions. But the scandals show that the exceptions are not enough. 
The causes seem plain. We live in a more diverse and mobile society. Old inhibitions against misbehaviour are weakened: we don’t worry about what the neighbours might say if we don’t know who they are. 
But there is another problem, which can be mitigated, though with difficulty. We have far too many unaccountable institutions. 
Partly because of an old liberal tradition of limiting central authority, and party through a Gladstonian/Thatcherite belief that markets themselves create discipline, we have created a horde of arms-length bodies that behave as a law unto themselves. 
We have charities that do not depend on individual charity but on the largesse of government departments. Quangos, NGOs and public corporations like the Post Office exist on public money, but are not accountable to the public. They also provide vast amounts of taxpayers’ money to each other. 
This is the beating heart of the Blob. We have encouraged its expansion because we mistrust politicians. But at least we vote politicians in – and out. We must increase their authority over unelected bodies. 
Perhaps too we could learn something from the Jacobin traditions of our French neighbours: instead of peerages, a few jail sentences for ministers, officials, quangocrats and even chief constables might concentrate minds very effectively.