There is a lesson to be learned from the Francis Report into the NHS in Mid-Staffordshire, and from the police force’s current travails. Nigel Lawson once said that the NHS had virtually become a state religion, and until recently, most of us held the British police in complacent esteem. This is dangerous. Left unchallenged, highly admired by the public, it is easy for any bureaucracy to drift into bad habits (cf. the Irish Catholic church), especially if it is immune to competition and market forces. But waste, inefficiency and corruption are no less acceptable when they are perpetrated by institutions with noble goals. Once their standards slide, these bodies can end up by killing people. Corruptio optimi pessima.
There is an exception. One large organisation, which often kills people, functions without market stimuli and does so superbly well: the army.
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