Beware the jobsworth with a target, my son
Why do quangos pay bonuses for simply doing a job properly?
The idea that executives of the Environment Agency should be made to hand over their bonuses to the flood victims of Worcestershire and Gloucestershire is absurd. The money would be but a drop in the muddy waters of this affair, and anyway it was earned long before the rivers broke their banks. A better question is this: why were they paid bonuses in the first place?
My understanding of a bonus is that it is an additional payment from an employer, made in recognition of increased productivity. Whether it is earned by an investment broker in the City, a hod-carrier on a building site or a salesman in a Mondeo, the money is meant to represent something over and above that specified in their contract of employment; it is paid out because of the difference their work has made to the performance of a company. More effort equals more profit equals enhanced pay; it’s known as capitalism. I cannot see how a quango, which is a non-profit-making organisation, can step up production, unless it is the massively increased output of red tape.
The EA executives were paid their five-figure bonuses because they were judged to have met 42 of the 49 performance targets set by the Government. These included five out of seven flood-management projects (no irony intended), improving the environment for wildlife, protection of inland waters and the quality of bathing water. In the section on flood risk, the agency was judged to have “fully achieved its targets”, though not, it emerges, in those areas that suffered from the worst of the flooding. In defending the bonuses, Sir John Harman, the agency’s chairman, said they had been calculated “by reference to the extent to which predetermined objectives have been achieved”.
In other words, the executives were rewarded with extra money for fulfilling the terms of their employment. Not for exceeding them, not for building those extra flood barriers or filling up those much-needed sandbags, but simply for doing the job, as specified by their employers – the Government.
Meeting targets is what every non-departmental public body is expected to do. As someone who has served my time on an NDPB, I am deeply familiar with the concept of the predetermined objective, but I never heard that we might be paid more for meeting one. Targets are things that are laid out in lists, each with its carefully crafted definition, its impenetrable jargon and its box to tick once it has been achieved. They are, in my view, a severely limiting form of creative endeavour, because they actually discourage individual enterprise; either a box is ticked or it is not; no one was ever congratulated for double-ticking or for adding in new boxes, so quite what the function of a bonus might be I find it hard to imagine. On the other hand, a failure to meet any targets was instantly noted and condemned. I do not wish to labour the point, but if the Government laid down 49 performance targets, and the EA only fulfilled 42, should that not have meant a reduction in salary rather than a bonus?
There is a more serious aspect to this quango culture, however. It is the rise and rise of the petty but all-powerful official, armed with clipboard and bearing all the authority of an impenetrable organisation, positively bristling with predetermined objectives. Because a target missed is now, apparently, a bonus postponed, these plenipotentiaries of the new bureaucracy are on the warpath.
You may recognise them by their ability to say “no”. Anybody who lives in the countryside will recognise the type, because it is here that their rules are most rigorously imposed – you may not block a path, run water off a hill, bury a farm animal, dig a ditch, light a bonfire, put up a fence or erect a shed without fulfilling the most rigorous set of procedures, and with the threat of sanctions should you fall down on the job.
Thus it was, the other day, that we learnt of new rules governing the use of water for irrigation on farming land in Scotland. Since our weekend retreat is deep in the Perthshire hills, where rainfall is a regular phenomenon, we had not regarded irrigation as high on the list of our priorities. Nevertheless, the letter that arrived was ferocious in its language. Unless we responded forthwith to new rules that had been imposed by the Scottish Executive, we would be liable to an increasing set of fines, starting at £50 and rising to several thousand. I noticed that the “target” date for imposition of these rules had already passed, and we were therefore in fining territory. I was able to assure the quango concerned (the Scottish Environment Protection Agency – Scotland’s equivalent of the EA) that we had no intention of digging Mediterranean-style irrigation canals, and the correspondence ceased. I have no doubt, however, that if we had been in breach, retribution would have been swift and unremitting.
What these organisations should perhaps remember is that we the public are not just their customers, we are their owners. We pay their bills, it is in our interests that they are supposed to act, it is to us that they are ultimately responsible. When, therefore, they deal with us, it should be in a spirit of cooperation rather than control. And if they have performed well or badly, it is we who should judge the results rather than their own boards, the Government or perhaps some distant office in Brussels.
I may be growing paranoid, but the more I think about those 49 targets, the more I wonder who drew them up. Was it the Department for Environment, to whom the EA is responsible; or was it the EU, which lays down criteria for water standards in Britain as elsewhere in Europe? It couldn’t have been the EA itself could it? No – that’s unworthy. After all, a situation in which an organisation lays down its own guidelines, then pays itself a bonus for meeting them would be unthinkable. Wouldn’t it?
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This is what you and everyone else that has voted for and supported a socialist government these past 10 years should expect. Throw in irritating dictacts like smoking bans, political correctness etc and you can see that you reap what you sow - and more fool you! Thankfully, I saw this coming and shipped out to somewhere less sterile than what can only be best described as a "land fit for beaurocrats". Good luck to the rest of you.
Steve, Limassol, Cyprus
A good summary of the relentless march of the quangoes - more and more of them crop up every year (especially in Scotland) and fewer and fewer of them seem accountable for their budgets or actions. The scenario that Magnus depicts of quango heads (or their departmental supervisors) drawing up their own targets is only too familiar. He is right: paying people bonuses just to do their job is ridiculous.
The problem is that employees in the public sector have private-sector envy. They ignore completely the downsides of the private sector (redundancy, pay cuts in lean times, job insecurity) and focus solely on the imagined upsides: bonuses, high pay and perks such as company lunches and cars. Someone needs to tell them that their wages and perks come at the private sector's expense. It's unlikely that this can continue for much longer, however, so who will foot the gigantic bill then?
MB, Edinburgh,
Al of Newcastle is right. If we didn't want a nanny state with interfering bureaucrats, we shouldn't have voted Labour in 97, 01 and 05. We have got the government we deserve, heaven help us.
PJ, London,
I suspect that the EA senior management drafted their own targets and then submitted them for a government minister or government department to accept and approve and that way those who have to meet the targets are in fact in control of them. However, the point is very clearly made, why on earth are public servants and QUANGO bodies paid bonuses simply for doing their job. Public organizations are not like commercial organizations where targets are based on increasing or improving efficiency, productivity and competitiveness in order to increase performance and improve the bottom line. When someone accepts a public sector job the terms and conditions should be made clear and bonuses should not be part of the equation. Soldiers are not paid by the number of enemy they shoot, airmen are not paid for the number of bombs they drop or number of planes they shoot down and sailors are not paid for sinking other ships and submarines. Time the government got a grip of this situation.
Kenneth Armitage, Suffolk, England
I have heard from these type of people that they set their own targets. They deliberately set a target so that it is achievable without being overdemanding, or unattainable, so that when they achieve it they get a pat on the back, and even more when they inevitably manage to achieve their target that wasn't that difficult in the first place.
Just look at the Defence Procurement organisation with their publicised targets and nomenclature including "stretch" targets!
Jim, Norwich, UK
Nice one. Does anyone remember, I think it was the'80s, when there was a war declared on QUANGOS? More publicity please and maybe we can start to get rid of these unelected busybodies and curtain-twitchers.
Chris, Northampton,
So true that we are all now being plagued by the petty bureaucrat who has forgotten (if he ever knew, and yes most of them are men for some reason) that he is there to serve us, not punish us. BUt how do we liberate ourselves from them? Who is willing to oppose them and promise their banishment in return for our vote?
Tim, London,
I work for a local authority.
I would like to work on the executive of a quango, or perhaps be a Director of a major Company where the performance targets for the Directors have been eased by themselves to make them easier to achieve.
I have only ever had 3 honoraria in 35 years for performing more than my contracted duties, and the biggest one amounted to less than 2% of my gross annual pay.
The cult of bonus for not very much doesn't exist in the section where I work.
Michael Smith, Southampton,
The vast majority of organisations with performance pay set their own targets. Who else would set them when mostly there is no higher body with enough knowledge? The idea is you set challenging targets (and strangely enough the majority of people are over optimistic) so you have to work hard or smart to acheive them.
Bob Foster, Leek, Staffs
These quangos are examples of the worst sort of governance in terms of lack of accountability. Many of them seem to in effect be able to promulgate their own regulations and set their own targets. If in effect they can also set their own internal remuneration and bonus levels, then we might as well just subcontract the whole process out to a pack of bandits.
Gervas Douglas, Andorra la Vella,
Yes, I must say that many find the sort of attitude which the employer tried to portray in Smith v Baker 1891, that workmen in a quarry consent to the swinging of heavy loads etc. over their heads, attractive...
I always find attractive the philosophy that London should wallow in their own filth or have pre 1840 water supplies and sewerage, or that the thames Valley and Severn Valley should have to pay for their own flood gates (like indeed London did)... But then I suppose the planet is not just built just for me, and my profits, and one amputation or head injury is too much really.
Oh, and I must remember to read the passage in the Ragged Trosuered Philanthropist where one of the aged workmen although in poor health and with no pension is forced to climb that tall ladder again and falls off and dies... very sobering.
Pete Balchin, Solicitor, Bristol, UK
When you say, "the more I think about those 49 targets, the more I wonder who drew them up" - did it occur to you in all this thinking, to ring up the Environment Agency and ask them?
Nicola Kirkup, London, UK
If you want edsmall state, you shouldnt have ticked the labour box since 1997. You got what you asked for - centralised state controll.
Al, Newcastle, UK
Churchill warned of the rise of power of these bureaucrats -'Civil servants - no longer servants, no longer civil'.
David, Oxford,
Unfortunately not. When Bliar came to power, he proclaimed he would clean up politics, he said he would scythe through quangos so that a minimum was left. In fact, what he really meant was that he intended to corrupt the political process in this country to the point of breaking, and that whilst doing so, he would line the pockets of himself, and all his mates.
Seems like he succeeded.
Jeremy Poynton, Fromeville, 51st State
Good article. I wonder just how many jobs have been lost and livlihoods destroyed by the Health & Safety Executive with its endless meddling and aggravation ? Must run into thousands.
We seemed to muddle along well enough before this dreadful quango was set up : I'd abolish it tomorrow !
Lewis Thomas, Slough, UK
It would be quite amusing if the EA had written its own guidelines and then managed not to meet them. Would seem to suggest that revelry in a brewery would be quite beyond them.
Simon Cook, Hong Kong,
I am aware of one organisation where the targets were agreed by the regulator and despite the fact that several were both unreasonable and unreachable the organisation met them all bar one or two.
The regulator of that organisation (desperate for an elevation to the House of Lords which hopefully she will never achieve) now proposes to fine the organisation several thousand pounds recognising not the magnificent achievement of meeting several very stretching targets but instead focusing on the negative.
Now THAT is outrageous.
Jay, London,