The dull bits of avoiding plane and political crashes

I hate flying. And being maybe a little overly analytic, I find knowing as much as possible about how and why planes crash helps me relax. So I’m an avid fan to the 'plane crash emergency' shows on TV. They’ve all got a fixed structure. First the very real disaster of the crash itself, with the emotional accounts of those involved. They then move on the forensic investigation of the facts – who did or said what, how exactly did a system fail. The final 10 minutes are the dull bit, when a change is made to the training programme, or a checklist introduced. Dull but vital if you’re interested in heading off the underlying causes of crashes. This structure may be worth bearing in mind when trying to think constructively about the evidence sessions of the Home Affairs select committee earlier this week. We are now locked into a real drama, which will have an emotional impact on all the people caught up in it. There will be a focus on the minute analysis of exactly who said what at which meeting. I doubt there will ever be much that an Institute for Government can contribute to these proceedings. But maybe we can help by providing a dull final 10 minutes to the show. It seems to us that we have to reprise how we do accountability in the public sector. Part of our answer is contained in 'Nothing to do with me', which argues that devolved public services need much more clarity and consensus about who exactly is responsible for what. It advocates that Secretaries of State should set out simple 'accountability maps', which should act as the basis for the accountability system. A crucial part of this is making sure that this consensus extends to an increasingly assertive Parliament. Now this is only a small part of the answer. And I’m fairly clear that our recommendations will not prevent political crisis hitting Whitehall, just as training and checklists have not yet eradicated plane crashes. But it’s worth spending at least part of the energy that will now be focused on UKBA and the Home Office thinking about the dull bits of accountability and how they could be improved, to maybe reduce the chances of further crashes.