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Having written about the power of words in my last Plugged in column (The MJ, 4 February) and as a result, become more sensitised to the subject, I though I would continue the theme this week. One phrase which crops up often is ‘tick box', invariably used as a pejorative term. But what if the boxes being ticked included world peace, a cure for cancer, and a cheap alternative to fossil fuels – we would all want to be the ones doing the ticking! Clearly, the issue is not about ticking boxes, but the outcomes of the work needed to justify the tick in the first place. A similarly-pejorative term is ‘talking shop'. How does this fit with our knowledge that making partnerships work is all about building relationships and trust? We can only build those relationships, and increase that trust, through discussion and exchange. So, to glibly dismiss relationship-building as being a talking shop is to shoot ourselves in the foot. Of course, eventually, that talking needs to turn into action, but we should not forget that this is unlikely without the inter-personal investment to begin with. This use of pejorative, value-filled words was a daily event when I was an inspector. A common exchange would involve me being accused of making a subjective judgment, to which my reply would be, ‘You say subjective judgment. I say qualitative assessment'. They both describe the same thing, but one is a more acceptable – and, I would say, accurate description. This attitude remains today. The word ‘inspection' no longer seems to exit in isolation, as it has had the word ‘burden' grafted on to it, as in ‘inspection burden', like Siamese twins, never to be separated. But, if we accept that there will always be some inspection, we should have a debate about the quantum. Is it a burden if inspection amounts to 10% of our costs, 1% of our costs, maybe 0.1% of our costs? How small is not a burden? The Kent Total Place pilot found inspection costs to be comfortably less than 1% of public sector spend – still significant, but is that really a burden? To my mind, debates about inspection location, content and usefulness are much more interesting than those about quantum, but perhaps that is less easy to convert into a handy, pejorative turn of phrase. In which case, we will forever have shallow clichés rather than informed debates – oops, perhaps I, too, have slipped into the pejorative!

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WHITEHALL

Plugged In

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