Ethics and the public interest

Since 1979, under governments of both major parties, the thrust of British public policy has been radically changed in the direction of neoliberal economics and the ‘New Public Management’ (NPM). This has had profound effects on the priorities that politicians and the officials who advise them are expected to pursue. The traditional public service values of equity, probity and integrity have been displaced by the business values of economy, efficiency and effectiveness – the ‘Three Es’ (Hood, 1991). Many of the provisions and regulations that were designed to reduce risks of corrupt or otherwise improper behaviour were relaxed in favour of generating more entrepreneurial attitudes among public servants and recruiting entrepreneurial talent from the business world. The benefits of enterprise have been significant in terms of gains in innovation, efficiency and improved relations with the public; but on the other hand, corrupt, selfish and greedy behaviour by some politicians and public servants has seriously eroded public respect for politics and public administration alike. More generally, markets and their values have increasingly dominated political, economic and social discourses and decision making, with the result that markets are now used to determine outcomes that would formerly have been regarded as inappropriate for the application of market methods and which arguably are still inappropriate issues for markets alone to determine (Sandel, 2012). Hence a review of the ethical issues that underpin public policymaking, administration and management is urgently required. Michael Sandel (2010) has argued that we need to rethink the importance of justice and related values in our public life, albeit that we disagree among ourselves about many moral and religious issues: ‘A politics of moral engagement is not only a more inspiring ideal than a politics of avoidance. It is also a more promising basis for a just society’ (Sandel, 2010: 269).