Actions have to come with consequences if we’re to stop scandal after scandal - Andy Brown

Then sustained distortion of the facts by people who were fully aware of the consequences of what they were doing took place at the Post Office. Somehow people at the very top of an important institution decided to believe that it was more likely that large numbers of their staff had developed criminal tendencies than that there were errors in computer software. They then proceeded to insist on this implausible theory for years with casual disregard of the consequences for ‘small’ people who can’t afford expensive lawyers.

The Grenfell Tower disaster was meant to result in a quick and effective inquiry followed by changes to the rules which would ensure that the public could trust buildings to be safe. Seven years later we are still waiting for the main body of the inquiry report. One of the key causes of the deaths was that shoddy and dangerous work was casually signed off as safe by building inspectors who had been hired by the very people they were supposed to be regulating. To this day there is no requirement for new buildings to be checked by a powerfully independent inspector employed by the public. Developers can still choose their own regulator. Not one of the people who made the decisions that caused the deaths has ever been prosecuted. The NHS is one of the most trusted institutions in the country and full of people who do amazing work in challenging circumstances for too little reward. Yet whilst some were doing that great work, others were experimenting on haemophiliac youngsters without their permission, buying in cheap blood products from the States that were known to come from people who sold their blood to fund their drug habits, and attempting to protect the institution from those who suffered the consequences.

Ordinary people who were suffering the horrible results of bad decisions were made to feel powerless and had to struggle to form support groups and to fund legal teams whilst dealing with grief instead of encountering an honest admission that something had gone wrong.

It is a bizarre form of misguided loyalty that tolerates unacceptable behaviour and distorts the truth in order to support an institution instead of protecting the innocent. It is also almost always more deeply damaging for that institution than it would have been to come clean in the first place and deal with the problem. Decades of cover ups and denials increase the cost of compensation and wreck reputations that take years to recover.

If we are genuinely serious about preventing the next scandal, then serious action has to be taken to change the rules on corporate and individual responsibility. As the law stands it proved impossible to get any of the most important witnesses to what happened in the Grenfell fire to give evidence until they had been guaranteed they would never be prosecuted. They will walk away free and clear regardless of how casually they disregarded the importance of other people’s lives.

Sub Post Office managers went to jail. None of the people who made the decisions that hounded them out of their job, ruined their reputations and forced them to take whatever work a convicted criminal could get seem to be facing the same experience.

When compensation is paid it does not come from the pockets of the guilty. It comes from institutions who could put that money to much better use and costs the taxpayer and the service user not the decision makers. Sub Post Offices that communities need are being closed because the Post Office that victimised those who used to run them is short of money and facing huge compensation bills. The NHS and the government will be paying £ billions out to victims of blood transfusions.

The single worst example of responsibility being carried by the wrong people was the financial crash of 2007-8. Investment bankers gambled many times the size of the entire world economy on obscure financial products in order to increase the size of their bonuses. When they lost it was governments that bailed them out. Resulting in such massive national debts that the public was asked to put up with over ten years of austerity. The city traders kept their bonuses whilst teachers and nurses experienced hefty real terms pay cuts.

Actions have to come with consequences. The wealthy and powerful need to take responsibility for their bad decisions. Institutions must face such high costs for deception that it is better to honestly admit mistakes. Either we change the laws on corporate responsibility, or we need to stop promising that it will never happen again. Because it will.

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.