Expenses and rule fetishism

Several of you have expressed dissatisfaction with MPs’ argument that their expenses claims were “within the rules.” What’s not sufficiently appreciated is just how deeply inadequate this defence is.

The problem is not just that it’s easy to obey rules if you make them yourself - - if indeed MPs have done this. It’s that the claim “I didn’t break any rules” is a category mistake. It confounds good, or merely acceptable, behaviour, with following rules. It’s a form of fetishism. Just as a foot fetishist mistakes a foot for a sexual object, or a primitive tribe mistakes a totem for supernatural properties, so MPs mistake adherence to rules for virtuous conduct.

I say this is a category error because following rules under-determines good behaviour. One can follow rules and behave abominably - “I was only obeying orders” is no defence -  and one can  behave well by breaking even quite serious rules; some assisted suicides, I think, fall into this class. To merely follow rules is to suspend one’s own moral judgment, to behave not as a human being but as an automaton.

The MP who checks every item on a till receipt against the expenses rulebook (pdf) is acting within the rules. But he is not behaving with dignity, nobility or virtue; as Libby Purves points out, thousands of people often under-claim expenses.

The contrast here is between “rule fetishism” and what the ancient Greeks called phronesis - the wisdom, or prudence, that allows people to judge what is virtuous conduct without needing to read a rule book. The man with phronesis would not have even tried to claim for Remembrance Day wreaths on expenses as he would know that only someone "without personal integrity, sans honour, sans virtue" would do such a thing.

This contrast, of course, extends way beyond the expenses row. The fact that New Labour has created 3000-plus new criminal offences since 1997 is testament to a belief that rules can determine conduct, and that people are incapable of exercising their own judgment as to what is right or virtuous.

In this sense, MPs' grossly defective defence of their ignoble greed and their illiberalism have a common root.

But why is it that MPs have supplanted phronesis with this rule fetishism? Is it because they are simply unaware of the possibility of virtue ethics as an alternative to priggish adherence to ever-accumulating rules? Or is it that they believe that they and we are incapable of exercising phronesis?

Worse still, might they be actually right to believe so?

Comments

[Mike]

Stopping people putting their lives at serious danger by attempting a rescue without the proper equipment or training is in your words "behaving abominably"?

The rules in that horrible case were not the result of some fetish, they were based on the hard facts that if the crowd had attempted a rescue in that situation they could have very easily killed themselves.

Infact you could argue in that case the police did practice 'practical wisdom' by not allowing people to risk their own lives and to wait for the fire brigade who have the training and experience of thousands of similar incidents and by that common wisdom could handle the fire much better.

It's not an easy or pleasant situation for either party but it was certainly not abominable.

[Luis Enrique]

Two what extent does the behaviour of MPs deviate from that of the average person? The answer to that question needn't dictate the nature of our response to these stories - perhaps we expect more of MPs than we do of the average person, but there is something in the tone of (some) responses to these 'revelations' that smacks, to me, either of hypocrisy or wilful ignorance of how most people behave when it comes towards maximising their own income.

For most people, claiming expenses is not a significant part of their lives, but there's not much reason I can see to think people who don't claim expenses would behave much differently from people who do, should they find themselves in that position. Contrary to Libby Purves, my experience is that most people who can claim expenses do in fact claim as much as permitted by the rules they operate under, and a fair few commit minor fraud. Most journalists, I assert with no more than anecdotal evidence, display creative flair towards expenses claims, and there's something a bit rich about seeing so many of them getting an attack of the vapours over this.

There are a number of differences in the case of MPs, not least that they set their own generous rules. It might also make a difference whether you being paid by the taxpayer or being paid by a private firm. There is also variation in how far you bend the rules, and those that take the piss should be brought up on it.

But if I had a job that allowed me to claim for, say, a second home and furnishings, I suspect I'd do exactly that, and if you think this would mean I wouldn't be conducting myself with "dignity" etc. well that's your opinion, but mine is that you are full of it.

What empirical question could we ask here? Say we had some way of grading the conduct of people claiming for expenses - a ranking that starts at 0 - full blown virtue - through to 10, full-blown brazen rule-bending greed. Now say we have the data for all 646 MPs - if we took 646 randomly selected individuals, how different would we expect them to behave? Do you believe that MPs are specially ignobly greedy, or are you saying that people in general are ignobly greedy, and this is just an instance of that?

Of course, being as stupid and greedy as the average person, might not be much of a benchmark for an MP.

[Luis Enrique]

on second thought, I don't think that you do suggest that claiming for second homes etc. as intended under the spirit of the rules is undignified, you are talking about the rule manipulation in order to maximise income. So when I said above I'd do "exactly that" I was talking about the former, not the latter, so what I then wrote about dignity does not follow.

[griswold]

Rules as written by HoC were deliberately drafted to allow maximum leeway for manipulation and enrichment. The underlying rationale being that the basic salary did not reflect the demands of the job and that the way around this was to 'allow' a certain amount of troughing under the 'nod and wink' regime.

That Ms Filkin took her job seriously merely confirms that she was acting against the 'spirit' of what the rules were intended for. However many of the 97 intake soon got the hang of things and went against the 'spirit' of not taking too much advantage at the expense trough.

The simplest solution is to stop fiddling about and to pay them £90k pa and no allowance other than for travel and centrally contracted staff.

[Trooper Thompson]

My personal experience is that people on the highest salaries fiddle the most.

[Bob B]

Isn't all this just another manifestation of "Free Market Capitalism"?

[BruceK]

Good point!

Rule fetishism has been only too much in evidence from this government, and the link to the 'I was only following rules' defence is interesting.

But I think rule-fetishism is inherent in liberalism, unless it is heavily diluted with norms derived from elsewhere (normally inherited, I would guess)

[Luis Enrique]

Bob B,

nah, politicians enrich themselves under all systems. you could even argue that western style liberal capitalist democracies minimise this sort of thing, in comparison to other systems.

[was that your shortest comment ever? I could do with taking your example]

[john cramer]

If you are going to ignore rules and act on some sense of righteousness then away you go.
As for the ancient greeks - they are long dead pray forget them.

[Curly]

Just come out and say it, they lack common sense, common decency, and common virtues!

[Cleanthes]

Luis,

"Do you believe that MPs are specially ignobly greedy, or are you saying that people in general are ignobly greedy, and this is just an instance of that?"

I'll say that people in general are ignobly greedy, but SO WHAT?

There are some massive differences that you seem to be deliberately ignoring:
1. As you well know it is utterly irrelevant how greedy I am or anyone else is. Unless I can convince someone else to trade with me on terms they consider beneficial, my greed remains unsated.
2. Following from this, in the private sector, someone has to stump up for extragavant expense claims of employees. Companies are reluctant to do this unless they can see some benefit in it (e.g. by entertaining potential customers, they reap the benefit of increased revenue)
3. Individuals don't get to make their own tax rules to avoid being taxed on their expenses.
4. Most importantly, individuals don't get to make the rules that say others are FORCED to pay up to fund their greed.

The behaviour of MPs breaks point 1 above - they do not have to trade to sate their greed.

The outrage is because we are applying rule 1: we are not trading on terms that are beneficial to us, so we object to being forced into the trade.

[Luis Enrique]

Cleanthes,

I wrote that we might decide that MPs are no worse, overall, than everybody else, yet still object to their behaviour (as you say, yes but so what?) and also that the case of MPs differs because they wrote their own rules, which can be seen as another way of putting your point about how MPs were able to do all this without having to persuade others to engage in voluntary trade.

Also, a few hundred randomly selected normal people will contains some saints and some scoundrels, so if we say that MPs are no different from everybody else, we would also expect to find some saints and some scoundrels. That's no reason not to condemn scoundrels.

[Cleanthes]

But overall, the tone of your comment is that there is some hypocrisy in the outrage, that perhaps the outrage is manufactured.

I strenuously disagree.

This outrage is healthy - it is shining light on the way that we are governed. It is worth us, as an electorate, knowing that there is an approximately average number of scoundrels making the laws by which all the rest of us have to live. It ought to act as a wake up call to the rest of us who, no matter how greedy and/or venal, have to trade honestly in order to feather our nests.

In short, it reminds us to distrust government and all its workings.

[Luis Enrique]

Cleanthes

is this an instance, then, when it is reasonable to be outraged even if there is some hypocrisy in that outrage?

[Bob B]

Any reports yet of MPs claiming for toilet paper?

[Gaw]

I think the expenses affair evidences just one instance of the slow death of virtue ethics in Britain. Both Westminster and the City of London are replete with examples of how, as long as formal rules are vaguely adhered to, any immoral, amoral or dishonourable act can be upheld. Something as trivial as The Apprentice demonstrate this fact for people on a weekly basis. And then there's Premier League football...

[Bob B]

In the news on Tuesday night:

"Hazel Blears has said she will pay £13,332 in capital gains tax on the sale of her 'second home' after coming under fire over her expenses claims."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8047005.stm

I feel sure this couldn't happen to a more deserving person.

[Bob B]

My guess is that the total cost to taxpayers from dubious expenses claims made by MPs is small beer compared with the billions lost on failed and failing government computer projects.

"Some of Whitehall’s biggest computer projects have spiralled out of control, with total cost overruns of more than £18 billion, an investigation by The Times can reveal.

"Plans for new computer systems are years behind schedule and have ballooned in cost; others have been scaled back or even scrapped. Yet companies continue to make hundreds of millions of pounds in profit, with £102.3 billion forecast to be spent on government IT projects over the next five years.

"The Times studied eight of the largest Whitehall IT contracts, spanning the health service, tax collection, benefits, Armed Forces and the police. Their overall cost to the taxpayer, from original estimates given to MPs to the latest estimates available, has risen by £18.6 billion."
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article5636437.ece

"Hospitals in the South of England are to be allowed to buy 'off-the-shelf' software systems to make up for the failings of the £12.7 billion project to upgrade NHS computers.

"The National Progamme for IT (NPfIT) is already running at least four years late in parts, having been set back by the withdrawal of two major suppliers due to spiralling costs."
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6191245.ece

[rolex yachtmaster]

And a lot of it reflects a switch from bank deposits to securities; foreigners “other investments” in the UK, http://www.watchgy.com/ mostly bank deposits, fell by £143.2bn in Q1. And of course there’s no guarantee such buying will continue.
http://www.watchgy.com/tag-heuer-c-24.html
http://www.watchgy.com/rolex-submariner-c-8.html