Called to Account
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2002
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This year's Reith Lecturer is Onora O'Neill. She became Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, in l992 and has chaired the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and the Human Genetics Advisory Commission. She is currently chair of the Nuffield Foundation and she has been President of the Aristotelian Society, and a member of the Animal Procedures (Scientific) Committee. In 1999 she was made a life peer as Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve, and sits as a crossbencher. She has written widely on political philosophy and ethics, international justice, bioethics and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.
In her third Reith Lecture Onora O'Neill looks at the quest for greater accountability in government, institutions and professionals and explores whether the instruments for control, regulation, monitoring and enforcement have worked.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Ruth Lectures. This lecture in the series |
| 0:06.0 | A Question of Trust given by Onora O'Neill was originally broadcast in the year 2002. |
| 0:14.7 | Good evening and welcome. We opened this series in London where we discussed whether there is a crisis of trust in Britain today. |
| 0:23.2 | Last week in Belfast, our theme was trust and terror. |
| 0:26.9 | Tonight we're in one of the largest hospitals in the country, so we thought about calling the lecture, |
| 0:31.2 | trust me, I'm a doctor. |
| 0:32.9 | But the issues we're exploring go well beyond medicine. |
| 0:37.7 | Doctors and health workers are not the only people these days called to account, |
| 0:42.3 | and that's the real title of this evening's lecture. |
| 0:45.6 | Accountability is now required from many different professions. |
| 0:48.5 | Teachers, social workers, lawyers, counsellors, the police, some of all of those are here in our audience tonight. |
| 0:54.4 | And that, of course, is unquestionably right. They're people with huge responsibilities and a great |
| 0:59.7 | influence over our lives. The question is, are the methods by which they're called to account |
| 1:05.9 | damaging to the work they're there to do? Do they end up spending less time working at what we want them to do |
| 1:11.9 | and more time accounting for what they're supposed to have achieved? And does all this add up to a |
| 1:18.1 | nation whose public services are in danger of coming down with a bad attack of bureaucratic |
| 1:23.8 | arteriosclerosis? We're in a hospital after all. |
| 1:28.0 | Our lecturer is on her home ground this evening. |
| 1:30.3 | She's the principal of Newham College, Cambridge. |
| 1:32.5 | She's a moral and political philosopher, |
| 1:34.8 | and she's our wreath lecturer 2002, |
| 1:37.5 | Anora O'Neill. |
... |
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