The current system of administration in the UK means that those making bad decisions do not bear the cost of those decisions. It is time to start rewarding good decisions and punishing bad decisions.
We should adopt a system whereby, for instance, a Judge who grants asylum to an asylum seeker who goes on to commit a heinous crime such as rape or murder has their pay docked by £25k. This should focus their minds a bit more and would help combat judicial activism. Likewise granting bail to somebody charged with a criminal offence should be rewarded with a payment, but should that suspect commit and arrestable offence whilst on bail, the Judge should have their pay docked.
A chancellor whose budget causes a significant rise in GDP should get an excellent bonus, however if their budget causes a loss of GDP, they should have their pay significantly docked or instant dismissal for egregious errors.
All matters voted in Parliament should have clear expected outcomes. If those outcomes are met then those who voted for it should get a bonus, if they are not met then they get fined.
The above are just some examples, but some thought should be given to how we can start linking officials to facing consequences for their bad decisions.
I understand and sympathise with the sentiment but I fear the unintended consequences.
We will end up with quite clumsy law that will be prone to creep. And when it does we are likely to end up with time served or worse still innocent people confined excessively because of the judges personal fears.
Rather than putting fear into the judiciary we need to do 2 things.
In the first instance publish every single piece of data relating to the interaction between the population and the state without fear or favour. We need to lay everything bare.
In the second we need to repeal all of the bad law. Bad law is unclear, open to interpretation and liable to be abused for personal ends.
With politicians, there is a conversation to be had about how we improve the quality of the individuals and how they conduct themselves.
In the first instance i would say we should reform the practices of the house of commons to force ministers to actually answer questiins rather than just making pointless quips and sitting down again.
A lot of people won’t understand this immediately, but you’re making a PROFOUND point here, that gets to the heart of the defincies of democracy versus other systems of government.
Compare modern democracy to monarchy - under democracy politicians need only worry about winning the next election, they are incentivized for short term popularity, not long term good of the nation, they can do things that will enrich themselves ( see how richly Tony Blair has been rewarded, making hundreds of millions of Pounds, despite not doing any actual productive work since leaving office) but destroy their nation in the long term.
Meanwhile under a monarchy, the nation is literally the property of the king, to be passed down the generations to his descendants, if he makes decisions that damage the nation, he is damaging the value of his own property for his descendants, and might even get himself overthrown and killed if he does a bad enough job. This is profound “skin in the game”.
Obviously we aren’t going back to monarchy, but OP is right that designing mechanisms to create “skin in the game” for officials, civil servants and politicians would solve a lot of problems that liberal democracy creates.
I am wondering whether we should bring back punishment for treason and sedition, so that people ( including those in authority ) will think twice before acting against the people and the nation.
We do also need to repeal laws which give power to unelected and unaccountable bodies who can not be voted out when they make decisions which adversely affect the population. We need to root out corruption.
