Each of us will have our own idea but here is mine. When people work together in an organisation – any organisation – there is a tendency, over time, for them to think of how they can make their lives more comfortable. More money would be nice and really we could do with a tea break at eleven and a good, long lunch break would set us up for work in the afternoon. But we need to go at 3.45pm if at all possible to pick up the children from school. Oh and let us take it for granted that I will praise your work and you will praise mine.

In the private sector where there is competition, this tendency is usually counteracted sooner or later by one simple fact: if the company does not produce a really good service at a competitive price, it will go out of business. It is a question of “put the customer first or die”. And indeed some companies do die. The British-owned motor industry was more or less run for the convenience of the trade unions in the 1970s. They had their strikes and their so-called “industrial action” intended to stop the production line. The employees got their way for much of the time and, as a consequence, the motor bike industry, in particular, was destroyed.

Any famous company we know of today from Marks and Spencer to the Prudential could go bust if it does not keep down its costs, adapt to the times and keep giving customers “a good service”. And if it does really well, a company can expand, investing its profits and becoming an even bigger and more successful company, perhaps on the world stage. The same discipline simply does not apply in public service.

Oh yes, there are attempts to motivate people in a way that is just as good. Indeed there are some services that simply must be provided by government and so we have to find methods to motivate the managers and staff. But usually these methods are not as powerful or effective as those provided by the threat of competition and the lure of profits. Targets can even make things worse.

I am a governor of a state primary school and one of the strange things we have to do now and again is approve the ‘targets’ for the school in the SATS exams. These are targets which are based on the school’s previous results and on the nature of its intake and so on. It is all very complicated. The head and his staff spend time deciding what the targets should be, agreeing them with governors and with the local authority which, in turn, is acting under government guidelines. The game – not at my school, of course! – is for heads to set the targets as low as he or she can get away with and thus make it easily possible to meet the targets or triumphantly exceed them.

You will notice that amidst all this expenditure of cleverness and energy a) no child is actually being taught anything and b) the results tend to be manipulated and useless anyway. And at the end of the day, hundreds of schools up and down the country are congratulated on beating their targets utterly regardless of the fact that up to one in five children currently leaving British schools is barely literate. It is the same phenomenon again: real world failure accompanied by public servants congratulating each other.

The NHS is famous for its target times for patients waiting in accident and emergency and for treatment after a problem has been diagnosed. Some good is done in striving to achieve these targets and there is much self-congratulation by the government. But I well remember the bitterness of a surgeon who told me that the weekend before he had been instructed by the hospital manager to perform minor operations to meet targets while there were five or more people who had broken bones and were lying in hospital beds – urgent cases – which he was prevented from treating. That is what targets can do. And targets have not changed the fact that as many as 10,000 people a year die of cancer here who would not have done so if they had lived in an average European country.

Some people say, “I don’t care if I have a choice of hospital/school. I only care that a good one is available”. But that is to miss the vital element. The only reason that Tesco provides a good service is because you could go to Waitrose, Asda, Marks and Spencer, Morrison’s or Sainsbury’s. Yes, there are some good state schools. I have observed superb classes in one. And there are some heroic nurses and doctors. My admiration for the expertise and work rate of one staff nurse who cared for my mother is boundless.

There is such a thing as people working philanthropically and because they want to do good. There is such a thing as people taking pride in their work, whatever it is. Both apply, incidentally, to the private as well as the public sector – not to mention the charities.

But as a generalisation, the overwhelming truth remains: there is a tendency in human nature for people to try to make their working conditions as comfortable as possible, often to the disadvantage of those they are meant to serve. And in the public sector, performance targets are not good enough to counteract it and are often totally removed from the experience of those the service affects. And that, I am afraid, is how we get to the grotesque congratulations for Mrs Shoesmith.