The FCO like all British government departments these days emits profusely all manner of Targets, Strategies, Strategic Priorities, Objectives, Road-maps, Performance Indicators and the rest.

Yet amidst all this feverish management-babble designed allegedly to measure and assess Outputs and Outcomes there is very little about one vital and time-consuming job the FCO does, namely promoting British (and European, and Western, and global) democracy by offering honest and accurate process.

This in practice takes numerous forms. Some are obvious enough, such as officials helping Ministers answer Parliamentary Questions (PQs) and letters from the public, or giving evidence themselves to Parliamentary Committees – a time-consuming and nerve-wracking afternoon out, but all part of keeping public life on a reliable footing.

But others are not so obvious. Thus the FCO’s financial and ‘risk management’ systems associated with how it spends its budget and eg its commitment to delivering good public records seem to go way beyond what the private sector would expect in similar respects.

Why? At root it is because British Ministers may be called upon to answer personally in Parliament for every detail. The chances of any given transaction being scrutinised are of course small, unless some or other abuse or mini-scandal has emerged. But the threat that it may happen – putting a Minister on the spot in potentially a ghastly personal way – disciplines the whole government system to an impressive degree.

The pinnacle of all this is Prime Minister’s Questions. It has a soap opera quality at times. But those few minutes a week of intense live public scrutiny compel No 10 to compel the whole of government to do its very best to serve up accurate honest summaries in readable and clear English on all the possible issues of the day and many more besides.

This great bloc of work prepared every week also has to be coherent in itself and as far as possible coherent across government departments. This in turn promotes overall official joined-upness on a scale which stuns our EU partners, many of which still seem to operate on the principle that official information is to be hoarded, not shared.

It is hard to think of anything comparable anywhere else. I was in the USA as the Clinton/Lewinski scandal unfolded. As far as I could see months went by without President Clinton answering any significant media or other questions on the subject. He just battened down the hatches to see out the storm.

That worked over there. But imagine the horror of having to get up week after week in the small Chamber of the House of Commons to explain such matters to hundreds of guffawing MPs. No one on earth could survive it.

Our success is not because we the British have smarter DNA. It is because over many decades our government and public processes have evolved to a remarkably high level of probity and sophistication. Among the highest ever attained in human history?

We are not doomed to maintain this success. There are always political and professional temptations to cut corners or be evasive when things go wrong. Facile media cynicism about government is corrosive. The interplay between UK and EU public spending creates stunning and impenetrable procedure, always a good source of trouble – and potential decay.

Maybe above all the drama of sheer technical complexity is fraying official capacities to cope – are too many processes inherited from earlier times simply no longer sensibly do-able by central or even local government at all? 

As things nonetheless stand, oh British public, our country and its authorities do all sorts of fat-headed things. But in avoiding top-level financial corruption and maintaining world-class standards of integrity in public life we have few rivals. Live in countries where these standards do not apply in practice and see how hopeless things can get for the whole society. 

So let’s not take PM’s Questions for granted. It helps define Civilisation.