Originally published 12 June 2012. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
Those of us deeply involved with public consultations on a daily basis can easily overlook the wider context of our work.
Whilst there are lots of other reasons for organising a consultation, one of the most important is to help politicians, civil servants, senior Managers and others make policy. It has never been easy, but in this age of austerity – is getting downright difficult. In a paper to be published this week by the Institute and sponsored by the Objective Corporation, we argue that there is a perfect storm of problems that confront those who involved in policy development. • Lack of money means that in a scenario of ‘winners and ‘losers’, there is less cash to compensate the ‘losers’. • The destabilisation of key institutions makes it difficult to work with bodies having a long-term commitment to finding solutions • Public expectations for involvement and the immense influence exerted by those who have learnt how to leverage social media best • Transparency and the trend towards manipulating the ‘evidence’
Let’s take a current example.
Housing benefit in England is being localised. In brief, the national Scheme is being stopped, and each Council has to develop its own policy, but with 10% less money to play with. Pensioners are protected against any change, and the Government has also insisted that vulnerable groups are protected. With those constraints – and the need to encourage incentives to work – Councils have discretion to agree what they like – but subject to consultation.
This is policy-making for real. It means taking general political aspirations and converting them into practical rules, which inevitably means making choices. There will be a great deal of evidence-gathering - usually facts and figures. But most critically we need to listen to those likely to be affected, develop insights into what the impact of different options might be – and also assess the preferences of the wider community. After all, in this case, one of the available options is for Councils to maintain existing levels of Benefits by making service cuts elsewhere.
The role of consultation in this – and other policy decisions is to develop a better basis upon which to take decisions. Data gathered through consultation is just part of what policy-makers need to assemble. Policy papers have to be referred to various experts; technical evidence has to be sifted, presented, reviewed, reconsidered, and someone not only has to manage a complex paper-chase, but steer the process towards consensus, or at least the identification of realistic options.
The Objective Corporation has estimated that a typical top-tier local authority has an overall programme of over 150 policy documents in the course of a year, involving about 120 different people of varying seniority. All this costs over £2m and is an area ripe for savings, possibly up to 40% by using leading edge software tools. They call it Policy Lifecycle management, and this is probably a useful way of working out how the role of consultation needs to vary according to whether we start with a clean sheet of paper or whether we are just tinkering with an existing policy at the Policy-review stage.
Influencing policy takes one into a wide area of competing values and interests. A new book written by Mark Henderson is called The Geek Manifesto, and is the latest in a series of works (remember Bad Science by Ben Goldacre?) bemoaning the way in which tabloid journalism, party politics and special interests carry more weight than pure scientific evidence. Maybe they are motivated by a fear that the UK might follow the US towards an anti-scientist movement re climate-change, teaching creationism in schools, abortion and other emotive ethical issues.
One of Henderson’s themes is the need for science-friendly people (Geeks!) to involve themselves much more in public consultation exercises. But his is not the only interest group that will conclude the same. As resources tighten still further, and competition for public funds intensifies, the job of the policy-maker gets tougher. Balancing competing arguments requires processes that are not just efficient, but that are demonstrably fair, totally transparent and squeaky clean against the standards of best practice ... and the Courts.
That’s quite an agenda!
Trigger Points
- Are policy staff/teams in your organisation working sufficiently closely with consultation and public engagement specialists?
- Do policy staff/teams need better awareness or guidance on aspects of consultation law and best practice in order to meet current challenges?
- This week, the Institute is publishing two White Papers relevant to this Topic • Briefing Paper 30: Consultation aspects of Council Tax Benefits localisation • Policy-making in the age of Austerity ...incorporating a brief analysis of its impact in Northern Ireland. This is the Objective-sponsored paper and it will be available either from Objective at www.objective.com or the Institute from Thursday, 14th June
- Our Law of Consultation training courses, and Seminars on Legal Challenges are relevant to policy-making staff, chief officers and elected members.
This is the 214th Tuesday Topic; a full list of subjects covered is available for Institute members and is a valuable resource covering so many aspects of consultation and engagement