Once the General Election result became clear (ie three days later!) we asked some of our most well-known Associates for their immediate reactions. In particular we asked them to consider what the implications might be for public engagement and consultation.

These comments were prepared before the comprehensive agreement between Coalition partners, and before Monday’s announcement of cuts.

However, they raise interesting issues, and deserve a wider audience

Davy Jones
Convener of the Institute’s Local Government Special Interest Group (SIG) and trainer on the Institute’s course on Implementing the ‘duty to involve’

Whatever government is in power, there are very deep-seated drivers for greater citizen engagement that will not easily be resisted. The agenda is here to stay. And the duty to inform, consult & involve is on the statute book – potentially to be used when local services cut services without consultation.
…
The Conservatives promised to introduce elections for local police chiefs, and the LibDems argued for elected local health boards. Both proposals make a nod toward greater accountability of non-council services to local people, but both threaten to fragment that accountability. The LGA’s tentative proposals for collective accountability for local services via greater council commissioning of other services and/or elected local public service boards might be a compromise that all sides could accept.

The new Government will pursue the Total Place agenda vigorously. But whereas TP is seen by many as a way to recast completely how local services are delivered, the danger in this economic climate is that it will be reduced to a crude cost-cutting programme. There is no doubt that it will be interpreted by some local areas as a green light for more out-sourcing and privatisation. Here, the cuts may run up against the commitment to consultation and involvement – as in many cases local people will be opposed to such cuts and privatisation. The new Government would do well to use Total Place as a way of drawing local citizens in directly to help make difficult service priorities and budget choices using Participatory Budgeting techniques.

All parties at the election campaigned for more local referenda and greater use of websites to provide more information and transparency. But referenda are a crude and ineffective way to involve people in decision-making. And websites are completely inadequate as a way of doing any more than providing information to those who are already web-literate. They do not constitute serious accountability let alone involvement. Information, consultation and involvement require serious deliberation and the involvement of local citizens and service users in the big decisions on services.

Jonathan Bradley
Participate UK Jon is an Institute Associate and trainer on the Institute’s course on Making Consultation Meaningful

All of this could have the following implications for public engagement in Great Britain.

• There will be an expectation on public service organisations to involve citizens in debates about how spending should be cut and services reconfigured (in fact people will demand it). For many there will also be a legal obligation to ensure this happens. More and more so, therefore, public engagement (and more formal consultation) will be about how better services can be provided with less money (the so called more for less debate). But dialogues about more for less are complicated and will require public engagement campaigns to be designed to be more fit-for-purpose than many currently are.
• Opinion polls are not very good at engaging people in discussions about cuts to services and how we do more for less. So organisations are going to need to adopt more participatory and deliberative approaches that focus on gathering informed opinion and insight. Consultation and engagement in this financial environment cannot and should not be about seeking popular support, but instead should focus on working with citizens to explore trade-offs and better ways of doing things with less money Formal consultations will need to be better executed.  People will need to be presented with clear and well thought through options.  This will require better pre-consultation engagement and organisations spending more effort on preparing their business case for consultation. This should allow for formal consultation to be executed more effectively and with less nasty surprises for all involved.
• There will be more pressure on public engagement to pay its way; to demonstrate that it can help us to save money and make better decisions.  This will place more emphasis on organisations’ to demonstrate that their engagement work has a real and tangible impact.  So the focus of feedback might need to shift away from a “You Said We Did” approach to one of “You Said We Saved!”
• Many of the changes needed to achieve the expected savings will require organisations to capture the hearts and minds of their employees, if they are to be implemented swiftly and effectively.  So another consequence of the change in government will be a need for more effective employee consultation.

In summary, this all means that public engagement will be a core component of the change agenda (or the savings agenda). Done properly it will enable government departments and local agencies to take the public with them and involve them in the challenges ahead.  Done poorly or not done at all, it will have the opposite effect and big changes will be very hard to implement, without the need for another election.

John Twitchen
Sauce Consultancy
Institute Associate & specialist in environmental communications By its very nature and in order to survive, any coalition has to be more “involving”and the first few days of the new Government have shown how important listening, adapting and responding have been. The ICM poll that showed very high approval ratings for the coalition demonstrates a positive public response.

So, what of the policies and key players? Well, there’s been no mention of the Big Society in the last few days nor did planning feature in the Conservative-Lib Dem agreement despite planning reform being a major issue for the Conservatives. Caroline Spelman, newly installed at Defra, has been outspoken on this issue in the past:

“Gordon Brown has shown his true control freak instincts by backing moves to strip local communities of their say over incinerators, rubbish dumps and sewage plants. [He] has sided with the big, bullying developer rather than the people.”

Eric Pickles, who picks up the CLG mantle, has been quoted as saying something very similar, too.

As regards machinery, it would appear likely that the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) will be unwound as both the Conservatives and Liberals proposed doing this; however, this loss of process that, in theory, further front- loads consultation should not been seen negatively, as it was viewed by many as adding further stages to an already lengthy process and passing off Ministerial responsibility to an unelected quango.

With the major decisions that have to be made on things like the future of energy supply and how to cut the deficit, the coalition will be looking to act fast but ensure its decisions are widely supported wherever possible.

In my view, this should lead to fewer, better consultations and more meaningful

Barry Creasy
Publications Editor,
Institute Associate and Trainer of courses on
Focus Groups and Surveys/Questionnaires

I suspect that, whatever the top-level discussions of the new coalition are, what we will see in terms of national governance, is a swing away from the ‘monarchy/oligarchy’ system that has been prevalent since the Thatcher years (policy coming from the PM or a small group, agreed by a compliant cabinet, and passed by a large-majority government), and a swing towards a more discursive and involved parliament. The up-side of this is that discussion, consultation, trading and compromise become a more embedded way of doing things at Westminster, but the downside may be that elected representatives become more smug about ‘we can work in this way’, and feel that there is already enough consultation/discussion going on within the corridors of power (and the concomitant extra time this takes) – leading to less incentive actually to consult constituents/the populace, beyond, perhaps, referenda on really high-level issues such as Europe and electoral reform.

In short, there is a danger that consultation – certainly from a central-government level – will reduce. Coupled with this, of course is the imperative to deal with the serious issues of the economy, which will almost certainly make for the tunnel vision of ‘we need to get on and work together to do this in the national interest’ (an interesting phrase du jour – which always prompts the question whether what has been done so far hasn’t been in the national interest!)

Mike Bartram

Institute Associate & Convener of the Institute’s Planning Special Interest Group  (SIG)

“David Cameron’s pitch to the electorate over the last few days of the General Election campaign focused on strong, stable government and that phrase was used again when promoting the deal reached with Nick Clegg.  Our lack of recent experience of coalition government makes it hard to predict how things will work out in practice.

On the one hand, the ‘new politics’ we have been promised might encourage a more consultative approach.  And the new Government might be tempted to resolve the odd political impasse by putting an issue out to consultation. On the other, there is a long tradition of governments – national and local – using a crisis to justify cracking on without consultation, using the argument that there is not enough time and that tough choices need to be made.

Even if the government is inclined to seek public input into policy making, it may be a difficult environment in which to persuade people, particularly those whose voices are seldom heard, or indeed sought, to give up their time if the only reward for their efforts is to focus cuts to vital services on marginally less painful areas”.

Quintin Oliver
Stratagem UK, Chair of the Consultation Institute, Trainer on a number of TCI courses,

If Northern Ireland is the ‘capital of consultation’ after a decade of devolutionary difference driving local solutions, aided by the rigours of our so-called ‘Section 75’ equality agenda, then there is no signs of the consultation bug abating.

Just before the election took place, Policing and Justice was devolved to the Stormont Assembly – providing the last piece in the political jigsaw, Scotland having been granted such powers way back in 1999 when the Holyrood Parliament took up the reins there. From that process a raft of consultation activity is expected from the new Minister, the Alliance Party’s David Ford MLA, as he seeks to stamp his mark on the previous NI Office agenda.

As the Institute will confirm, the closer one gets to politicians with consultation, the more volatile the behaviour patterns become! Some see it as a three month nuisance between their decision and its announcement, others spot the 12 week delaying opportunity instead; wiser heads will sometimes see the opportunity to fly a kite or two in the public domain to test public opinion and stakeholder reaction, and others again see the chance of moulding opinion through the consultation process, in an almost propagandist fashion.

As the Lib-Con coalition beds down, all devolved countries and regions have a sharp eye on the quantum of their bloc grant from Westminster, and each is positioning carefully to maximise their needs and minimise their successes; they will also be keen to show strong public and stakeholder support for putting up cogent defensive arguments against the new Treasury restraints. No doubt they will remind the new government that it predominantly represents the English voter, not the Celtic arc of Scotland, N. Ireland and Wales.

Already in N. Ireland we are used to lengthy Pre-Budget consultations, as the Finance Minister lays the ground for his direction of travel, while stakeholders stretch out their mendicant hands for crumbs for their pet programmes.

So, the consultation culture is alive and well, kicking vigorously and resisting any tendency for let-up.

A Postscript from Rhion Jones

Since we requested these excellent insights, the Coalition Government’s Programme has been published. Among its 407 proposals, it commits to ‘review’ something on 31 occasions. It will ‘consider’ proposals 11 times, it will ‘investigate’ 10 times, and it will ‘explore’ 6 times. Add 4 more issues they will ‘examine, and 3 things they want to ‘look at’ and you get the picture.

A crude examination of this plan reveals approx 170 items, which, based upon experience and intuition is likely to require consultation in one form or another; some of them will be consultation-heavy – meaning that they will probably spawn a whole range of iterative consultation – as is inevitable with any serious reform of our Planning laws.

We have also counted 17 (yes, seventeen!) proposals for new public engagement. Some, we know are one-off opportunities for the public to influence what happens. Examples include the Referendum on the Alternative Vote and also a Referendum on more power for Welsh Devolution.

But others are brand new permanent mechanisms for public involvement.
Here are a few of them:-

• ‘Directly-elected individuals on the Boards of NHS Primary Care Trusts
• Patients to have the right to ‘rate’ hospitals and doctors
• Power to recall MPs and force a by-election
• A formal debate in Parliament if a Petition secures 100,000 signatures
• A Public Reading stage for new legislation going through Parliament
• Oversight of the Police through a ‘directly-elected individual’
• Residents’ power to instigate local referendums on any issue!
• An opportunity for the public to challenge regulations they don’t like
• A ‘direct say’ in how some of the Overseas Aid budget is spent

Many of these will be vigorously contested, especially in the House of Lords, and some will fall by the wayside. Overall however, they represent a trend towards, not away from public engagement. The Institute will monitor the evolving situation and advise its members accordingly, starting with our Seminar/Workshop on Public engagement Implications of the new Government on June 29th 2010 at London

 

This is the 20^th Briefing Paper; a full list of subjects covered is available for Institute members and is a valuable resource covering so many aspects of consultation and engagement