We hear a lot these days about new forms of consultation and engagement- more often than not these are the more traditionally ‘new’ forms like citizens juries and assemblies, but we’re also seeing a bit of an increase in other methods of information gathering. We’ve actually written about this previously in the context of ‘calls for evidence’, which we concluded were likely not functionally different to public consultations, but could risk putting off lay respondents who might assume they were more technical in nature.

This week’s example comes from the strategic rail review being undertaken in Ireland (somewhat unusually in itself) as a joint effort between the Irish and Northern Irish Governments. In addition to the main public consultation, they state that they will also “be engaging directly with specific stakeholders in a targeted consultation”. So, our question is two-fold. Why? And, is this appropriate?

The first question is quite difficult to answer- we are not one of the targeted stakeholders, and there doesn’t seem to be much information about the detail, save a statement that targeted stakeholders are those “identified as those having a significant interest in the future of rail on the island of Ireland”. Although this statement is presumably wide enough to capture views from any citizen (particularly those who use trains), we must assume that their views will be considered only as part of the public consultation and the ‘targeted’ consultation will be comprised of the views of service providers, network operators and such.

The public consultation is, it has to be said a little short on the sort of information and questioning we might expect for such a major project. It has 8 questions, geared to provide a broad overview of opinion. As a ‘strategic’ review however, this might be suitable. We are curious however about why a separate targeted consultation is being done- if this really is a top-level consultation, why could targeted stakeholders not contribute to the public consultation?

If it’s a matter of technical information, then perhaps you could argue that they are being sought for their expert knowledge, but it shouldn’t have been too difficult to fold that into the wider public consultation- after all, the general public might also have important views worthy of being registered.

Without a definitive answer on the ‘why’, we must turn to the second question- is this appropriate? The Institute has always advocated that all consultations should be targeted, to a degree. It’s why we talk so much about the importance of ongoing and continual stakeholder mapping throughout your consultation- so you can make sure to collect the views you really need, and actively reach out to those you need to.

So a degree of targeting is right and proper. Where it becomes problematic is when consultors start choosing their consultees. Consultation is largely a self-selecting process- if someone wants to respond, they should be able to. Consultors cannot just go out and pick the twenty people they know will agree with them, and consult them.

There are of course rules on who we have to consult, though they are rarely prescriptive, and usually amount mostly to “you can’t just not consult this group because you don’t like what they want to say.” It even arose in one of the Covid cases last year, where the Department for Education didn’t consult children’s rights groups, instead only consulting councils and service providers because, they argued, they would have the children’s best interests at heart. They received a slap down from the judge who pointed out that that was not an assumption you could safely make, and different perspectives were valuable.

Whilst there’s no real implication that such underhanded shenanigans are going on in this case, we would be interested in seeing how what the targeted stakeholders are being asked differs from the public consultation- if you happen to be a targeted stakeholder, do send it across. With the increasing prevalence however of different forms of ‘peripheral’ consultation, we’re beginning to wonder if we need a more public typology!