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Who wants to be consulted?

What exactly is the appetite for public consultations? And what is the civic-duty syndrome?

We don’t often ask people if they want to be consulted. There are many reasons for this:

  • There may be perfectly satisfactory, tried-and-tested machinery for taking certain kinds of decisions, with legitimately empowered decision-makers
  • No history of public participation or involvement in a particular issue; maybe it’s too technical or a subject with little or no perceived impact on the wider population
  • No-one has confidence that any wider dialogue would have any measurable influence on what happens

But, also of course, there may be a legal framework that lays down when you do and when you do not consult. It saves us the bother of checking whether anyone actually wants a consultation – you just do it!

Parliament, has, over the years, liberally sprinkled the statute book with requirements to consult. It’s probably done so somewhat over-enthusiastically. A consultation clause is a convenient fudge if you wish to place upon a Minister or a public body the responsibility for taking a difficult decision, but want to provide a safeguard to act as a check upon its unfettered discretion. Umpteen Regulators from Ofcom to the Civil Aviation Authority operate under a regime of prescribed consultations. Local Government, in turn, has evolved a whole range of customary consultations – to the extent that a failure to do so might risk losing a judicial review for not observing the doctrine of legitimate expectation. Whatever the reasons though, the truth is that we sometimes go to consultation when there is little or no demand for it. And, conversely, we sometimes fail to consult even when there is an overwhelming public desire to influence a decision.

If we ask people whether they would like to be consulted, we encounter the civic-duty syndrome. Residents will respond to pollsters – shall we say ‘optimistically’? It’s the same phenomenon that explains forecasting errors in recent elections and referendums. When asked whether they will vote, parts of the electorate say Yes, but then don’t! It is the same with consultation. Year after year, the Hansard Society has studied citizen behaviour and has found that people are far more likely to say they would respond to a consultation than actually do so. The 2016 data reports that 22% say they would, but only 7% have actually done so. The same applies to signing an e-petition, but note the different ratio – 34% would do so – and 18% have done so. Is there something here about the ease of participation?

What we know is that only 3-5% of the general public is genuinely active in public affairs, but we also know that for local issues that arouse strong passions, far greater numbers feel they want to become involved. Despite this it is rare for more than 1% to respond to a traditional consultation.

With this in mind, it is fascinating to study research carried out by Ipsos MORI and NHS Improvement in December and published earlier this month. It concerned the 44 NHS Sustainability & Transformation Plans (STPs) in England, and discovered that 14% of the public had heard of them. In recent weeks, the BBC and other media have covered these plans extensively so maybe public awareness may have increased.

But then the survey goes on to seek people’s views about involvement. Weighted scores for (those who answered) three questions are as follows:

I am happy for the NHS to develop the STPs for my local area without people having a say17%
It is important for people to have a say in the STP for my local area but I am not personally interested.” 39%
I would like to have a say in the STP for my local area.” 44%

This, therefore, begs a couple of questions. Firstly, what allowance do we make for the civic-duty syndrome? Even allowing for the ratio of good intentions to practical involvement, these are high numbers. Secondly, how do people interpret the phrase ‘having a say’? We should always remember that the relevant NHS legislation talks in terms of involvement, and not necessarily formal consultation. And there is, without doubt, a lot that local authorities and the NHS can do to seek the views of local people without going through the formal processes of public consultation.

The trouble with less formal engagement processes is that they are largely a standards-free zone and lack some of the safeguards to ensure that all relevant voices are heard. A recent Report from the Rowntree Foundation highlights the problems that people in poverty face when seeking to express their views on key issues – and therefore beneath the broad numbers about people’s appetite for consultation may lurk some deep-seated and complex issues that we have yet fully to grasp. More research needed!

TRIGGER POINTS

This is the 315th 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.

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