Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-181)
MR BEN
PAGE AND
MR SIMON
ATKINSON
1 MARCH 2005
Q160 Mr Betts: Can you tell us how you
make sure you get scientific examples.
Mr Atkinson: You would do some
kind of carefully controlled sample which would include particular
steps to ensure you are not missing out people, so that it might
be that you are setting quotas of younger people or quotas of
the key ethnic groups in the community, or it could be, if it
is a random sample, about going back again and again to those
addresses to make sure that you have got hold of them. It is still
fair to say that with even the best face-to-face survey, if you
like, in terms of its "Ferrari-ness", as Ben just mentioned,
you are still going to work quite hard to get people who will
not come to the door, who are scared, who are not able to speak
English, some of those things, and I think the best survey will
have to hold its hands up and say that that probably needs to
be complemented by more one-to-one work, if that is felt to be
worthwhile as part of the project.
Mr Page: With the right measures,
you can still in this country construct samples that are broadly
representative. We can get into the detail about its polling and
its accuracy or otherwise, but you can, with the right effort—sending
out people who can speak the main community languages in places
like Tower Hamlets—achieve representative samples. I certainly
would not recommend that for every single exercise the council
do—it would not be good value for money—but occasionally
I think you would still have to do that.
Q161 Mr Betts: We move on to another
exercise where you are trying to engage people, encourage them
to participate, as well as be consulted. Do you have any examples
where MORI have helped councils develop forms of involvement which
actually do engage with groups who do not come forward very easily,
like the young, maybe the disabled, maybe ethnic minorities?
Mr Page: I think there are real
examples—places like Southwark, where they looked to setting
up community forums. The members there wanted to try out three
different approaches with differing degrees of local control.
We were able, just by small meetings like this, with different
community groups, with cross-sections of people right across the
borough, to reconfigure those in a way that more accurately met
the real needs of local people as opposed to some sort of theoretical
model. At these first meetings they had people queuing up to get
into these meetings when the area forums were first set up. So
I think there are lots of examples of services being reconfigured
and I think if you look at some of the NDC areas, particularly
where there is money going into an area and you are getting local
people who perhaps have never taken part in a committee in their
life on to things, there is a whole range of techniques where
that does happen. But I think you have to remember also that most
people do not want to come and sit in meetings like this.
Q162 Mr Betts: You would do a check of
how representative that process is by looking at the people who
come along.
Mr Page: Yes.
Q163 Mr Betts: You still have to accept
that the people who come, be they black, white, young or old,
are probably the ones with the loudest voices rather than always
representative.
Mr Page: We are back to our central
point: is that consultation, which is not purporting to be representative
and is about just engaging with those who want to engage, or is
it research? If it is consultation you still of course . . . Yes,
if you observe that all the people here are old, white pensioners
and we are in a central London it is quite likely that a key group
is missing. You would then advise the authority that it needs
to do some outreach work. There is a whole practice area of this
type of thing. We do a survey for the Youth Justice Board of kids
who have been excluded from school, to track their participation
in crime every year. So there are things that you can do. Indeed,
there are lots of good examples of authorities working with—I
am using these dreadful phrases now—"excluded groups",
so you can see that, and developing a dialogue and so on.
Q164 Chris Mole: Many doubt whether their
opinion will have any influence with the council and often assume
that relevant decisions have already been taken before the consultation
takes place. How important is it to combat that sort of cynicism?
Is it possible to measure the impact, if, say, you take a council
who have not yet made up their mind and demonstrate that before
and after there has been a change?
Mr Page: One of the things we
do on some of these exercises is to get members of the public
to fill in a questionnaire before they come to spend a day talking
to councillors and officers and then again at the end of the day,
and you can actually see how their opinions have shifted about
the extent to which the council is listening or their views on
a particular issue as a result of that day of discussion and deliberation.
I think the key point is the one I was making earlier: in a perfect
world, you would write back to everybody who took part and say,
"Look, these are the findings and this is what we are going
to do about it." Sometimes, of course, with some of the findings
it takes time—people have to look at reallocating money,
changing the way the services are configured—so you cannot
necessarily go straight back to people and say, "Right, you
said you were very cross about dustbin emptying, now we are going
to buy five more dustcarts." It will not happen that quickly.
But I would say that the best authorities are very good at reflecting
that this is what people's priorities are. Take where we are sitting
now: in the city of Westminster, if you listen to the leader's
speech that they make every year—it is a big part of civic
life in Westminster the leader's speech: you will see Simon Milton
talking later this week, and Jane Roberts, Labour in Camden doing
exactly the same sort of thing—he will be reflecting, "You
said you were worried about street crime, you said you were worried
about this, you were worried about value for money, and this is
what we are doing about it," and making sure you are consistently
getting those messages across, not just to the people who took
part but also to the population as a whole, so that they can see
that it really resonates, that these are the issues that we know
people are concerned about, we think is healthy and local government
should do more of that.
Mr Atkinson: If you ask people
whether the council listens to local people's views, they will
give you the benefit of the doubt and they will often have a relatively
positive assessment. If you ask whether it acts on their views,
you will get a rather lower proportion, 30%, saying that it acts
on it. There is a big gradient there. Some might say that is as
it should be, in that you have an authority that is listening
and it is not seen so much as directly acting—and there
is an interesting question there about the role of an elected
member which we started off talking about. But I think both of
those are showing some improvement—not huge, but some improvement.
Mr Page: It is a real uphill slog,
in fairness to local government. Richard Page was talking about
building houses and the delights of many areas in the South East
receiving extra housing. It is very clear in one part of Surrey.
One district has made a real effort: "This district is going
to take a certain number of houses (as agreed by the government)
under the plan for the area," and the councillors there have
visited every single home in the town around which this is going
to happen, and I think, from memory, the proportion of the people
who believe that the council never listens to them and that this
is all a council plot to tarmac over the surrounding countryside—having
visited every home twice—has gone from 90% to 60% So this
is a tough one.
Q165 Mr O'Brien: In my opening question
I was asking you how you measure the results of your exercise.
Could I ask another question on that: In your experience, which
section of the community are the hardest of all for local authorities
to engage?
Mr Page: I would say young people,
quite frankly. Young people, and obviously working-class young
people who are not particularly well educated, shall we say, who
are disengaged from the whole political process. Most of our polling
at the moment is suggesting that only 23% of 18-24 year-olds as
a whole are going to vote. If we then look at young people growing
up in somewhere like Barnsley, it might be even lower.
Q166 Mr O'Brien: People not going to
vote does not mean to say that the council are not engaged.
Mr Page: Absolutely.
Q167 Mr O'Brien: How do you arrive at
that view that the young people are the hardest to engage?
Mr Page: Because when we are conducting
surveys, where we are actually trying to ensure that we have the
correct proportion of people in each of the different age groups
in a community, and we know from the census data, whatever its
strengths and weaknesses, in each street what the profile is,
we know that without special efforts we are going to be under-representing
the views of that particular age group. As a result of that, we
will be making particular efforts to find those sorts of people.
Q168 Chairman: Is that not an indication
of your difficulties as a polling organisation rather than necessarily
the difficulties for a local council?
Mr Page: I think you will have
to ask the councils how easy or difficult they find teenagers
as opposed to pensioners taking part. Our general view is that,
whether it is the council or MORI doing it, until you are socialised,
until you have set up home and have a family, you are generally
not that interested in the council—and of course the dreadful
day on which one sets up home and has a family for many people
is now being extended later and later into their lives—and,
as a result, I imagine both of us will say that, quite frankly,
Chairman.
Q169 Mr O'Brien: Have you had any experience
in the campaign on the Young People's Parliament?
Mr Page: I have certainly met
with the Young People's Parliament.
Q170 Mr O'Brien: Have you done a report?
Mr Page: We have not done a report
about it, but I am sure—
Q171 Mr O'Brien: Because I find that,
in my area, where I went to address some of the candidates, the
schools who are voting for candidates and the response of those
canvasses and the undertaking that has grown up is very impressive.
Mr Page: Yes.
Q172 Mr O'Brien: I consider that there
is contact with young people; the question is that MORI has not
caught up with it yet.
Mr Page: I have two observations
on that. There may be something that colleagues may want to look
at. We did some work for an organisation called Young People
Now, a magazine, that involved some focus groups among younger
people who themselves feel excluded from this process. We also
did some analysis of the media coverage which was almost exclusively
negative in terms of how young people were portrayed. So there
are some interesting things which might be worth picking up on.
The BVPI surveys which we have talked about I think are indicative
of some of the experiences that both MORI and councils have had.
If you look at the group aged 18-24, they are about 16 or 17%
of the population; if you look at who has responded to the BVPI
survey sent out to a random sample, they are about 5% So we have
to weight the data, but you know that your 5% is almost certainly
an atypical group of young people and we have missed out on huge
segments. You have to work very hard to get relatively small numbers
of people taking part. The other thing I would say about the Young
Parliament, is that I think it is entirely commendable, I think
it is absolutely the right thing to do, but I would guarantee
that, if you asked a representative sample of young people whether
they know much about it or who their representative is, that it
may be even lower than their knowledge of their MP.
Q173 Mr O'Brien: That is something we
may go on to. Finally, on this question of consultation, in your
summary to the submission you outline the most difficult challenges
for research and consultation in local government, and you list
five items. You never mention community once. Why is that? After
all is said and done, local authorities, as you agreed with me
earlier, are there to consult communities: stakeholders, council
taxpayers, business payers. Nowhere in this conclusion do you
mention the word "community".
Mr Page: Quite frankly, we would
think that was so self-evident that we did not even bother mentioning
it.
Q174 Mr O'Brien: So we need someone to
research MORI.
Mr Page: If you want to.
Q175 Chairman: How can local authorities
be consulting future users as opposed to ones at the present moment?
The Select Committee has looked empty homes. One of the sad things
there was that there was some evidence of one or two refurbishment
schemes, where local people were very well consulted, that everything
was put in that they wanted but they still ended up with a lot
of empty homes because they were not consulting with the possible
people who might have moved into the area. In quite a lot of areas
local authorities ought to be looking at future users. Do you
think that is a failure on their part or is it that it is really
almost impossible?
Mr Page: Unless something is very
targeted, it might be quite difficult to predict hypothetical
future use. But, as a more general point, Chairman, there is an
issue about non-users of services, and obviously the classic,
easy thing to do is to leave a self-completion questionnaire around
a swimming pool or something like that and ask the receptionist
to give it out to everybody who comes in. There is a broader issue
about the people who do not bother using that swimming pool: Is
that because it is too expensive, or they do not like what is
on offer or because it does not offer women-only sessions, if
you are in Bradford or somewhere like that? There is a big issue
about making sure you have looked at users, potential users, people
who used to use something and no longer do, but with all of this
there are issues around cost as well.
Q176 Chairman: How good is your organisation
at sharing information? If you do a piece of work for one local
authority, do you make it available to all other local authorities?
Mr Page: That has been entirely
our approach over the last three decades, that we allow people
to compare their results. Because one key thing to remember is
that if you are looking at people's attitudes, for some services
that local government delivers 30% satisfied would actually be
brilliant. From memory, Gateshead has the highest level of satisfaction
with pavements anywhere in Britain when we last looked, and it
was about 33% Gateshead is a great council. But if you get that
level of satisfaction in dustbin cleaning, it would probably mean
the council is about to change political control very dramatically
at the next election. The relative standing on any question is
extremely important and that is something that MORI provides as
a matter of course.
Q177 Chairman: Could I ask you about
a different example now. In Stockport there were discussions about
whether the licensed taxis should be retained. I understand that
Stockport Council have asked you to do a survey. The taxi proprietors
and drivers are very keen to see the questions before they are
asked. I understand that you have told the council that would
not be a good idea and that they should use Section 22, I think
it is, of the Freedom of Information Act to refuse to release
that information. Would it not be far better to release that information
so that the taxi drivers can have a feeling as to whether the
right questions are being asked?
Mr Page: I am quite happy to go
off-line on this one but I am not au fait with all the
600 or 700 exercises with which we might be engaged across UK
local government.
Q178 Chairman: I am more interested in
the principles.
Mr Page: In certain cases, where
something is highly contested, you may want to say, "This
is the survey." We would say: "These are the questions
asked, here is the sample method" and be entirely transparent
about that, and the local media, the different stakeholder groups,
like the taxi drivers can reach their own conclusions about the
robustness or otherwise of that exercise. We are not going to
be asking biased questions. In some instances, it is desirable—but
I do not know the local circumstances—for everybody beforehand
to agree what the question wording is, so that there is less contesting
of the data and everything else later on. But it may be that the
two parties' views are so polarised that it is almost impossible
to agree a question wording that we be suitable to both of them.
We might also find this in areas such as hunting, where one person's
unbiased question is somebody else's extremely leading question.
As I say, I am very happy to talk about that off-line and I can
go and find out about it.
Q179 Chairman: As a matter of principle,
you would prefer the two groups to agree the questions.
Mr Page: If at all possible, but
it may be that in this instance that is not the case. I cannot
say.
Q180 Chairman: Would it not be better,
before you do a survey, for there to be a proper public debate
in the newspapers, so that when people are responding they have
a bit more idea of what the issues are rather than responding
to things that are fairly abstract?
Mr Page: That would apply to a
whole range of areas of endeavour. If both local government and
Parliament had more debate about key issues I think that would
be very good for public life in this country.
Q181 Chairman: And you think the debate
should occur before you do the survey rather than afterwards?
Mr Page: Or even—and we
would say this, wouldn't we?—do the survey first, to understand
people's views before they are informed, have the debate, and
then do another survey to see if the debate has shifted opinion
one way or the other.
Chairman: On that note, may I thank you
both very much for your evidence.
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