2 Why involve the citizen in policy-making?
5. This Government has set out to reform the
relationship between the state and the citizen through ideas such
as the Big Society, which the Coalition Agreement stated "offers
the potential to completely recast the relationship between people
and the state: citizens empowered; individual opportunity extended;
communities coming together to make lives better";[5]
and through opening up public services and handing individuals
and communities increased power where appropriate.[6]
The changing nature of the relationship with the citizen was highlighted
to us by Professor Beth Noveck, former US Deputy Chief Technology
officer and author of Wiki-Government: How Technology Can Make
Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful:
the future of Government looks like a hybrid between
strong government institutions [...] and networks of peoplegroups
and individualsparticipating in helping to make those institutions
work better.[7]
6. The National Coordinating Centre for Public
Engagement (NCCPE) suggested that citizen engagement in the policy-making
process "helps institutions to keep abreast of public concerns
and expectations and supports real-world problem solving"
as well as demonstrating accountability and leading to socially-grounded
decision making.[8] Sciencewise,
a national centre for public dialogue in policy-making involving
science and technology issues, similarly said that the likelihood
of future unforeseen conflict could be reduced through engagement,
and that final decisions were easier to implement because they
were based on the best possible knowledge from a range of sources.[9]
Involve, an organisation that supports organisations in engaging citizens, suggested that:
When done well, public engagement can have a number
of advantages for policy-making, including strengthening the democratic
legitimacy of policy, by ensuring that citizens are able to take
and influence the decisions that affect their lives; increasing
the accountability of government, by ensuring that citizens are
aware and can respond to the decisions that government takes;
and improving the quality of policy, by ensuring as broad a range
of knowledge, views and values as possible are present in the
process and ensuring that policy goes with the grain of public
values.[10]
The current approach to policy-making
7. The Government's Civil Service Reform Plan
states that "at its best policy-making in the Civil Service
can be highly innovative and effective, but the quality of policy
advice is not always consistent or designed with implementation
in mind", and goes on to identify a number of criticisms
with the Government's current approach to policy-making:
- Policy is drawn up on the basis
of a range of inputs that is too narrow;
- Policy is not subject to sufficient external
challenge before it is announced;
- The policy development process, and the evidence
and data underlying it, is insufficiently transparent;
- Policy insufficiently reflects the reality experienced
by citizens; and
- Policy is often developed with insufficient input
from those who will have to implement it.[11]
8. These criticisms were common in the evidence
we received. Professor Kathy Sykes of Bristol University, for
example, said that "many people see policy-making as happening
behind closed doors and as something they can't influence".[12]
Catarina Tully, a Strategic Consultant and Director of consultancy
FromOverHere, wrote that "there is insufficient challenge
in policy-making. Policy-making can be too often lacking in transparency,
not engaging the right citizens and consulting too narrowly".[13]
9. Involve suggested in their evidence why this
might be the case:
Government policy-making processes typically treat
public engagement as a nuisance at worst and an optional extra
or nice-to-have at best. This does not mean that there has not
been significant activity, quite the opposite in fact, but that
it has not been sufficiently valued or integrated in policy-making
processes[...]Current models of policy making are based on and
reinforce a culture and structure within government that was designed
for a bygone era in which the role and expectations of government
were different.[14]
Involve went on to suggest that the public is only
engaged when "assessing the acceptability of a policy idea
during formation (e.g. through focus groups) or after a policy
has been developed (e.g. through formal consultations)".[15]
Public engagement is, of course, far broader than simple consultation
or the testing of ideas. The breadth of the term, including the
difference between engagement and consultation, was something
explained to us by a number of our witnesses.
Defining public engagement: Comments from
witnesses
Simon Burall, Director of Involve
I think it means[...]citizens interacting with and
receiving information from government all the way through to citizens
having a collaborative approach with government and actually developing
services with them. Consultation sits somewhere in
the middle. Consultation for me has a very specific meaning: it
means that government has developed policy to a point where it
knows what it wants to do, and what it wants to do is engage on
the details.[16]
Catarina Tully, Director of consultancy 'FromOverHere'
There are different types of public engagement, and
it is very helpful to distinguish between the categories. You
have expertise, deliberation on complex issues like GM, representation,
then consultation, which is around legitimacy. We do these different
forms of engagement at different times in the process and for
different reasons. [17]
Stephan Shakespeare, Chief Executive Officer of
YouGov
Engagement is people being involved, and consultation
suggests some kind of formal process. [...]For me, the important
thing for us to do is to distinguish between a consultation that
is done because you feel it ought to be done, and a consultation
that you do because you want it. They are very different things,
but they are both valuable. You have a right to be heard perhaps,
and therefore you create processes by which people can be counted
and make their views felt. But if you actually want people's opinions
because you think that they have different experiences that will
contribute to making better policy, then you have to think about
the process very differently.[18]
Mike Bracken, Executive Director, Government Digital
Service
Consultation has a degree of formality to it, whereas
engagement is an ongoing conversation.[19]
10. A common view in the evidence we received
was that the public were cynical about public engagements undertaken
by the Government, and that some believed engagement, particularly
consultation, was used as "a fig-leaf of legitimacy for bad
policy".[20]
The Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (Cesagen)
at Cardiff University said that "public engagement continues
to be blighted by a perception that it is a reactive or post-hoc
exercise, where public participation is at a stage of decision-making
where its impact is purposely limited and negligible".[21]
Sciencewise drew a similar conclusion:
[...] public engagement in national decision-making
has sometimes tended to be a reactive process, often commissioned
by Government as a result of public dissatisfaction or the failure
of a national policy. Engagement commissioned in this way usually
occurs late in the policy cycle and is primarily seen as a way
of rebuilding trust in a discredited decision-making process.[22]
11. Through ideas such as "the
Big Society" and "Open Public Services", the Government
is aiming to redefine the relationship between the citizen and
the state, enabling and encouraging individuals to take a more
active role in society. The process of policy-making is one where
the public can play an active and meaningful role, and it is right
that the citizen and people with knowledge and expertise from
outside Government should have the opportunity to influence the
decisions of Government.
5 HM Government, The Coalition: Our Programme for
Government, May 2010, page 8 Back
6
About Open Public Services, www.openpublicservices.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/about/ Back
7
Q 75 Back
8
Ev 53 Back
9
Ev 49 Back
10
Ev 59 Back
11
Cabinet Office, The Civil Service Reform Plan, June 2012,
page 14 Back
12
Ev 63 Back
13
Ev 79 Back
14
Ev 59 Back
15
Ev 59 Back
16
Q 101 Back
17
Q 79 Back
18
Q 16 Back
19
Q 101 Back
20
Ev 59 Back
21
Ev 44 Back
22
Ev 49 Back
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