It seems that the recent Duty to Inform, Consult, and Involve will soon be an ex-duty. A letter to Council Leaders sent by the Right Honourable Grant Shapps, Minister for Housing and Local Government states that it is the Government's intention to repeal the duty and the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act of 2007.
Since we share a name with the duty you might expect Involve to defend the Duty to Involve; it has after all only had since April 2009 to prove itself. However I am not so sure that the passing of the duty is such a bad thing. In some ways the name is itself a paradox. It shows the tension between central government handing power to local communities and on the other hand feeling compelled to maintain control. Names such as the "Duty to Inform, Consult and Involve", the "National Empowerment Partnership" and the "Empowerment Directorate" are all paradoxical terms that on one hand point to central control and coercion, and the other of local control. There has always been a risk that the centrally mandated duty would have a perverse effect; leading to box ticking and focussing on quantity rather than quality. I do sometimes worry that councils are engaging more with an eye to the duty and avoiding litigation than towards the needs and wants of the people they're working for. This obviously is not good for democracy. Making government more democratic and accountable requires more than laws and regulations. It is an intricate interplay between carrots and sticks, aiming to change attitudes and cultures as much as mandate behaviour. Involve is currently carrying out work on culture change and engagement, exploring how to best make engagement meaningful. The messages surrounding the duty have been mixed at best. Some civil servants and ministers have presented it as a low cost requirement that most councils already meet, whereas others have presented it as a radical reform, demanding a shake up of power at the local level. We don't know which yet as the Duty has not been tested in court. The minister clearly believes the duty is in the former category: his letter specifies that "councils need not incur any significant expenditure in these requirements" and also mentions "minimum cost" and "cutting out all wasteful spending". I've reached the view that abolishing the duty is probably the right thing to do. Five years ago when money was flowing and the economy was booming Involve said that bad engagement is worse than none at all. Today this is more relevant than ever. The Big Society rests on the belief that the public sector can't do it all and that we need to refocus on quality not quantity. Blanket duties may get in the way of this by focussing our attention to activities rather than outcomes. So what do we lose without the duty? If we abolish the duty how will local communities keep government accountable for the state of local democracy between elections? In principle I am all for local communities rather than courts and central institutions holding local government accountable but this is difficult because one person's genuine dialogue is another person's manipulative ‘con-sham-tation'. We need to acknowledge that there can be a tradeoff between empowering professionals and councils on one hand and strengthening citizens and communities on the other. Both still need to happen, but intelligently. We need to acknowledge that the shift from PCTs to GP consortia won't necessarily mean more influence for patients. GPs vary widely to the degree that they are willing and able to listen to local people. In place of a central duty we need new ways of holding government to account. This could include approaches such as recall, referenda, or naming and shaming using online tools alongside traditional approaches. Whatever is chosen it needs teeth. The Duty to Involve has been both too vague and too wide ranging to be useful. It is important to remember that it has no value in itself; rather the question is how Government can best support citizens to hold councils accountable between elections. "When you're leading, don't talk." Thomas E. Dewey (American Politician)
There is a common belief in politics that tough times require tough leaders. Too often commentators on both the left and the right of the political spectrum take the view that public engagement is a luxury for better times. The secretive coalition negotiations over the past few days have certainly left the public in the dark. That makes it all the more encouraging that the Agreement between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives speaks of "radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups". My personal opinion is that citizen engagement is all the more important when difficult decisions need to be taken. There is no shortage of difficult decisions to take in the coming parliament. The budget deficit is staggering in scope and the Institute for Fiscal Studies has slammed all three main parties for failing to be upfront with voters about this in their election campaign. Fear has the potential to stop politicians and civil servants being honest with citizens. Supposedly Mervyn King thinks that the savage nature of the cuts will doom whoever wins to electoral oblivion for a generation. This is certainly true if parties carry on treating the public as if they can't handle the truth, but it doesn't have to be that way. The view that ordinary voters are too ignorant and short-sighted to be trusted to do anything beyond putting a piece of paper in a box ever five years has a long history. Opponents of public engagement like to quote Edmund Burke's speech to the Electors of Bristol to support their view that the role of the leader is to lead, not listen: "Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion." However, this is a very selective reading; a few lines later Burke goes on to say: "what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?" I'm with Burke on this one: local people will be able to target necessary cuts far better than officials in Whitehall however educated and knowledgeable they might be. Edmund Burkes' speech with its internal contradictions highlights the tension inherent in political leadership between treating citizens as dependent constituents to look out for and treating them as actors in their own right. The problem is that treating citizens as if they were children unable to comprehend and deal with a difficult message becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. The illusion that the British people can have its cake and eat it fuels unrealistic expectations and public cynicism. Until citizens are involved and informed they will punish politicians who over promise and under deliver. Matt Leighninger suggests in his excellent book that the time has come to move from a parent-child relationship between politicians and citizens to an adult-adult relationship. The truth is that forward thinking leaders have always listened to citizens and acted accordingly. Increasingly they have also found that better solutions are created if power is delegated. Ironically, forward thinking politicians can achieve more when they share power with the public, as engagement can reduce conflict and increase ownership over difficult choices. This is demonstrated in detail in our coming publication ‘Talking for a change', to be launched next month. To finish off I'd like to counter Dewey's old fashioned view of what leadership is with a quote from another American politician who rightly said: "No one ever listened themselves out of a job" Calvin Coolidge (American President) Things have been very busy at the Involve offices since the World Wide Views Event last week. We are working on the official event report, which should be ready shortly. We've been busy poring over the voting results from the UK event and it makes for fascinating reading. On most issues it seems that the majority of UK participants agrees with the Government's tough stance; in many cases the UK participants want to go even further in terms of emission reductions and penalties for countries that don't live up to their commitments.
One of the big challenges we face is to convey the energy in the room to others who weren't there. A report can't really capture the spirit of the event, and neither can the numbers on their own. That's why it is great that a number of different media outlets covered the event, including Radio 5 Live and the World Service. Unfortunately most of this coverage is time limited access, but you can still check out the coverage in the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph. I'm about to go to Copenhagen for a two day session where we will draft up the global policy report. Taking 38 event reports, each of them as rich and complex as the one from Kettering and creating a report to do justice to them all is a big responsibility. One way of seeing if you agree with our conclusions is to go onto the WWviews.org site and compare the results of the UK to other countries. This is my second blog based on my experience attending the second annual ‘Strengthening our Nation's Democracy' conference in Washington DC in August this year. The gathering of people active in the ‘Democracy movement' was organised by the Ash Institute (Harvard), AmericaSpeaks and Everyday Democracy and gave me a better understanding of the American context and the Obama administration's agenda for the field.
Obama's record in developing public engagement is impressive so far: • One of his first acts was to publish the Memorandum on transparency and open government • He has set up an Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation aiming to encourage public engagement in social entrepreneurship and community organising • He has set up an Open Government Initiative to look into how the federal government could be made more transparent, including through the use of new media across government. • He has transformed the former Office of Public Liaison into the Office of Public Engagement with a remit to engage with the public in a more sustained way • His administration has allowed the first public comment on an executive order, the first Open Town Hall for the executive branch and has launched Data.gov to increase transparency. I think Obama's successes to date show that the UK can be braver in pursuing large structural reforms at the national level. However it is also easier for Obama as a new leader to generate enthusiasm and overcome cynicism compared to Whitehall, where the same party has been in power since 1997.The US is also ahead of the UK in using inventive approaches to engagement, especially in terms of new technologies.Despite the great work of Ministry of Justice and Hansard Society on the Digital Dialogues reports a lot more needs to be done. Hopefully , Andrew Stott newly appointed as the Cabinet Office's the new Director of Digital Engagement will be able to champion this cause. In the main UK government institutions tend to stick to established approaches rather than pushing the envelope. Another insight from the conference is that the so called ‘Democracy movement' is incredibly diverse. At the conference people from fields ranging from Electoral Reform, Deliberation, Collaborative Governance and Environmental Resource Management came together to explore where their visions overlapped and where they did not. The tensions that surfaced were absolutely fascinating. My sense is that we should consider organising the same kind of get together in the UK; people involved in Community Development, eDemocracy, Electoral Reform, Citizenship education and Social Innovation don't necessarily talk to each other, despite obvious areas of overlap in interest and purpose. There is a clear opportunity to work together in wake of the expenses scandals which has made the case for change very clear. However the future for US engagement is not all bright; one of the challenges Obama faces was apparent as I made my way back from the conference. In the terminal of Dulles International Airport I caught a news item of Congressman Steve Kagen facing hostile crowds at a Town hall discussion about healthcare in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I know a number of officers and councillors in the UK who have had similar experiences and who can sympathise with the congressman who clearly had lost control over the meeting and its vitriolic participants. Since that time dozens of similar town meetings have got out of hand across the US, with the disruptive behaviour often encouraged by campaign groups. This has led some to question the usefulness of public engagement in passing the healthcare reforms and in other contentious topic areas. For me these examples highlights the uneasy tension between engagement as means to achieve partisan political aims contrasted with engagement as a means of achieving better government and governance. Obama came to power on the back of one of the most successful political engagement exercises of living memory. He had almost 2.5 million friends on Facebook, around one million individuals donated to his campaign, some estimate that around eight million people gave time to volunteer for his campaign, and above all he mobilised a wide array of people beneath a common vision. Engagement for political ends is by its nature outcome focussed. But engagement is also important for other reasons; for example increasing the legitimacy of decisions and ensuring that the decisions made are ones that people are willing to live with. This form of engagement is less political and more process oriented. Now that Obama resides at the White House the tension will be to decide how to reconcile political engagement (which he has shown he is very good at) with engagement for better governance (which he has less of a track record of). Part of the reason why the Town Hall meetings have been difficult to run seems to be that they have aimed to fill both outcome and process roles at the same time. This is the difference between running a campaign and a government. Clearly health reform is a contentious area and many people have interests either in seeing engagement succeed or fail. The Obama administration now needs to deal with a number of problems. 1. The first is how to deal with the expectations raised amongst the core activists from the campaign, who often feel close to Obama and expect a high level of interaction going forward. Can Obama's team keep their core supporters onboard and maintain momentum amongst the campaigners? 2. The second challenge is how to manage the logistical transformation from having thousands of volunteers in all states during the election to run events to a situation where the Obama team have far fewer staff members to engage the public with. Logistically following the Obama 08 campaign will be difficult. 3. The third, and possibly most tricky challenge, is to avoid engagement becoming seen as a partisan issue. In the UK today some conservative politicians consider engagement to be an example of New Labour management speak, to be removed when they get into power. Where politicians choose to limit their options for making political decisions, simply to score political points everyone looses. The Obama Administration has taken steps to limit the power of professional lobbyists but as Mark Schmitt of the American Prospect points out it is less clear cut how Obama will deal with the ‘grassroots lobbying' that is currently undermining the Town Hall meetings across the country... As Obama wrestles with the transition from leading one of the most successful political engagement campaigns the world has ever seen to the much more messy work of governing he might be tempted to reduce the role of public involvement in the wake of Congressman Kagen's (and others') experience. In my mind this would be a mistake. Finally I wanted to end with the interesting point that John Gaventa of the Institute for Development Studies made at the conference. Each year the US and UK spend billions ‘exporting Democracy'. This tends to translate into some quite superficial promotion of the very political structures that citizens in western democracies have become increasingly mistrustful of and feel are growing ever ,more distant from their lives. At the same time we are seeing vibrant experiments and new practices emerging at the local level across many countries of the world. John asked the question: ‘If we want to export democracy, perhaps we should export the good stuff?' Edward Andersson The recent referendum on electoral reform in Ontario Canada has raised a number of questions about how to link small scale deliberative participation with large scale change. Despite the enthusiasm for reform shown by a group of random citizens who spent eight months deliberating on the issues the general public voted against change. There are important lessons here for Gordon Brown’s ‘New Politics’.
---- In March 2006 the Government of the Province of Ontario, Canada, established a Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform which reviewed the electoral system to see if it needed to be changed. The Citizens’ Assembly was made up of 103 citizens, selected at random, one per existing provincial electoral district. This group was composed of 52 women and 51 men. The independent body met twice a month from September 2006 to April 2007 to examine the current electoral system and deliberate on alternatives. The Assembly also held public meetings across the province. In short it was an interesting and ambitious process of civic deliberation based on the idea that average citizens can come together to make good policy decisions. On paper public deliberation would seem to be especially good when it comes to electoral reform because politicians have a vested interest when it comes to the system through which they are elected. In May 2007, the Assembly recommended, by a decision of 94-8 that Ontario should adopt a form of mixed member proportional representation instead of the existing ‘first past the post’ system (similar to what we have in UK national elections). The Assembly's recommendation was put to the Ontario voters in a referendum on October 10, 2007. The proposal was rejected by 63% of voters. This stands in marked contrast to the 84% of the Citizens' Assembly members who supported the proposal. The ruling party has ruled out further attempts to engage the public around the electoral system for now. "We've had that debate; I have an abiding confidence in the collective wisdom of the people of Ontario." The result raises interesting points. Advocates of deliberation argue that the randomly selected citizens represent society at large. How can we then explain this discrepancy? For some the problem is that while the assembly members had access to accurate information the general public were not provided with good information through the media and thus weren’t able to make an informed decision. Others believe that it was the Assembly members who were manipulated by the process and that the public saw through what was an essentially flawed proposal. Data from the University of British Columbia and the University of Montreal seems to indicate that the more people knew about the Citizens' Assembly and the proposal, the more likely they were to vote in favour of it. This means that the first suggestion is more likely to be true. There’s an interesting comparison to be made with Gordon Brown's ‘New Politics’, which relies heavily on Citizens' juries and citizens' summits made up of random citizens brought together to recommend policy decisions. What good are they if they make good decisions but the general public rejects them? Even the most wide ranging deliberative process to date has only engaged a few thousand people over a relatively short time. Canadian blogger Jim Snider suggest that we cannot rely on the government, interest groups and political parties to host the vital debates for deliberation to link up with wider societal decision making and referendums. Instead charitable foundations should fund these public conversations. ---- A few weekends ago I attended an event organised by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on participation. A number of trusts recently funded the UK segment of the European Citizens Consultation so it would seem that some UK trust are moving in this direction. The inevitable conclusion seems to be that the role of the media is key. Involve's upcoming work on tele-democracy and our forthcoming pamphlet ‘Participation Nation’ will explore these issues in depth. Yesterday (30th of October) the 'Local Government & Public Involvement in Health Bill' received the Royal Assent, with wide ranging impacts on local government and the health services in England and Wales.
Key highlights of the bill include: * More powers have been devolved to local authorities, giving them the opportunity to delegate more decision to communities. * Local Area Agreements (LAAs) and an accompanying duty to cooperate requires local agencies to work with their communities around service provision and improvement. * The Overview & Scrutiny powers of local councils have been strengthened and the new 'Community Calls for Action' provide a new route for community members to raise issues at the local level. * A new duty requires local authorities to "inform, consult and involve local people in running local services". * Councillors will have more powers to resolve issues of concern to the communities they represent (if necessary by requiring consideration by Overview and Scrutiny Committees). * There has been a reduction in the number of central targets, with the goal of a more balanced performance framework and more proportionate inspection regime. * Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Forums will be replaced by new Local Involvement Networks (LINks) * The duty of Strategic Health Authorities, NHS Trusts and Foundation Trusts to involve the public and patients has been strengthened. These institutions now need to consult on all “significant” proposals and decisions. Controversy and Change Some parts of the bill have been controversial, not least the transition from PPI Forums to LINks. For the critics of the reforms the transition is a way of silencing challenging community voices and creating new structures with less powers to challenge NHS decisions. It is unclear how the LINks will work in practice but on paper they have several advantages over the PPI Forums. There is a formal expectation that they will work more closely together with Overview & Scrutiny committees and local councils and they will also cover social care issues as well as those around health. Hopefully this should lead to to more joined up working and less duplication of effort. However it is clear that the transition from one structure to another could have been managed better. Many of the people who have given up their time in PPI Forums do not feel that their efforts have been valued by the government and the NHS. As the foundation for all engagement and participation is the enthusiasm of the public this is a disappointing result indeed. Delivering meaningful results These new requirements add up to considerable change for local authorities and the heath services. There are a number of encouraging developments contained in the bill, not least devolving more power to local service providers and to citizens directly as well as setting out clearer involvement requirements. However it is important to remember that the old analogy of leading the horse to water holds true when it comes to participation. It is easy enough to place duties to involve on local authorities and force them to go through the motions of participation. What central government cannot do on its own is to ensure that local involvement is meaningful. Half hearted engagement rarely delivers good results and there will need to be a concentrated effort to convince public agencies that they need to involve and empower their communities, not just because the law requires them to but because of the benefits it brings to local communities and institutions. The new Empowerment Action Plan outlines some of the valuable work being done to provide support and move the public sector from mere compliance to enthusiasm for the agenda. Involve just launched a new participation website. People and Participation.net (http://www.peopleandparticipation.net), is a new radical resource to help people across the country influence Government decision-making. The site combines the strengths of an expert guide to participation with interactivity and inclusiveness of a wiki. Key features include:
• An interactive tool which helps practitioners to select participatory methods based on their specific circumstances • A comprehensive methods database, covering over 30 traditional and innovative approaches to public participation from around the world • A selection of case studies, showcasing good practice and allowing site users to post their own success stories to inspire others. • A section for site users to post their questions about participation. Involve staff will respond to these questions and thereby create an ever growing knowledge bank of answers to common. • News and events information from the UK and beyond • A comprehensive library of written and web-based resources from around the world to help site users make sense of public participation The interactive website was built by Involve and Headshift. It is funded by the department of Communities and Local Government, the Ministry of Justice and the Sustainable Development Commission. We hope that the site will be a creative space where officials, councillors and citizens can share their success stories. I would be really interested to hear what you think of peopleandparticipation.net. You can leave your feedback directly onto the site. Gordon Brown seems to have proven his critics wrong. Rather than the 'iron fisted' 'control freak' we were promised by the tabloids we have a prime minister who yesterday proposed an ambitious constitutional reform programme. If it all comes off Gordon Brown will have less power and Parliament and Local Government will have more.
In today's Guardian Involve published an article arguing that while constitutional reform to increase democratic accountability is morally the right thing to do, the new prime minister must go further. Procedural reforms are unlikely to dent the chronic public disinterest that plagues Britain, with just 33% of those in the bottom social class feeling they can influence government decisions. The focus needs to be on changing the very culture of government so that it works with, not just for, the people. From empowering frontline staff to work with service users, to using new deliberative forums or asking more of politicians themselves in leading debate, it is vital that fine words on people power do not become corroded by constitutional dogma. We have a powerful opportunity for change. The jury is out as to whether this can and will be grasped. In the shadow of Chancellors budget Sir Michael Lyons released his long awaited report 'Place-shaping: a shared ambition for the future of local government', looking at the relationship between local and central government and the future of local government finance.
Initial interest seems mainly to have focussed on the details of Lyons proposals for local taxation, and in particular the so called 'bed tax', a tax on the tourist accommodation industry. The Conservatives have strongly opposed the bed tax and have made it the focal point for a campaign to 'Save the great British holiday'. In the end the Lyons report does not recommend that this tax be implemented nationally but raises the possibility that individual councils may choose to implement it locally. The Liberal Democrats have ignored teh bed tax and focussed their criticism of the report on the fact that it proposes to reform council tax rather than abolish it. The Liberal Democrats claim that the recommendations will actually worsen inequalities. It is also interesting to see how many groups are keen to claim responsibility for influencing the outcomes of the report, ranging from the Local Government Information Unit, The New Local Government Network and the British Hospitality Association! At Involve we were more interested to see what Sir Michael had to say about the relationship between local government, central government and citizens than the details of taxation. Some of the most interesting bits of the report seem to have been overlooked by most commentators. Lyons speaks of the role of local government as 'place shaping' and recommends a wide ranging transfer of power from the centre to the local level, and a far reaching shift in the culture of government, far more important in the long run then whether or not there will be a tax on tourist accommodation. This shift in power could be crucial for local democracy. The UK is arguably the most centralised country in Western Europe, a situation which does little to encourage local activism or indeed trust in local institutions. When local councillors have so little power to begin with it is hardly surprising that some have reacted negatively to ideas of enhancing public participation in the past. Hopefully more power to local government will enable us to move beyond old fashioned views of power as a zero-sum game. However devolution of power without more open institutions might mean that all we do is replace one set of unresponsive institutions in Whitehall with other, equally unresponsive ones, dotted around the country's Town Halls. Luckily Lyons also calls for councils to 'adopt a leadership style that engages local partners, facilitating, advocating, arbitrating and influencing rather than dominating.' He specifically mentions the need to improve the structures of public engagement, and for councils to be more innovative in their approaches. We were pleased to see that he mentions Participatory budgeting, which is clearly relevant to the area and provides an accountable way of dealing with controversial issues, such as the 'bed tax'. However, despite highlighting the usefulness of participatory budgeting, he stays clear of actually mentioning the method in his recommendations. |
Edward Andersson
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