Daniel Greenberg, PLC consultant:
The Coalition’s Programme for Government promised to introduce a new ‘public reading stage’ for bills to give the public an opportunity to comment on proposed legislation online.
A pilot project has now begun with the establishment of a website allowing the public to comment on the Protection of Freedoms Bill. The idea is that comments made on the website will be “collated at the end of this public consultation and fed through directly to the Parliamentarians who will carry the Bill through the House of Commons”.
It is easy to understand what has given rise to this initiative: in particular, it owes much to an increasing public cynicism about the value of the vast and accelerating number of consultation exercises mounted by Government in recent years. There is a perception in some quarters that formal consultation has become a substitute for a real process of engaging people likely to be affected by Government action in the formation of policy. What amounts to effective and sufficient consultation appears to have become more of a technical issue of administrative law than a matter of common sense governed by genuine good intentions (see, in particular, R. (Greenpeace Ltd) v Secretary of State for Trade and Industry [2007] EWHC 311 (Admin); R. (Breckland DC) v Boundary Committee [2008] EWHC 2929 (Admin); and Devon County Council v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government [2010] EWHC 1456 (Admin)).
So a government that wants to be seen to be really listening, has to try something that looks less like mere formal consultation and more like real involvement. Hence this initiative.
Anything that makes it easier for people to have a say in the formation of legislative policy that will affect them must, presumably, be good. Whether what has begun today will in fact improve the quality and effectiveness of legislation depends on a number of questions, including the following:
- The deadline for comments on the new website is based on the Parliamentary “two weekends rule” – the convention that there should be at least two weekends between the initial publication of the Bill and the first proper debate in Parliament; so people have about two weeks in which to comment; will that be sufficient to allow people to prepare and express their thoughts on a 100 clause Bill?
- Will the arrangements for collating and distilling comments be sufficient to allow Parliamentarians to extract comments of particular interest, or to establish general trends and consensuses, from a mass of responses?
- Will Parliamentarians really use the comments to shape their own views, or will they pick and choose from the views expressed for the purpose of claiming support for their established positions?
- Will the Government act on clearly expressed trends and consensuses, by preparing or agreeing to amendments that reflect them?
- How much modification is feasible at the stage when a fully drafted Bill has been formed and launched into the Parliamentary timetable?
- Is there scope for the system to be abused by people organising pressure campaigns that distort the real picture of how citizens feel about a Bill? Put another way, is there a risk that this system will actually give too much weight to the views of vocal minorities?
It is not surprising that a pilot project should pose questions of this kind, and none of them detract from the value of attempting to facilitate real public engagement in the law-making process, something that could be vital to restoring public confidence in the political system as a whole. PLC Public Sector will be watching this development with great interest, and reporting from time to time our conclusions about how effectively it works.