Government ignores its own rules on consultation

The Jersey Government fails to comply with its own code of practice and policy on consultations with an adverse effect on the quality of policy-making. This is the principal conclusion in a report published today by the Policy Centre Jersey. The report Improving the Consultation Process was written by the Centre’s Senior Adviser, Sir Mark Boleat.

The report argues that a major deficiency is that consultations are not always meaningful, rather they are going through the motions with the objective of claiming that consultation has been undertaken and that there is broad agreement with the proposals. There are reports of charities or businesses being invited to events labelled as consultations but which in practice comprise a PowerPoint presentation with little opportunity for discussion. A second major deficiency is that little notice is taken of points made in the consultation, combined with the absence of a meaningful analysis of consultation responses.

These comments are supported by the Government’s Barriers to Business Report : “84% of respondents stated the Government does not understand the impact of regulation on businesses and 79% stated that the Government does not consult well with businesses before creating any new regulation or making changes to existing regulation”.

The report notes a number of other problems -

• Closed-question online surveys are the preferred means of responding to consultations. This is not sufficient and often they do not cover key issues and run the risk of questions being biased.
• Respondents are asked to give little information about themselves so there is no way of assessing how representative respondents are.
• Responses to consultation exercises are often non-existent or poor, in particular by failing to indicate how policy has been influenced.

The report recommends a change of attitude such there is meaningful engagement with relevant organisations or people. It also suggests a number of administrative improvements that should be built into the Code of Practice –

• Respondents should be asked to give basic information (eg, age, ethnic origin, sex, employment status, income band) so that an assessment can be made of the representativeness of respondents and results analysed by category of respondent.
• Questionnaires should follow a standard format devised by the Chief Statistician, should ensure that key issues are covered and that questions are not slanted, and should be cleared in advance by the Chief Statistician.
• An analysis of responses should never be a matter of counting votes. It is appropriate to mention, and to include extracts from, individual responses either where they have a relevant interest or where they have made a particularly significant point.

The reprt concludes that -

It is probably the case that the current deficiencies are not because of decisions not to follow good practice but rather because of a lack of awareness of what good practice is. This points to the need for training and a central point for advice. Guernsey’s experience of having a dedicated consultation and survey support officer should usefully be examined.

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