The Deliberative Workshop on the 2007 Draft Legislative Forum was coordinated by the British Cabinet Office. It involved 9 regional events with local stakeholders, such as local authorities, local businesses, and District Councils.
Problems and Purpose
The Governance of Britain paper released by government in July 2007 announced that for the first time, a ‘draft legislative programme’ for the coming year would be published to give both Parliament and the public advance sight of what the Government is planning to bring forward in the forthcoming session. In response, the Cabinet Office coordinated the consultation with the public on the programme on behalf of the Leader of the House of Commons. The report of this consultation was released after the draft legislative programme itself was released. This involved 9 regional events with local stakeholders, such as Local Authorities, local businesses and District Councils, to consider the effect of the Draft Legislative Programme on their region along with a national workshop.
The research objectives of the workshop were:
- to explore public priorities in relation to how they matched to the bills in the 2007-08 programme;
- to explore what people wanted to see reflected in the 2008-09 programme; and
- to find out whether and how people wanted to be engaged on the annual programme of draft bills and individual bills in the future.
Background History and Context
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
In order to engage directly with members of the public, the Government commissioned Ipsos MORI to hold a national workshop on 20 October 2007.
Participant Recruitment and Selection
A total of 76 people took part and their profile was reflective of the UK adult population in terms of demographics, taking into account factors such as age, gender, socioeconomic group and ethnicity. Apparently, there was also stratification on attitudes and behaviors, but no detail provided.
Methods and Tools Used
What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
Given the short amount of time and the breadth of topics, this was more a standard consultation than a deliberative exercise. The report of the process was very vague on the citizens’ opinions and recommendations, so its difficult to see how anything could have been ‘implemented’ on the back of it. Also, in a debate in the House of Commons, the Leader of the House of Commons acknowledged that the timing of the publication of the programme this year meant that there was only limited scope to change the content of the programme itself, but that in future years, the government would consider the best time to publish the programme. However, deliberative events did not factor into future consultations of this sort.
Analysis and Lessons Learned
See Also
References
External Links
Notes
This entry is based on the POLITICIZE dataset. More information can be found at the following links:
- Paulis, Emilien; Pilet, Jean-Benoit; Panel, Sophie; Vittori, Davide; Close, Caroline, 2020, "POLITICIZE Dataset", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/Z7X6GT, Harvard Dataverse, V1
- Pilet J-B, Paulis E, Panel S.,Vitori D & Close C. 202X The POLITICIZE Dataset: an inventory of Deliberative Mini-Publics (DMPs) in Europe. European Political Science.