ATTEMPTS BY THE British government to include the electorate in major political decisions has backfired – with every single department failing to take any of the public’s suggestions on board.
The government’s Your Freedom website, set up last month, sought the public’s ideas for “a more open and less intrusive society through our Programme for Government”.
The public were invited to post their ideas on a number of subjects – but with 9,500 suggestions posted on the website, each individual government department has merely assumed the suggestions were an endorsement of its prior agenda and simply reinstated its own policy.
In discussions on immigration, for example, where users had suggested various measures like introducing language tests or giving UK citizens priority in employment, the Home Office merely replied: “We are pleased to see broad support for our proposal to limit migration so that net migration is scaled back to the earlier level.”
Elsewhere, in discussions over the environment, the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: “We agree,” and then set out the plans already agreed by the coalition government.
Another response, in a debate about cutting the government’s pledges for overseas aid, simply read: “Dropping this pledge would be a serious mistake.”
The director of Involve, a non-profit that advises companies and public bodies on public consultation, said that “badly-designed consultations like this are worse than no consultations at all.”
There are two other major crowdsourcing projects ongoing, including the ‘Spending Challenge’ programme seeking ideas for cutting the deficit, has received 60,000 responses.
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