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Engaging with engagement

Part 2.

This is a second post on the Hansard Society’s latest Audit of Political Engagement, its ‘annual health check on public attitudes to our democracy’. (The first was on how well our system of government works.) There are many options for political reform, but will the public pay any attention to them?

The Hansard Society’s Audit of Political Engagement 2014 has a particular focus on how the public think political accountability, transparency and accessibility can be improved. Building on previous work, it put seven reform proposals to respondents: • requiring all MPs to hold an open meeting at least twice a year • introducing a right for constituents to ‘recall’ their MP if they have behaved badly • require Parliament to make the attendance and voting records of MPs easily accessible online • requiring all MPs to send a written, formal, annual report to their constituents • involving the public in monitoring the work of MPs (e.g. some constituents on a citizens’ jury) • requiring national newspapers to devote at least a page each day to parliamentary debates • requiring all MPs to be on either Facebook or Twitter. Respondents were asked which two or three (if any) of the propositions would be most effective in holding politicians to account – and which they personally were likely to pay attention to.
The most popular proposal was the open meeting requirement (44%) closely followed by recall (42%). In third place, on 33%, is requiring parliament to make the attendance and voting records of all MPs more easily accessible online. Many of these proposals aren’t necessarily as straightforward as they seem. For example, our director Peter Riddell has already written about some potential pitfalls of open voting records, which are also acknowledged by TheyWorkForYou. But a big pitfall shown by the survey itself is general apathy. Respondents admitted that even if they were in favour of changes they might not actually pay them any attention.
Open voting records show the greatest difference between those thinking it would be effective and those saying they would actually pay any attention to it: 33% to 23%. This may not be entirely surprising. As we know from other sources, the army of armchair auditors that David Cameron wanted to enlist to scrutinise government spending data, for example, appears to have deserted. Maybe our citizen army need reinforcements. As well as the ‘citizen army’ model, perhaps we should also be thinking of a wider fourth estate, which now goes beyond traditional news media into expert organisations, campaign groups and others who can publish online. Such organisations can use open data and other political information to not only inform the public and hold those institutions to account, but give the public the tools to do the same themselves. That’s partly what we’re trying to do with Whitehall Monitor, using government data and our institutional knowledge to work out what’s going on in government, and publishing our data to allow and encourage others to do the same. As with any and all of the reform proposals put by the Hansard Society to its respondents, more open data in itself will not be enough to increase accountability, transparency, accessibility or engagement. But done properly, it can certainly help.
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Institute for Government

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