All change at Cambridgeshire County Council

Summary

Some observations following today’s first full council following the 2013 local government elections

By sheer twist of fate, I managed to feature across three different media platforms in one day today – TV, radio and print. Well…online print if you count the third. Interesting to note that all three were a result of my social media presence. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

I was on BBC Look East this evening (See here, 2m.25s in - available till 6pm 22/5) as well as being on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire at a frightfully early hour this morning. The transcript of which is here. Finally, I had a very short comment piece on civil service apprenticeships posted in The Guardian, for which Sir Bob Kerslake is due to respond to all of us later on.

Puffles with Elodie Harper of Anglia Television

The media presence

There was also a large media presence in Shire Hall today – I counted over 10 of us there, representing TV (both ITV and BBC), Radio (BBC & Heart), print (Cambridge Evening News and the Cambridgeshire Times) and social media (myself and Richard Taylor) along with campaign groups such as the Cambridge Cycling Campaign.

We even got to meet longtime Twitterfriend Elodie Harper of Anglia Television too!

 

“Thanks for the advertorial Pooffles, but can we get to the substance now please?”

If we must

I rocked up at Shire Hall in Cambridge – the HQ of Cambridgeshire County Council – for the first full council since the Conservative group lost their majority and leader in the elections a few weeks ago. As I repeated on the radio, I did not foresee either, hence turning up to Shire Hall to see what the new political dynamic would look like. As far as all things local government are concerned, the votes that were passed today were significant as far as long term political culture in the county is concerned. It’s just too early to feel the effects of it.

How so?

We have very much moved on from the previous model of ‘strong leader with big whip’ to one of consensus. All of the other parties joined together to pass motions limiting the power of the council’s executive, as well as moving from a cabinet system to a committee system, the latter being where committees are due to be made up of members from all parties.

Why is this significant? Because it means that the Conservatives – who are going to be running a minority administration – will have to co-operate with at least one other group to get their policies voted through.

“Well that makes for a nice cosy right-wing Tory-UKIP stitch-up, doesn’t it?”

Not at all. The mood coming from UKIP Cambridgeshire group leader Peter Reeve was that he saw Cambridgeshire Conservatives as a dying force in the region – one where his party can take rich pickings as far as future votes are concerned. Accordingly, the Labour and Liberal Democrats groups were more than happy to team up with UKIP today to pass motions significantly reducing the ability of new council leader Cllr Martin Curtis to force through policies in the way his predecessor was able to.

What we don’t have in Cambridgeshire though is a coalition. Was there any possibility of a LibDem-Tory coalition for Cambridgeshire? Given that the former have been the official opposition for quite some time against the latter, the personality dynamics made this less likely. It wasn’t as if it was two opposition parties coming together to replace a third incumbent as in Westminster in 2010. The noises from both the Labour and Lib Dem groups is that they will approach each issue on a case-by-case basis. It will be interesting to see who co-operates with who on which issues over the next few years, because it’s not as clear cut as it might look from a distance.

“How so?”

There are a number of ‘game changing’ factors here, such as:

• Both the Conservatives and the next largest party, the Liberal Democrats have new leaders of their groups in the council, and both are leading significantly smaller groups on the council
• UKIP and Labour have significantly increased their presence at the expense of the above-two
• The Council is now under no overall control, with a minority Conservative administration that will have to govern through consensus rather than through strength of council votes
• Further significant cuts being forced on the Council by cuts in the grant from Central Government.

The Great Wall of Cambridge – will the City see this as an opportunity to break away from the rural north?

It’s what most councillors at the district level Cambridge City Council want. The reason being that they feel (and not without good reason) that transport policy in previous years has been decided by councillors that do not live in Cambridge. Therefore attempts to deal with congestion – such as congestion charging – have fallen by the wayside. I don’t have a problem with congestion charging of vehicles in principle, but it’s not a standalone solution. It would need to be co-ordinated with capital investment (light rail, new bus stops/interchanges and bypasses) along with significantly improved transport services to rural areas and other key market towns. The other challenge is how to make congestion charging not have too detrimental impact on local businesses while at the same time alleviating the pressure that comes from organised day trippers – particularly in the summer.

Switching from the existing two-tier set up to a unitary model would require primary legislation in Parliament. Given the Coalition’s previous moves with Norwich and Exeter, it is unlikely that Cambridge will become a unitary authority before the next general election.

The other risk with Cambridge becoming a unitary authority is the polarisation of the county north and south. How would both central and local government avoid the risk of the north of the county becoming even more cut off from the more economically prosperous south than it already is? Hence why for me over the next few years, transport infrastructure will be one of the key issues – one that goes far beyond the trials and tribulations of the much-maligned A14.

 

A Parliamentary Commission on the Civil Service

Summary

Some thoughts on the call from the Chairman of the Public Administration Select Committee for a root-and-branch examination of the civil service.

Bernard Jenkin made a call for a Parliamentary Commission on the Civil Service in a speech to one of my old trade unions – the FDA Union. Mr Jenkin is the Chair of the Public Administration Select Committee – the select committee I keep closest eye on given my civil service background. They are also the select committee that keeps the closest eye on Puffles – with a third of its membership following Whitehall & Westminster’s favourite dragon fairy. It was also on this committee that Puffles was first mentioned in a parliamentary debate. See Qs 231, 235 (asked by Jenkin himself) and 242 – asked by one of Puffles’ followers, Greg Mulholland MP, in the evidence session on Public Engagement in Policy Making.

So…should we have a parliamentary commission?

There needs to be a ‘something’. What that ‘something’ is, I’m fairly open-mined. What matters is the robustness of the evidence presented, the resources the ‘something’ has to scrutinise that evidence, and the likelihood that the recommendations stemming from that ‘something’ are implemented.

Parliamentary commission, royal commission, government review, independent review, judge-led review, think-force paper – it could come from any of those. In the grand scheme of things, call it what you want.

What I fear will get missed out is the millstone currently hanging around Nick Clegg’s neck: constitutional reform. That’s his area of policy responsibility, yet in so many high profile areas of constitutional reform he’s not been able to deliver. I made a similar point in a blogpost on the equal marriage debate. Unpicking the Church of England’s current legal rights and responsibilities started pulling on strings around much needed House of Lords reform – not just because of bishops but because of this, which then leads to undermining the hereditary principle in politics [Good], which then leads to questions on the legitimacy of the monarch.

A small number of chaps working for a smaller number of chaps scrutinised by a larger number of a small number of chaps

This was the world that Whitehall and Westminster was back in the times that all things Northcote Trevelyan were written. Ministers are responsible for policy, civil servants for delivery, and ministers are responsible to Parliament which is then responsible and accountable to the electorate. In those days though, the policy-making functions within the civil service were much smaller than they are today. There was also a much greater role for local government too – as Tristram Hunt describes beautifully in his book Building Jerusalem - essential reading for anyone interested in local government & public services.

Since Northcote Trevelyan, there were arguably two points in history when the principles of civil service accountability & functions should have been reviewed and refreshed in a big way. The first being 1945 and the post-war consensus. The massive growth of public services – including the NHS, along with the widespread nationalisations of major industries (which, to all intents and purposes for the War were under state control anyway) involved a significant growth in the number of people who were working in the public sector, as well as the increased complexity of those operations. The second being the large-scale privatisation & outsourcing brought in by Thatcher & subsequent administrations. Contractual vs democratic accountability anyone?

Why a root and branch review?

One of the reasons why now is a good time to have a root and branch review and refresh of what the civil service should be there for is the increasing connectivity people and institutions have with each other in this digital age. The thing is, once you start teasing away at the tensions within existing policy-making processes, a number of other tensions are exposed – ones that the civil service has little influence over but are stuck with either way: The regular reshuffling of ministers is but one example. Incredibly destabilising not just for civil servants, but for all those with an interest in delivering public services. For some of the non-state organisations delivering public services or government programmes, a change of minister (even in the same party) can be the difference between a contract going ahead or being cancelled.

What I’m saying is that a parliamentary commission on the civil service cannot be looked at in isolation. You’ve got to make it consistent with something similar for the role of Parliament and government. Otherwise you run the risk of having a very partisan commission that ends up weakening/strengthening one institution while doing nothing with the others to ensure that all things balance out. For example you don’t want an over-strong civil service that ends up being viewed by citizens as a powerful unaccountable technocracy in the way the European Commission is. You also don’t want to weaken the civil service to the extent that ministers can easily override important checks and balances that are in place. e.g. “No Minister, you cannot do that because The Law prevents you from doing so.” Then there’s the problem of Parliament – which is far too weak vis-a-vis both the civil service and ministers. The payroll vote and inherent conflict of interest of MPs being ministers is the biggest problem for me. It is an inherent conflict of interest to have MPs tasked with scrutinising the executive being members of that very executive. Have them appear before MPs as they currently do in select committees, business questions and urgent questions, but as ministers only, not as voting MPs.

Who’s said what so far?

The FDA Union published Delivering for the Nation: Securing a World-Class Civil Service. A number of interesting recommendations indeed – in particular on training as well as on big-picture policy making principles. I was struck by the line about departments being given a budget by The Treasury and having to work backwards – which reflects John Birds’ thoughts at JCI Cambridge last week. Interesting to note too that the Shadow Cabinet Office Minister Jon Trickett has been quoted by the Institute for Government that tackling narrow diversity in the senior civil service will be something a future Labour government will tackle. It’s a fair comment to make given how things seem to have gone backwards diversity-wise (in particular for women) in the senior civil service. Read this by Jill Rutter of the Institute for Government.

What seems to be missing in the FDA’s report is a discussion about open policy-making in an era of social and digital media. My anecdotal feeling is that trade unions in general are a little behind the curve on digital and social media in general, looking perhaps to the Labour Party for initiative rather than outwards towards both grassroots members and wider communities.

Will we get a Parliamentary Commission?

Unlikely in the next two years – I expect ministers will three-line-whip the proposal out of the water. The Cabinet Secretary and the Head of the Civil Service have both come out against the plan. It’s something that may come up again after the next general election. I get the feeling that the top of Whitehall wants to just get on and implement the existing reform plan as is, rather than re-opening debates that they feel have already been had.

Technical policy expertise – can we have it back please?

My remaining big concern about the civil service though is about the hollowing out of expert policy teams, and how dependent the civil service has become on secondments from outside the civil service in a number of specialist policy areas – especially those that have lots of very expensive lobbyists thrown at them by wealthy interests. If we are to have a parliamentary commission on the civil service, I’d like to see that issue in examined in detail. In particular, I’d like to see some evidence and analysis around impact (on the economy and society) and expenditure vs the resource (including numbers and types of) allocated to the various policy and delivery functions.

Food for thought.

Big Issue founder John Bird fires rockets at charities and civil service

Summary

A write-up of John Bird’s recent visit to Cambridge

A few of you may know that I am a member of JCI Cambridge, the Cambridge branch of Junior Chambers International, an organisation that seeks to develop the professional skills of young professionals through series of self-organised events and community projects. Last month, our branch adopted the Cambridgeshire branch of Mind, the mental health charity, as our charity for the year. The person who brought me into JCI Cambridge was Jenny Willatt, so it’s all her fault really. In the Cambridge branch there are about 50 of us, but something tells me there is huge potential to grow that number – particularly in some of the larger public sector organisations, as anecdotally much of the membership comes from smaller private sector organisations based locally.

John Birds’ Words

It’s his Twitter-handle too @JohnBirdsWords. Or John Bird Swords, if you like. And he had a lot to say – but given what he’s been through in his 67 years on this planet, there was more than enough content to pack into the couple of hours he had with us. The big thing I took away as an interesting fact was the role Gordon and the late Anita Roddick (of The Body Shop) had on the founding of The Big Issue - the weekly magazine sold by people who are homeless and those in unstable housing. Cambridge has a separate local magazine written by and sold by people who are homeless too – FLACK Cambridge. Interestingly, The Independent pulled up this article from 1995 which covers it too.

Having moved on from some rip-roaringly funny-but-painful anecdotes of getting The Big Issue of the ground, John then turned his fire both on charities and on the state. What I found interesting was that he had come to a number of similar conclusions that I had come to – even though we both come from very different backgrounds. The other thing that was interesting was that he had similar criticisms about government grant making schemes that Cambridge entrepreneur Peter Dawe had when he did a talk for JCI Cambridge about the big mistakes he had made (and what he learnt from them) in the world of business. There was me nodding in agreement to both when they said that grant making schemes often benefit those who are better at filling in the forms rather than helping people develop a really great idea.

‘We’re here to help you, but no you cannot join our board of directors’

One of the things I asked myself following John’s paraphrased observation above, was to what extent the real ‘decision makers’ in government, the civil service and in large charities had experience of being dependent service users of the operations that they are responsible for.

Think about that for a moment.

Great school, top college, oxbridge/redbrick university, top internships, highly-sought-after graduate placement, fast-tracked to the top, running large public sector organisation. (I didn’t have Sir Jeremy Heywood in mind – but looking at his wikipedia page…). On internships, Tanya de Grunwald picked up the issue of unpaid internships with charities a couple of years ago.

Actually, it’s unfair to focus on a single individual. I alluded to the same in my earlier blogpost about Jo Johnson’s recent appointment. But what is the impact of not having people who have experience of either frontline delivery experience or receiving the public services directly, within the decision-making functions of your organisation? For a start, there is the perspective. When you start dealing with such large numbers of people and such huge financial sums, it’s all too easy to forget that these are human beings we are dealing with. It’s also all too easy to forget that you need to be careful with the small amounts of money when you look at it from the perspective of a tax-payer on the minimum wage.

John raises a reasonable point: What is the route from dependent service-user to chief executive of your organisation? How can someone who has been kicked out by their parents, fled from domestic violence and found themselves homeless, become director of housing policy in a Whitehall department? the single mother with lots of potential but who has been failed by the system and has no qualifications become permanent secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions? This is where I hope the Civil Service Apprenticeship Scheme will be expanded, having worked with some talented apprentices on a departmental scheme in my final year in Whitehall.

John on how to restructure Whitehall

“Why can’t we bring in something that says if you cut spending on youth clubs in economically deprived areas, it is likely you will have to increase spending by this much”?

Or in management-speak, feedback mechanisms and automatic stabilisers. It’s what some politicians don’t understand about our benefits system: The automatic stabilisers kick in for a reason: eg people have lost their jobs. Therefore, in order to reduce spending, do you a) get people into jobs or b) artificially clamp down on the benefits system?

A party-political point maybe, but because of the way Whitehall is structured, individual ministers can only work with the levers that they have. Housing ministers cannot do anything about using the tax system to deal with problems in the housing market because the levers are in The Treasury. Employment ministers can only do so much in their area where levers are held by ministers in the Department for Business. The Universities Minister can only do so much on accessibility if the primary and secondary education system is not functioning in a manner where children with huge potential from economically deprived areas are not mentored and inspired to reach for the stars. Health ministers can only do so much if the minister for sports is not playing ball.

…And all of the above are barriers before we’ve even considered whether ministers as individuals get on with each other or not. Just because they are in the same party doesn’t mean they are friends. Sometimes it’s quite the opposite -as any political activist will tell you.

“That’s all very well Pooffles, but why was he telling a bunch of people not in the private sector this? Shouldn’t he be telling civil servants and politicians this?”

Chances are he already is. What pleased me was that, between the lines he was encouraging people to become interested in local and national politics. He was also telling people what things they need to learn about too. He said that people needed to learn about systems – about how things functioned: The political system, the economic system, the legal system. Once you’ve got the basics of that sussed, then you can start scrutinising things more effectively. For Cambridge-dwellers it might mean going along to and keeping tabs on your local area committee. Or for those using social media, engaging in local politics through some of the people linked in this blogpost.

Next steps?

For JCI Cambridge, one of the things worth thinking about in terms of future speakers is having a few of the younger councillors (Carina, Samantha and Ian, Puffles is looking at you) coming along to take part in a panel discussion, as well as council officials doing one explaining what they do on the inside day-to-day. After all, many JCI members pay council tax in Cambridge, so isn’t it worth finding out what the money is spent on?

“Whose side are the professions on?”

Summary

A short series of thoughts on today’s Public Accounts Committee hearing on tax avoidance featuring Google, Ernst and Young and HMRC, along with the Goldman Sachs ruling.

There were two things in the news today on all things tax avoidance. The first was the Public Accounts Committee hearing on tax avoidance – Google’s UK executives being hauled back before the powerful select committee of MPs. The second was the High Court judgement on HMRC’s tax deal with Goldman Sachs, which the judge ruled in HMRC’s favour against a legal challenge brought by UKUncut’s legal arm.

Previous blogposts on tax avoidance

I’ve blogged before on this subject, in particular at:

• Tax evasion, tax avoidance, tax breaks – can we get definitions right please?
• Multinationals, franchises, the superwealthy and tax avoidance
• Does a Parliament-inspired consumer boycott let MPs off the hook on tax avoidance?

Browsing through Twitter on the #PAC hashtag today, I’ve noticed that opinion has become polarised. Tax professionals have come out against the Public Accounts Committee, while activists have come out in favour.

Richard Murphy’s take on today’s proceedings makes for interesting reading. I’m particularly interested in the final points that he makes – 3) and 4), in which I broadly agree with him. The risk that tax professionals face is that their public profile is beginning to look like they are the apologists for the tax-avoiding super-wealthy. HMRC on the other hand continues to have sand kicked in its face, even though there are growing numbers who want HMRC to take a stronger stance against tax avoidance by the super-wealthy.

“Hang on Pooffles, isn’t it the job of tax professionals to reduce the tax burden of their clients? So long as that is legal, what’s the problem?”

Depends how big a world view you are taking it from. From a narrow world view, it’s a perfectly understandable and rational thing to do: taking the law as is, and trying to use it in a manner that benefits you. The two problems are:

1. Tax avoidance is a very murky area, not helped by the 14,000 pages of tax code the UK currently has
2. People are looking at headline numbers – things like total profits, shareholder dividends, executive remuneration and (given the economic context of austerity) are not liking what they see.

Thus what’s coming out on Twitter seems to be:

• tax professionals on one side tearing their hair out when an MP on the Public Accounts Committee is seen to make some basic errors of interpreting that tax code
• activists tearing their hair out because those appearing before them seem utterly ignorant of the wider social context of these headline figures.

So the question then is: How do you reconcile the two? (Can you reconcile the two?)

“Let’s put that in the ‘too difficult to deal with’ tray”

I gave Treasury an absolute kicking in an earlier blogpost in the section with the above title. Treasury has got to take the initiative to simplify the tax code significantly. At the same time, it needs to avoid the risk of simplifying it in favour of those who, in my opinion already have too much. (The super-wealthy). I recognise though that this is a very  ’Political’ point, and that people with different dispositions may disagree.

If The Treasury won’t take the initiative on this, then the onus falls onto Parliament. There is only so long MPs can haul firms before them to be harangued. I believe we’ve already passed that point, and that Margaret Hodge (Chair of the Public Accounts Committee) has got to set in train by whatever means, a process that does the job that Treasury seems unwilling or unable to do. This also means engaging with tax professionals too.

“But Pooffles! What about my clients? Won’t someone think about the poor little rich people?!?!”

I jest – tax professionals are not simply there to see how much they can screw the taxman for on behalf of their offshore clients. Amongst other things, they take some of the burden off of small businesses when it comes to managing tax. The time spent having to manage tax issues is money not spent focussing on improving things like customer services, or products.

The problem at the moment seems to be that in criticising politicians, tax professionals are seen in the eyes of the public to be defending the super-wealthy and tax-avoiding corporations. What I’d like to see coming from the world of tax professionals are some solutions: solutions that, in the eyes of the public are seen to be socially just. Because if bigger dents can be made in the amount of money lost to tax avoidance can be made, it might have an impact on the cuts to public services and/or reduce the tax burden on the rest of us.

What about HMRC? Are they not off the hook?

Turning around HMRC is like turning around a super-tanker. What to do about them is something I’ll leave to someone more familiar with the inner workings of the organisation. But the status quo is unsustainable.

Public policy – is it academia vs party politics?

Summary

Some thoughts from a couple of talks inside Cambridge’s public policy community

Puffles has been flying around the Cambridge Public Policy community of late. Talks hosted by the Cambridge Science and Policy Exchange, by the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities, and the Cambridge Public Policy programme have brought a few issues to the surface.

Prof Henry Tam – are we living in a plutocracy?

The name may ring a bell with some of you. Henry Tam used to be the deputy director for community empowerment delivery at the Department for Communities and Local Government, one of the senior civil servants that worked on the Communities in Control White Paper, and formerly the Head of Civil Renewal at the Home Office. He’s now back in academia both at Cambridge and at Birkbeck, and blogs here.

The picture Henry painted was one where the social progress of the post-war consensus, in particular with income disparities, has been undermined by the neo-liberal consensus. He looked at time-series data on income & wealth – citing these as the strongest indicators of power. The picture isn’t good, as the data from the Equality Trust show.

He also looked at the historical context, citing Ancient Rome, the Catholic Church in the middle ages and France in the years preceding the 1789 revolution. With the Church in particular, one of the core societal beliefs was the belief in the monopoly of salvation: – only through the organised church can you get this. As a result, church gained huge wealth and power. As it became institutionalised, people had to submit to the church because of both the belief & power of the institution. Challenge that & you could get killed – and people did. “In the next world, you’ll get your share. In the mean time…” Exactly. With France just before the revolution, it was the belief that there was this ‘special’ group of people – the aristocracy. The belief they propagated was that the land has belonged to them and they should be treated with deference & respect…& should not be taxed. While the workers on the land should be.

In both those cases, the beliefs were undermined, leading to the rebellions, revolts and revolutions.

Henry then compared those historical precedents to today – the belief around the core concepts of the neo-liberal consensus. This is especially important in public policy debates today because the acceptance or otherwise of this framework has a huge impact on the sort of policy responses that are dreamt up by policy-makers. One of those is about the role of the public sector. Another is about the level of public sector spending. Coalition ministers have framed the debate around Labour’s record on public spending – set in concrete by Liam Byrne’s extremely ill-judged note to his successor David Laws just after the 2010 general election. Thus making it much harder for Labour to argue for any alternative.

The wider question that Henry tried to unpick was who are the people and institutions that can unpick the neo-liberal consensus given that the data tells us that this consensus is leading to policies that is exacerbating things like climate change, growing polarisation of society and the enrichment of the top 1% to levels not seen before. In particular what is the role of academia? One of the big barriers for academia is fear of losing funding – something that impacts charities that deliver state contracts too. On the latter, this was explored in a fairly old paper from the Charity Commission. How can academia and academics retain their independence of thought from the state without having to worry about funding impacts of any criticism of policies of the government of the day?

Dr Hugh Hunt – Engineering the Climate

Dr Hunt covered similar material (but at greater depth) from his talk at Science Day at the Department for Communities and Local Government. (He’s working on the SPICE project) The big thing that came out of this discussion for me was the huge barrier between the science world and the public policy world. Ditto the science world and mainstream media & through them, the general public.

One issue – one that came up at the Cambridge Science and Policy Exchange event, was the engagement of scientists with politics. For whatever reasons, there are scientists that choose not to engage with politics and the public policy processes. Yet it is essential that scientists do this because – and as Dr Hunt set out clearly, there are some very difficult choices that need to be made in terms of mitigating for, and adapting to climate change. But science and scientists need to be at the heart of the conversation, informing and educating the public as well as policy-makers, not least so that people are equipped to deal with and challenge the noise coming out from big corporate interests.

Science and party politics?

This comes back to the point I made in response to Steph Gray: Where do you draw the line between public policy and party politics? If the high level principles are set at a party political level, doesn’t this require at least some scientists to become active in political parties? The challenge with that is that the world of party politics is a very messy, opinionated and potentially dangerous one – to ones reputations anyway! Hence I use the term ‘Whitehall jungle’. That’s not to say the world of science isn’t just as messy & opinionated – it’s just that in science there is a strong focus on evidence bases. In party politics, it can literally fall down to whether you like the other chap or not, or whether he went to the same public school as you.

The point I’m trying to make here is that scientists need to bring scientific analysis in particular into the realm of politics – to scrutinise what happens in the world of party politics. This is especially the case where politicians try to use weak evidence bases to justify their policies. In the new world of open policy making as well as open data, it is essential that academics and scientists engage with the world of public policy and party politics, if anything to scrutinise and improve the quality of the policies that are ultimately implemented by ministers.

Is your university undermining local government?

Summary

Some thoughts on Phil Rogers’ findings on electoral trends in Cambridge – with some tough questions for Cambridge University colleges and Anglia Ruskin University

This blogpost follows on nicely from my previous one on the role of civic society & local government social media boosting voter turnout & engagement. (If you haven’t read it, it’s here, & puts what follows into context).

The Sage of Cambridge City Politics, Phil Rogers has posted this very interesting analysis of voter turnout & active campaigning.

Before you proceed, please at least scan the graphs in Phil’s blogpost linked above.

Comprendez? Then we can proceed.

“What did Phil have to say?”

There were three things that stood out:

1. There is a correlation between active campaigning and voter turnout
2. There is a correlation between active campaigning by more than one party, and size of majority
3. The wards dominated by Cambridge University student closed residences (ie halls) had low turnouts with low majorities

I’m not going to make the mistake of saying correlation = causation. My interest as per my previous blogpost is in engagement and turnout. What citizens choose to do with that engagement & with their vote is their business. The impact that greater engagement and turnout has is that it helps people exercise an informed vote – which then impacts on the legitimacy of the decisions taken by councillors.

Institutional rather than personal barriers

My interest is on the former rather than the latter. A number of people – myself included have commented (in particular at a national and international level) the lack of talent in political life, and the lack of calibre of a number of people elected to high public office. Rather than applying the same moaning at a local level, I’m looking at institutional barriers to engagement – because I think there’s more to local democracy than casting a vote.

In my previous blogpost I looked at barriers around face-to-face engagement and ‘hustings’. In this one, I want to look at something Phil raised – one that is currently being discussed by a number of Cambridge locals on Twitter as I type this. (See Richard Taylor and Tim Haire in particular). Looking at students in particular, Phil wrote the following:

Student turnout tends to be low for several reasons:

• young people in general have a lower turnout than older people
• many students feel less involved with local government than more permanent residents
• student residences tend to be inaccessible to local party campaigners – colleges do not allow them access to knock on students’ doors, and some colleges refuse to accept election leaflets unless they are individually addressed
• many students were away for the Easter vacation during much of the election campaign

With the second bullet point, how can we encourage students to feel more involved with what goes on in their local community? Especially if every academic year they move to a new residence and/or are kicked out during the holidays to make their rooms available for the lucrative conferencing market?

With the third bullet point in particular, this also applies to sheltered housing. How do you make closed and sheltered housing more accessible for canvassers in particular around election time? (It’s one of the reasons why I abhor gated communities too. I can understand why you’d have them in high crime areas, but Cambridge? Really?)

With the fourth bullet point, this is one for those tabling the university terms. Is there any way to co-ordinate university term times to account for when local elections are on, given that Cambridge has them every year.

“Hang on Pooffles, don’t universities have student societies? Or are they all so far to the left that they fall off the pavement?”

There’s nothing stopping far left candidates from standing, as one or two do regularly. And yes, there are fairly active university party political societies in Cambridge. So part of the response to improve voter engagement and turnout may rest with encouraging party political student activists to play a more formal role in encouraging people to vote – or at least have a look at who happens to be standing before deciding whether to vote or not.

The other issue is the rules and regulations of colleges regarding canvassing. Ditto closed and sheltered accommodation. In recent years, colleges have clamped down on who can and cannot flyer student pigeon holes. Ditto with sending out college-wide emails. With good reason. There’s more than enough junk mail and spam in both. So what are the alternatives?

This for me is where elected councillors together need to sit down with colleges and those that run closed housing operations to thrash out a suitable agreement that ensures people are made aware when there are elections and who is standing. How they go about doing so will vary depending on the nature of the accommodation. I’m not going to be prescriptive and say everyone has to fling open their doors to every activist who turns up every other day or at random times in the middle of the night, for example. Rather, leaving it up to those who know far better about either side to come up with a sensible and reasonable compromise that can help tackle the problems of low engagement and low turnout.

Roles of student unions, housing associations & council democratic services

This is something where conversation and co-ordination could have an impact. It doesn’t need to go beyond the essentials of:

“There is an election, it is for institution X that is responsible for Y services, and you can find more information about who is standing on what platform at Z. Oh, & here is when & where to vote/how to register to vote.”

Links to wider political and public policy debates

As I mentioned in February 2013, something is stirring in Cambridge public policy circles. There are a growing number of conversations that are happening in academic circles – a number of which I have been party to. (More often than not, with dragon fairy). One of the things several people facilitating these discussions have asked me is how they can engage with both the wider local community and with wider public policy circles. Hence the importance of linking the various groups and societies together, both at a face-to-face level and on social media.

I was at an event recently with Cambridge University’s Science and Policy Exchange, where three eminent academics – Barbara Sahakian, Mark Stokes and David Nutt – were talking about evidence-based policy-making & the role of science. (I touched upon it in this blogpost). One of the things I said to the many scientists in the room is that some of them needed to get involved in party politics in order to have a greater impact on the policy-making process. The reason being that it is at party political level that many of the high level principles are formed, that then end up in the Whitehall policy jungle later down the line. But what route does a city buzzing with scientists have if the institutions that they work within are not as open as they could be to grassroots politics – one of the routes into politics at a national level. Remember Julian Huppert MP is one example of someone local (he went to school in Cambridge) who has ended up in national politics having gone through local government as a former councillor in Cambridge.

So to finish with…?

There are some changes that can be made within various institutions. But those institutions need to be aware of the problems, accept they exist and acknowledge they are part of the solution too.

What role is there for civic society & local government social media in boosting voter turnout?

Summary

Some thoughts from a Cambridgeshire perspective.

I had a look at the turnout figures for the recent local government elections in Cambridge. Chesterton, The People’s Democratic Socialist Republic of Romsey, and The Royal Division of Her Majesty the Queen Edith (the latter two separated by that no-mans-land of Coleridge, where rumours are that it’s being occupied by a dragon fairy) scored much higher than the rest of the city in terms of turnout. Choice and ‘contestability’ (ie candidates genuinely campaigning hard for votes) in these wards were, so activists from various sides tell me, was what made the difference.

It makes it all the more boring for me, in a safe-as-houses seat where none of the councillors or candidates are social media users. Hence chasing after the other political types on social media. Is that good enough for society and the city? I say it isn’t. But setting up a Twitter account isn’t going to change the world on its own.

Who hustled the hustings?

Do people generally know what hustings are anymore? I can’t help but feel that the lack of regular local politics’ hustings in general reflects badly on the state of civic society in an area. The only one I was aware of locally was the one run by the Cambridge Cycle Campaign who not only held an event but provided a platform for all candidates in the city to have responses to their questions published online. It reflects poorly on those candidates that chose not to respond given the size of the Cycle Campaign.

Why aren’t more civic societies in Cambridge organising hustings or local political debates involving a cross-section of political parties?

Genuine question. Why didn’t every parents’ and teachers’ association, every place of worship, every single issue group, every collective look at organising a hustings? The one thing that stands out is the effort required to organise one. It requires someone to do the legwork. As anyone who has been passionately involved in any voluntary organisation will tell you, it’s often a very small number of people that keep things ticking over.

Beyond that, I’m interested in what the barriers are to all concerned. Things like:

• not having a suitable and affordable venue to put on something like this on
• not knowing where to start in terms of contacting people to take part. You might call me a digital native, but what about those community groups that don’t have anyone familiar with or confident using the internet?
• given the ‘paper candidate’ nature of some of those that stood, candidates refusing to take part
• having a facilitator acceptable to all parties
• having very limited means of publicising your event
• people not being able to get a baby-sitter
• people not having transport access or assistance
• charities or community groups worrying about being seen as politically partisan

Those are just a few off the top of my head. There are many more.

Councillors and candidates as civic leaders

One of the things that I have been pondering for example is the role of councillors and those standing for election as civic leaders. In particular I’m thinking about how councillors and activists can make it easier for residents to get in touch with them and improve their availability – not easy given many on both sides have full time jobs or commitments too.

This is where I’m learning a fair deal from being a community governor at what was my old primary school, although spending much of my first year listening rather than doing as I get up to speed. I don’t see my role as someone who gives the staff a hard time, but rather someone in and around the school community who looks to see what can be drawn in from wider afield for the benefit primarily of the children.

Given the fragmentation of, and the closure of so many public services, the big ones that seem to remain are schools and hospitals. One of the questions I think councillors and candidates need to ask of their local political parties is who within them is on cordial terms with the key ‘non-executive’ governors of schools and hospitals – eg governors at Addenbrookes Hospital, or the governors of Long Road Sixth Form College, to the governors of Cambridge Regional College. The reason why I’ve stated ‘non-executive’ is because the board of governors has the formal scrutiny role. It means any concerns that a councillor may wish to raise, or have raised, is done through a transparent and accountable route rather than through off-the-record conversations. Use informal routes to put people in touch with each other by all means – as I do. But with decision-making processes and the running of those institutions, it must be above-board.

Getting younger people involved

Personally I’m with Richard Taylor on this. In Cambridge we have a series of ‘area committees’ where local issues are discussed. I think that pupil/student/youth representatives from the school and further education college councils should be invited to attend those area committee meetings that their schools or colleges sit within. I also think that consideration should be given for a substantial formal slot say every quarter, where youth representatives can raise issues with councillors, with the proviso that there is a formal means by which they can report things back to their schools and colleges. I dare say too that there is an onus on governors (possibly pointing the finger at myself here) to keep abreast of what’s being said too – ideally by attending but if not, through online or social media.

What about social media?

This is where local councils can make things easier for people to be reminded via things like Facebook accounts, email alerts or smartphone calendars. Or for those not online, do things the old-fashioned way: Invite people to subscribe to a snail-mail mailing list to remind people closer to the time that there is a meeting on, or invite residents to subscribe to a telephone list where your customer services team phone up people 24-48 hours before a meeting is due to take place to remind them.

Contact details of local councillors that sit on area committees

As mentioned above, a little icon that allows people to download meeting details onto online calendars or smartphones would be incredibly useful for those who are interested but for whatever reason ‘forget’ about the meeting on the day. For example, the Eastern Area Committee has a link to listed meetings here. For each meeting, a single-click icon such as the ‘Add to my Calendar’ icon on this Teacambs event clearly visible on each meetings page would be incredibly convenient.

With contact details – again using the Eastern Area Committee as an example, social media contact details of councillors (where they are using social media in their official capacity) would be really useful – as would links to the websites and group social media pages of the local political parties too. That then gives residents some sort of an idea of the disposition of both political parties, and of individual councillors too.

Finally, there is a role for educating councillors, candidates and residents about social media. Yes, I have a financial interest with corporate training, but I have a general open offer to Cambridgeshire councils to run free group seminars for their local councillors (such as this one I did in my very very early days for councillors in Cambridge City. Things are much more polished these days!) Furthermore, I am one of the social media ‘surgeons’ that runs free 1-2-1 social media surgeries with the local charity Cambridge Online – the next one being on 20 June 2013. If you want to sign up for this, please call Cambridge Online on 01223 300 407.

“Will all this impact on voter turnout?”

I don’t know, but I’m working on the principle that stronger personal relationships and a higher profile of party political types within their – our communities, gives people more of a reason to vote. Using social and digital media increases the ability of people to cast an informed vote, and giving them reminder prompts too, which is even better.

Food for thought?