Guernsey Press

A consultation too far?

TODAY I want to say a few things about the difference between referendums and government consultation. Both are exercises in asking the public what they think about a particular issue, but the purposes of those two exercises are very different.

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A referendum is basically when a government says to those it has been elected to serve, ‘Over to you chaps – we would prefer you made the decision on this one yourselves’.

Whether that is a wise and responsible example of direct democracy or an abrogation of responsibility by those paid to research such issues in depth and take informed decisions is a subjective question. What is clear – to all but the States of Jersey – is that if you ask the people to vote in a referendum you are pretty much duty bound to respect the outcome.

Consultation is a very different matter for all sorts of reasons.

Firstly, it is not even a scientific attempt to gauge public opinion on a matter. In nearly every case such consultations receive the views of only a relatively small, self-selecting, sample of islanders. Usually the people who bother to respond are those with very strong views either way on the topic being consulted on. So by definition the views of the 95% of islanders whose opinions lie somewhere between those two extremes remain a complete mystery to the States.

This problem is probably made worse by the sheer amount of consulting which States departments carry out these days. Even the most civic-minded individuals would soon start to suffer ‘consultation fatigue’ if they tried to give feedback on all of these issues. So it tends to be left to the passionate supporters and opponents to put pen to paper or complete the online questionnaires. Good luck to them, but it hardly gives an accurate insight into the collective will of the community.

Another difference between referendums and consultation is that the States never suggests that the weight of responses to any consultation will determine the outcome. Rather that is just one of a mosaic of factors which the decision makers will take into account when reaching a conclusion. Others factors include professional advice, personal political beliefs and the lessons of experience.

At the end of the day, each deputy is duty bound to vote the way they think is in Guernsey’s best interest and not to swing with perceived public opinion like a weather vane. If the public don’t like the way they carry out that duty then they will give them the order of the boot at the next election. This process has a name. It is called ‘representative democracy’.

I am dealing here with the general concept of government consultation and I am not going to go into individual consultation exercises which may have caused a degree of controversy, such as lowering speed limits or introducing non-selective secondary education. That said, I must point out that occasionally States committees can be their own worst enemies.

As I say, there has never been the least suggestion that just getting majority support in a consultation exercise will ensure that a particular viewpoint prevails. If it did then we would probably have a minimum wage of £20 an hour (except for deputies, who would be paid zilch), superb public services and minimal taxation. All would be very popular when consulted on individually – but impossible to achieve as a package.

So given that it’s never been intended that the lobby who can muster the biggest response to a consultation will necessarily win the day, it is a very bad mistake to imply beforehand that it might. A classic example was the consultation on the future of secondary education carried out in the last States. I don’t know who came up with the catchy title of ‘Your Schools, Your Choice’ for the exercise but they did the committee concerned a very severe disservice by implying that the decision lay with the respondents. Of course it didn’t. ‘Your Schools, Your Say’ might have been a tad less misleading.

So if the simple weight of numbers responding to consultations for and against is never going to be the single determining factor in the final decision, what the heck is the point of all of this consultation? Good question.

Certainly when I was first in the States in 1982 committees just tended to get on and do what they thought was best for Guernsey. I suspect that if I had suggested to Alan Grut or Norman Le Cheminant that they weren’t consulting the public enough, they would have been dumbfounded. Their terse reply would have been along the lines that they had been elected/employed to make decisions on the community’s behalf and they weren’t about to duck that task by asking the public to do it for them.

But times change. In the 1990s the concept of government departments consulting on just about everything became regarded as best practice in the UK and it pretty soon spread to Guernsey. By and large I think that was a good development as public opinion should be an important factor in the States’ decision-making.

My only three concerns are:

1.) That it has gone too far, with far too many consultations, which are devaluing the whole exercise.

2.) That modern social media use can distort outcomes of consultation exercises in favour of the better organised lobby groups over those who are less internet savvy.

3.) That a false impression has been propagated that such consultations are somehow mini referendums.

In relation to this latter point – they are definitely no such thing. Rather they are one factor to weigh in the balance together with many others. At the end of the day, the prime duty of any deputy is to do what they genuinely believe is best for Guernsey.