Climate assembly members think and act differently on climate, two years on

Posted on January 12, 2023 by The Constitution Unit

Climate assemblies are becoming more common across the world as governments and others consider how best to tackle the climate crisis .As their use has grown, so has interest in how they are commissioned, run, and evaluated. Research into their impact on decision-makers has also increased. However very few studies have looked at the long-term impact on assembly members themselves. Sarah Allan discusses new research that shows this impact could be long-lasting and cover changes in both attitudes and behaviours.

Climate Assembly UK was commissioned by six select committees of the House of Commons to examine the question, ‘How should the UK reach its climate target of net zero emissions by 2050?’. It brought together 108 members of the public who together broadly reflected the UK population in terms of their demographics, climate attitudes and geography. Assembly members met over six weekends to hear evidence from speakers with a wide range of different perspectives, discuss what they thought with one another and reach their conclusions.

The focus of the assembly was on providing input to the six select committees to inform their work. Assembly members were not asked to make changes to their own lives, nor were they given information or support aimed at helping them to do so. And yet, in the weeks and months after the assembly ended, its members started telling me and my colleagues Involve about changes they were making to how they lived. They had bought an electric car, become a parish councillor, started a climate-friendly business, and more. Our interest was piqued. Were the people contacting us the exception or had lots of assembly members made similar changes?

We teamed up with Stephen Elstub and Jayne Carrick from Newcastle University to find out. Together we sent assembly members two additional research surveys – one in April 2021, roughly a year after the end of the assembly events, and the second in September 2022, two years after the launch of the assembly’s final report. 73% of assembly members responded to one or both of the surveys and gave permission for the Newcastle University team to use their results. Analysis shows that the small number of differences between these assembly members’ backgrounds and attitudes, and those of the assembly members who filled out our research surveys during the assembly, do not explain our findings.

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The people most affected by COVID-19 should now be fully involved in the inquiry

Posted on September 22, 2022 by The Constitution Unit

The public inquiry into COVID-19 published its terms of reference earlier this summer, with its first ‘promise’ being that ‘People who have suffered during the pandemic will be at the heart of the inquiry’s work’. Simon Burall, Senior Associate at Involve, asks what this really means in practice, and suggests three questions we should ask ourselves to determine whether this promise is kept.

We have been locked down at least twice (and more depending on where you live in the country), schools have been closed, businesses lost and household budgets squeezed. To date, there have been over 200,000 deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate. Nobody has remained untouched by the pandemic.

The UK COVID-19 Public Inquiry has been set-up to explore the impact of the pandemic, to examine the UK’s response, and to learn lessons for the future. Given the widespread impact of the pandemic, the Chair of the Inquiry, Baroness (Heather) Hallett is absolutely right to want to put the public at the heart of its work. It should be celebrated that this is the first of seven ‘promises’ that the inquiry has published. However, this ambition – and the inquiry in general – comes with risks. If this ambition is not met, and the public deem the inquiry to have failed to pass fair judgement, it could further undermine existing low levels of public trust in our politics.

So, this blogpost lays out three questions we will be asking to judge the extent to which the inquiry is keeping this promise, as it progresses in the months to come.

Are the public part of passing judgement and proposing plans for the future, or just witnesses?

The inquiry has been formally constituted and has a legal status as laid out in the 2005 Inquiries Act. The act lays out the statutory framework for the appointment of the Chair, how it should take evidence and produce its report. This will obviously, and rightly, restrict the ways in which the public can be involved, but there is much more the inquiry could do beyond publishing standard consultation questions, inviting a tiny number of members of the public as witnesses and meeting with specific groups which were particularly affected.

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Launching the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK

Posted on April 7, 2022 by The Constitution Unit

Today the Unit publishes the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK. Set up by the Unit last year, the Assembly offers unparalleled insights into public perceptions of how the UK’s democracy is working and should work. In this post, the project’s Research Assistant, James Cleaver, summarises the Assembly’s recommendations.

The Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK contains the conclusions of the first UK-wide citizens’ assembly to discuss the topic of democracy. Many of these conclusions speak directly to major ongoing political debates: around standards in public life, the balance between key democratic institutions, and the role of the public.

The Assembly

The Assembly was convened to answer the overarching question of ‘How should democracy in the UK work?’. It was conducted by the Constitution Unit in partnership with Involve, the UK’s leading public participation charity. Over six online weekends between September and December last year, Assembly members focused on three key areas of democracy: the relationship between government and parliament; the roles of the public; and ways of upholding rules and standards.

Having deliberated about these topics, members produced eight overarching resolutions and 51 specific recommendations, the latter designed to achieve the ambitions of the resolutions. Looking across these conclusions, three key themes emerge.

First, members expect high standards from those in public life, and they want independent regulators to be able to enforce this. Second, they oppose unduly concentrated power, calling for parliament, the courts and other constitutional checks to play more prominent roles. Third, members want better mechanisms for the public’s voice to be heard, both through improvements to the representative system, and through better use of petitions, referendums and deliberative processes.

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Local citizens’ assemblies in the UK: a second report card

Posted on March 25, 2022 by The Constitution Unit

Posts on this blog over the past few years have tracked a wave of local citizens’ assemblies convened by councils keen to explore a range of issues. Last year, we published an ‘early report card’ examining the impact these assemblies were having – whether councils were listening to them and acting on their recommendations. A year on, it is time to take a fresh look. Lauren Brown here updates the report card to the end of 2021.

A wave of local citizens’ assemblies began in the summer of 2019 in the UK, with topics discussed ranging from climate change to air quality in local boroughs. Despite COVID-19 and the need to shift such assemblies online, the interest in using deliberative processes has continued. Often utilised to help resolve politically tricky issues, citizens’ assemblies are widely celebrated for how they allow representative samples of the population to consider issues deeply before making recommendations.

In the UK, by the end of 2021, there had been 23 citizens’ assemblies, with seven held in the last year alone. These have primarily focused on issues of climate change, though some have also considered COVID-19 recovery and neighbourhood design. Moreover, the London borough of Newham has become the first UK council to create a permanent citizens’ assembly, thereby institutionalising public deliberation within the UK at a local level. The wave of local citizens’ assemblies in the UK therefore shows no real sign of letting up.

Still, as Robert Liao noted last year, the devil is in the detail – whilst it is clear that citizens’ assemblies continue to be popular for addressing local issues, it is less evident whether the recommendations they produce are consistently being followed up on. With the Unit’s own Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK – which will report in full next month – stressing that people want their ‘elected representatives to do better’, it thus remains key to ask whether citizens’ assemblies lead to significant change, and whether their recommendations are being implemented as well as just listened to.

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Monitor 80: Defending democracy

Posted on March 16, 2022 by The Constitution Unit

Today, the Unit published the 80th edition of Monitor, which provides analysis of the key constitutional news of the past four months. In this post, which also serves as the lead article for Monitor 80, Meg Russell and Alan Renwick reflect on risks to democracy at home and the appalling invasion of a democratic nation, Ukraine, which could have long-term repercussions for the health of democracies across Europe.

Monitor has in recent years catalogued a succession of astonishing events in British constitutional politics: the 2014 Scottish independence referendum; the 2016 Brexit referendum; the parliamentary battle that ensued under Theresa May’s divided minority government post-2017; Boris Johnson’s unlawful parliamentary prorogation of 2019; and the politics of COVID-19 lockdown post-2020.

The shock likely to dominate memories of 2022 – Russia’s appalling invasion of Ukraine – is of a different order. The war is a terrible tragedy for all those directly affected; on the world stage it is Europe’s darkest and potentially most dangerous moment at least since the Cold War standoff of the 1960s, and perhaps since 1945. In response, British constitutional politics has seen a suspension of normal working. Hostile exchanges at Prime Minister’s Questions have been replaced by pledges of unity. The House of Commons has given standing ovations to Ukraine’s ambassador in London, and then to its President, Volodoymr Zelenskyy. A mutinous Conservative Party that had been gearing up, perhaps, to topple its leader now bides its time.

How Putin’s war might shift British politics beyond the short term remains to be seen. In this edition of Monitor, the developments discussed mostly predate the invasion. Some of these – notably, a raft of bills and consultations – have a momentum that will run on. As has been true for several years, these developments give some considerable cause for concern.

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The Constitution Unit Blog

Category Archives: Public Engagement and Policy Making

Climate assembly members think and act differently on climate, two years on

The people most affected by COVID-19 should now be fully involved in the inquiry

Launching the Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK

Local citizens’ assemblies in the UK: a second report card

Monitor 80: Defending democracy

The Constitution Unit Blog

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