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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

Democracy and the draft Online Safety Bill: the report of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee

Posted on March 4, 2022 by The Constitution Unit

The publication of a draft Online Safety Bill has enabled two parliamentary committees to engage in detailed pre-legislative scrutiny. The conclusions of a special joint committee were discussed in earlier posts by its Chair, Damian Collins and Alex Walker. Here, Alex analyses the findings of the second report on the draft bill, authored by the DCMS Committee, and analyses the points of contention between the two reports.

Parliament has been giving close attention to the landmark Online Safety Bill since it was published in draft in May 2021. In December, the joint committee set up to consider the draft bill published its report. I considered its recommendations in the first part of this two-part series on the scrutiny of the draft bill. The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Select Committee has since published its take on the draft legislation. As the DCMS committee commented, it is welcome that the bill was published in draft, and is receiving such comprehensive pre-legislative scrutiny. Whilst the government is of course not required to accept the recommendations of the committees, failing to address gaps they have both identified would not be a constructive response to the pre-legislative process.

One such gap (highlighted previously on this blog) is that of online harms to democracy. Whilst they diverge on a number of points, the DCMS committee and the joint committee share the analysis that this is a serious issue which the bill should address. In this piece, I consider the DCMS committee’s proposals to address online threats to democracy and look at how they differ from those of the joint committee. Both approaches to improving this aspect of the bill are worthy of careful consideration and the government should not use the points of difference as a way to avoid taking action.

Content that undermines democracy should be in scope

Constitution Unit Deputy Director Alan Renwick and I argued in written evidence to the DCMS committee that online harms to democracy should be addressed in the legislation. The committee agreed. The government’s own 2019 Online Harms white paper detailed the dangers that online activity such as the viral spread of disinformation could pose to democracy. But the measures the white paper set out to address this issue were later abandoned, leaving the draft bill with a considerable blind spot. Both the DCMS committee and the joint committee concluded that leaving this gap unfilled would be a mistake. However, the two committees recommended different changes to the legislation.

Continue reading →

What Kind of Democracy Do People Want: a discussion

Posted on March 3, 2022 by The Constitution Unit

Last month the Constitution Unit published What Kind of Democracy Do People Want?, the first report of its Democracy in the UK after Brexit project. To mark the report’s launch, a seminar was convened to discuss its findings, their implications, and possible future avenues of research. The project’s research assistant, James Cleaver, summarises the discussion.

What Kind of Democracy Do People Want?is the first of four reports from the Democracy in the UK after Brexit project. It is based on a UK-wide survey conducted in July 2021 in partnership with YouGov, with a sample size of almost 6,500 people who were representative of the UK’s voting age population.

A panel of three speakers was convened to discuss the report’s findings: Professor Alan Renwick, Deputy Director of the Constitution Unit, who is leading the Democracy in the UK after Brexit project; Paula Surridge, Senior Lecturer in Political Sociology at the University of Bristol and Deputy Director of UK in a Changing Europe; and James Johnson, founder of J.L. Partners and former Senior Opinion Research and Strategy Adviser to Prime Minister Theresa May. The event was chaired by Professor Meg Russell, Director of the Constitution Unit and a Co-Investigator on the Democracy in the UK after Brexit project. The summaries below are presented in order of the speakers’ contributions. You can watch the event here.

Alan Renwick

Alan Renwick outlined the structure of the research project and summarised the report’s key results. He focused on three overarching findings: while there exists broad satisfaction with democracy, people have very little trust in politicians; most members of the public want politicians who are honest, have integrity, and operate within the rules; and people generally prefer not to concentrate power in the hands of a few politicians, but rather to spread it to parliament, non-politicians, and the wider public. You can read more about the key findings of the report, and how they compare with other studies, in a recent post on this blog.

Continue reading →

The Constitution Unit Blog

Category Archives: Public Engagement and Policy Making

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

What Kind of Democracy Do People Want: a discussion