ePetitions and MPs as 'conduits for the raw sewage of populism'

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Apr 302012
 

Commons committee reportThe Commons backbench business committee (BBC) recently published a report on the lessons it has learned since being set up in June 2010.

As the committee which allocates Commons time to debating ePetitions, I'd been hoping it might say something interesting on the issue, particularly as it had specifically invited evidence and held a seminar on the subject.

In the event it didn't, though it did note that the seminar was moderated by the Hansard Society, which will shortly publish "an account of the session and its own thoughts on the future of ePetitions".

Strangely more interesting than the report itself, though, was the appendix in which the committee published the responses of MPs to a series of questions about how the BBC had worked.

There was obviously some concern amongst those who responded that the ePetitions system is being 'hijacked' by organised campaigns and vested interests in 'collusion' with the media.

The most strident comment on ePetitions was this one:

"It is not a surprise that the e-petition has now increasingly being reclaimed from Parliament by the real powers in politics—the media and the Government/alternative Government. E-petitions circumvent rather than rebuild MPs' representative abilities and were always going to end in an even greater belittling of the MP's role.

"Like the 'e-campaigns' that flood MP's in-boxes, most of the 'e-debates', far from being spontaneous are highly organised by vested interests, most appear to be 'got up' at the tabloid editorial meeting, even frontbenchers are now openly colluding with newspapers to fix the agenda for debates.

"Some MPs have no value to add, some appear to be willing indeed enthusiastic conduits for the raw sewage of populism. Because there is so little self confidence in the role of MPs and an independent Parliament, there is no coherent and uniquely Parliamentary response to this—the BBBC has to fill this gap even at this early stage in its maturity. If they don't then local/backbench/constituency issues will be squeezed out and the BBBC will become the e- petitions committee giving away hard won backbench time to whatever is the most intimidating media bandwagon."

While other comments were not as vehment as that, there was still a concern that time given to debate ePetitions is time not available to debate other issues of concern to MPs.

"I quite agree that e-petitions should not be able to randomly eat into the main allocation of BBCom time, given the role that media and powerful players often have in getting a high number of signatures. I wonder if one solution to that could be to argue for additional 'ring-fenced' BBCom time for e-petitions. For example, two three-hour debates every quarter? That would only be an additional four days time over a year—(or even one three hour debate every quarter, only two days) and I understand BBCom currently gets 35 days in a Session."

"You do not need me to tell you that the current arrangements for e-petitions are ill thought through. Nor do I believe it right for select committee reports, which may well be dull and worthy but deserving of a debate should have to jostle with sexy backbench ideas. There should perhaps be a set amount of time for each—20 days for e-petitions in Westminster Hall on a 'Take Note' motion, 10 days for select Committee Reports, 30 days for true backbench business."

"Congratulations to the Committee on their great progress. It has been a reform of major significance but it is not right (or Wright) yet. Those who have control of the levers of powers have speedily used e-petitions to advance their causes. The critical approach adopted by the Committee to their work is very welcome. Well done!"

"The Committee should beware of orchestrated campaigns promoted by the media or professional lobbyists. Applicants should be routinely questioned on who is funding or promoting their applications."

"Topicality or importance must NOT be determined by e-petitions promoted largely via the media—too much of recent debate has been controlled via this route and it will ultimately denigrate the ability of backbenchers to truly influence debate in our society and to hold Government to account."

So that's what at least some MPs think about the ePetitions system. Tomorrow I'll publish the ideas I sent to the BBC as a small submission to their review.

 Posted by at 10.05am  Tagged with: , ,

Government backs Westminster Hall debates on ePetitions

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Apr 292012
 

'petition' keySince I last wrote about ePetitions, the government has replied to the Commons procedure committee report on ePetitions, giving its endorsement to a pilot period in which the backbench business committee (BBC) can schedule ePetitions for debate in Westminster Hall as well as the Commons chamber.

There was also agreement on the need to better inform petitioners of the next steps they should take when their petition reaches the 100,000 threshold.

The government and the procedure committee did, however, get themselves into a bit of a muddle over the form of words to use on the ePetitions website to explain both the impact of petitions on public policy and that after reaching the 100,000 threshold the government would pass the petition to the BBC but that it would be eligible for a debate rather than guaranteed one.

Elsewhere in its response, the government disclosed that:

"In the six months since the launch of the site, over 3.5 million signatures have been submitted to the more than 11,000 petitions on the site."

And it appears that the ePetitions website is also proving a useful source of intelligence for departments and ministers:

"Officials in Government departments have also indicated that they regularly monitor e-petitions, including those which do not reach the 100 000 signature threshold, to examine public feeling on issues. In some departments, officials have used popular e-petitions as a prompt to commission briefing for Ministers, and where petitions quickly increase in signatures, as a prompt for looking in details at specific policies. This is especially true in the case of e-petitions covering issues which have not received widespread parliamentary or media coverage."

The BBC has also published a few thoughts on ePetitions, which I'll cover more tomorrow.

 Posted by at 4.51pm  Tagged with: ,

Which areas will lose out in voter registration data-matching?

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Feb 092012
 

Last November I highlighted a report from the Commons political and constitutional reform committee which contained some pretty negative views about the use of 'data matching' to improve the electoral register.

"The evidence we have received... suggests that data matching will be of limited effectiveness, especially in identifying potential electors."

So it was slightly surprising to read the government's latest electoral registration proposals which suggest that checking the register against other official databases will "confirm the accuracy of the majority of entries on the electoral register".

Ministers have rethought their original proposals so that anyone on the existing household-based register whose existence can be confirmed by a separate official database will now be automatically transferred onto the individual electoral register.

The government says:

"Over the past year we have carried out a series of data matching pilots, comparing electoral registers in twenty-two areas with a range of data from public authorities. While the final evaluation is still being concluded, the evidence so far suggests that comparing entries on an electoral register with information held by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) allows us to confirm as accurate a significant majority (an average of two thirds for that data set alone in the pilot areas) of entries on the registers concerned.

"Subject to the results of the full evaluation, and further testing this year, we are therefore minded to build on this to simplify the transition to [Individual Electoral Registration] for the majority of electors. It is now our intention that the names and addresses of all individuals currently on an electoral register will be matched against the data held by public bodies such as the DWP and local authorities themselves. If an elector's information can be matched, the individual will be automatically placed onto the new IER register and would not need to take any further action to be registered under IER. Only those people who cannot be confirmed automatically will be invited to provide identifying information to be verified. This should simplify the transition process for the majority of electors, reducing the number of people required to provide personal identifiers and will also allow [electoral registration officers] to free up resource to target the smaller group of people whose information cannot be matched and those who are currently missing from the register."

The new Cabinet Office publication also includes the first hard data on how well those data-matching pilots are going.

The table below shows matches between the DWP customer information system (CIS) and the electoral register in different areas.

Data matching success rates

Its stands out just how badly the data matching has performed in some parts of London, and raises the prospect of differential transfers between old and new registers in different parts of the country.

Potentially, parts of London (and perhaps other inner city areas) could see far more people drop off the register than other areas of the UK if this table is any guide.

Although there will still be other work to encourage people to re-register, such as advertising campaigns.

The government says:

"It is our view that this finding, if confirmed, opens up a significant opportunity to simplify the process of transition to IER. Our proposal in the White Paper was that all electors will be asked to apply individually in 2014-15 and provide identifiers which will then be verified against the DWP CIS. Instead, our view is that if data matching could be used to verify the majority of entries currently on the electoral register as these results suggest, a majority of people can be transitioned into IER without having to take any further action. Each entry would still be individually verified but without requiring an individual to provide any extra data. We believe that this will simplify the transition for the majority of people, reducing the data burden (so less new personal data is required) while providing assurance about the accuracy of the register. It will also enable more focus on electors missing from the register."

The document also suggests that some problems with attempts at data matching occurred because the DWP supplied old records to the councils involved in the pilots.

"We have learned lessons from the pilots in terms of making the process of data matching more effective and efficient and have put some of these lessons into practice to provide nine of the twenty-two pilots with more up to date DWP records."

The Electoral Commission is expected to publish its full review of the data-matching pilots in the next few weeks.

 Posted by at 11.06pm  Tagged with: ,

MPs want changes to ePetitions system

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Jan 192012
 

The Commons procedure committee has published its interim report on ePetitions.

The two main conclusions of the inquiry were largely as predicted in this blog's previous post on the committee's inquiry.

Most importantly, the procedure committee says debates should take place in a dedicated time slot on a Monday afternoon in Westminster Hall, rather than in the Commons chamber.

"We recommend that the Standing Orders should be changed to allow the Backbench Business Committee to schedule debates on Government e-petitions between 4.30 and 7.30 pm on a Monday in Westminster Hall. The sitting would only take place if the Backbench Business Committee had set down the subjects of e-petitions for debate. The debate would take place on the motion 'That this House has considered the e-petition from [petitioners] relating to [subject of petition]'. We recommend that this change should be introduced on an experimental basis for one year and that its effectiveness should be reviewed at the end of that period. "

It has been argued that moving the debate out of the Commons chamber would suggest to the petitioners that their concerns are given a lower priority, though the committee rejects that and notes that frontbench spokesmen would be required to set out their positions during the debate.

Arguably more significant is the change to the format of the motion being debated.

Whereas last October's Commons debate on the Hillsborough disaster was on a motion which "calls for the full disclosure of all Government-related documents", presumably the new equivalent would have been that the Commons "has considered the e-petition relating to the disclosure of Hillsborough documents" – a much weaker formulation, with a vote not on supporting or opposing the actual disclosure but on agreeing just that the issue had been discussed.

Unless I have misunderstood the proposal, that seems like a backwards step.

The somewhat less significant recommendations call for clearer text on the ePetitions website and improved communication with the sponsors of the petitions. The committee says:

"We recommend that the Government should remove the sentence 'e-petitions is an easy way for you to influence government policy in the UK' from its e-petitions  website and replace it with a statement that more accurately reflects reality. We propose: 'e-petitions are an easy way for you to make sure your concerns are heard by Government and Parliament'.

The aim is to essentially downplay what might be achieved by an ePetition. And the MPs also call for more information for the petitioners to help them understand the process better, particularly when it comes to ensuring they know to contact an MP to take their petition forward.

For example, the ePetition on pensions uprating has reached the 100,000 threshold but so far no MPs have told the backbench business committee that they are prepared to lead a debate on it.

The committee says its report is focused on dealing with some of the more obvious flaws in the ePetitions system and does not address deeper issues of public engagement with parliamentary processes.

"We have not, in this short inquiry, sought to address wider questions about public engagement with Parliament, reform of the House's own procedures for petitions, the treatment of e-petitions other than those submitted on the Government's website, and the role of the Backbench Business Committee. We believe that all of these subjects are worthy of more considered examination by us in the future."

So another review of these issues seems likely, and could further improve public engagement with Parliament at some point in the future. It might be after this that the whole ePetitions system is transferred from the government to Parliament.

The committee also said that there should have been more consultation with Parliament before ministers took the plans forward.

"We agree with the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, Natascha Engel, that 'a lot of the problems that have arisen were perfectly foreseeable and had there been a debate, and perhaps even a vote, they would have been highlighted.'

"We regret that the Government did not see fit to refer its proposals for its e-petitions system to us or to place its plans formally before the House for debate and decision before the scheme was introduced."

I think the MPs are right that plenty of the problems thrown up were totally foreseeable.

That said, however, the government's use of ePetitions as a test of its move towards more agility in IT was always likely to involve something of a culture clash when pitched against the less-than-agile decision-making processes in Parliament.

If it had been left to Parliament, it seems more than possible that assorted committees and officials would still be pondering the £1.3m price tag previously estimated for the first year of such a project, while the government got it built and running for around £132,000.

It isn't ideal, but this is an issue where the 'just do it' approach was probably the right one. If the committee and the House wanted more control over the system then they could and should have built it themselves (although the procedure committee would probably argue that no time was ever given to vote on its previous proposals, which is a separate set of problems).

Without the government getting on with it, however, the significant level of public interest and engagement which has been generated (and which the committee welcomed) would never have materialised.

Disruptive technology wins out, and can now be iterated and improved having been introduced. Not a smooth process in this case given the inter-institutional tensions, but on balance probably as good as it was going to get. Better some innovation than none.

 Posted by at 11.35am  Tagged with: ,
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