SCS070

the involve foundation evidence to the liaison committee (commons) inquiry into the effectiveness and influence of the select committee system

Introduction

The Involve Foundation (‘Involve’) is the UK’s leading public participation charity. It supports people and decision-makers to work together to solve our biggest challenges. www.involve.org.uk

In recent years Involve has undertaken considerable work on public engagement by parliamentary committees. This includes:

• Delivering the Citizens’ Assembly on Social Care for the Health and Social Care and Housing, Communities and Local Government committees of the UK Parliament. Please see Box B for more on this case study;
• Authoring ‘Innovations for select committee engagement’, a report and guidance commissioned by the Select Committee Engagement Team of the UK Parliament to inform its offer to select committees;
• Providing formal training and informal advice to the Select Committee Engagement Team of the UK Parliament, the participation team at the National Assembly for Wales, the participation team and select committee officials at the Scottish Parliament, and parliamentary officials at Stormont.

We have focussed our evidence to the Liaison Committee on the questions that most closely match our areas of expertise.

Witnesses, evidence, and select committee powers

1. Are committees getting the right evidence?  What barriers are there to select committees getting the information they need?

1.1 Public engagement as evidence

1.1.1 Select committees have a long track record of engaging the public in their work. Sometimes the purpose of that engagement is communication: to make the public aware of committees’ activities. At other times the purpose is to generate evidence to feed into committees’ inquiries.

1.1.2 Public engagement to generate evidence is not a useful activity for every inquiry. But for some inquiries the experiences, views and ideas of members of the public are an important evidence source. This is particularly the case in two scenarios:

• Where certain members of the public have lived experience of the issue a committee is addressing. This may be because they use a particular public service, facility or benefit (e.g. cancer services, parks, universal credit), have a particular life experience (e.g. homelessness, gang membership), or work on the frontline of a particular sector (e.g. fishermen, care workers, small business owners). Here committees should be able to access people’s firsthand experiences of the topic in question, and the knowledge and ideas that have derived from that experience.

• The case studies in Box A give two examples where evidence from members of the public with relevant lived experience has been valuable to parliamentary committees. These case studies are from the National Assembly for Wales. Similar examples undoubtedly exist from the work of the UK Parliament’s own committees. However, information on public engagement work by House of Commons’ select committees is not easily available – certainly not all in one place. This is something that could usefully be addressed, not least to ensure that parliament gets the recognition it deserves for this work. It could also usefully open up this area of parliamentary work to academic research and scrutiny.

• Where the issue an inquiry is addressing is particularly controversial. Relevant issues include those that have often proved politically intractable (e.g. social care funding, climate change), moral issues (e.g. abortion, ethical questions arising from technological and medical advances), and constitutional issues (e.g. electoral or House of Lords reform). Here committees should be able to access informed and considered public opinion about ways forward as part of the evidence they receive.

The case study in Box B gives an example of where evidence from a representative sample of the public has been valuable to parliamentary committees looking at a controversial topic.

1.1.3 Committees gain several advantages from engaging the public as part of evidence gathering. These include:

• A more diverse evidence base, allowing for enhanced scrutiny of government. Engaging the public can provide:

      A useful point of ‘check and balance’. Is what committees are hearing from members of the public with relevant lived experience consistent with what they have received in written evidence from organisations and academics? Does it raise new lines of inquiry that could inform questions to oral witnesses? 

      An unfiltered insight into the reality of the situation on the ground. Hearing firsthand experiences can help convey a situation more powerfully than organisations’ policy submissions. It can also provide anonymised examples that can be put to ministers in oral questions or used in committees’ reports.

      An alternative source of ideas from people who think outside of the policy development box. People with relevant lived experience often have new, constructive and useful suggestions to make about how situations or systems could be improved. They can also provide invaluable feedback on whether seemingly sensible ideas are likely to work on the ground.

• An enhanced ability to represent the public. Committees receive greater information about what the public thinks, why they think it and – depending on the engagement method used - what trade-offs they would make when faced with the reality of decision-making.
   
• The creation of political space to find a way forwards on politically difficult issues. Knowing what the public would choose from amongst realistic policy options can create space for political consensus and a solution to be found.

• A greater impact for committees’ work and reports. Committees’ reports can achieve significant impact. Public engagement can help add to this: for example, reports backed by the views of a representative sample of the public may receive added government attention. Public engagement can also provide an additional angle for media work.

• A potential improvement in public perceptions of parliament and politics. Public engagement with committees increases the number of people with firsthand positive experiences of parliament. By communicating that parliament is undertaking this engagement work, committees can also reach non-participants, influencing their perceptions of how parliament works.

1.1.4 As demonstrated by the case studies in Boxes A and B, the sharing of engagement practice within and between the UK’s parliaments is important. This is not, however, the only place select committees should look for examples of relevant engagement practice. Government departments and public sector bodies are among other organisations that undertake public engagement work on the topics considered by select committees. Good practice from these examples is also relevant to committees’ work and should be considered by those within parliament looking at how to make sure committees are receiving the evidence that they need.

1.2 Barriers to public engagement as evidence

1.2.1 As noted above, the UK Parliament does not publish information about the public engagement work undertaken by committees in an easily accessible format (please see paragraph 1.1.2 above). However from the information that is available it seems clear that committees are not always getting high quality public evidence to inform their work.

1.2.2 Evidence from across the public sector in the UK and abroad shows that public engagement can provide invaluable insights on many of the issue areas considered by committees. If committees are not finding the outputs of public engagement work useful to their deliberations, this suggests that the engagement is not working as effectively as it could be. This should be a matter of concern for committees given their representative and scrutiny roles.

1.2.3 Involve’s work with public sector bodies – including all UK parliaments, government departments, local government and public services – and our international work, suggests that there are a number of common barriers to engaging the public in evidence gathering. We have listed some below, with steps that parliament could take to mitigate against them if these are challenges that it faces:

• Lack of a clear brief: Successful public engagement is designed both to meet the needs of the commissioning body (the committee) and to be accessible to the people the committee wishes to engage. The clearer committees can be on the following questions, the more useful the evidence that engagement activities will generate for them:

-          What is the desired scope of the engagement work (i.e. which policy areas or issues would the committee like the engagement to cover)? This may be all, or just part, of an inquiry’s terms of reference.

-          What does the committee want to learn from the engagement? This might be about people’s lived experience or about public opinion, as outlined in paragraph 1.1.2. It is helpful for a committee to be clear on the topline questions or issues on which it would like the public’s view.

-          Who does the committee want to hear from? Are there different types of lived experience that the committee wants to understand? Are there any particular considerations around geographic or demographic representation that need to be borne in mind?

-          In what format(s) would the committee like findings from the engagement presented to it? For example, written materials, a short film, and/or a (private) evidence session.

-          When does the committee need the results of the engagement by? For example, what are relevant inquiry deadlines.

-          How much budget and staff time does the committee have to put towards the engagement, if any? With sufficient lead-in time it may be possible for committees to access external funding in some cases.

• Starting with a method: Whilst it is important to learn from the public engagement methods used by other committees and bodies, not all methods are suitable for engaging all sections of the public on all topics. It is therefore important that committees start by thinking about the brief for their engagement work as per above, rather than starting by saying that they want to do the engagement in a particular way. There are many people, including Parliament’s Select Committee Engagement Team, that can then advise committees on the most appropriate methods to use.

• Not enough time: The more lead-in time there is for engagement activities, the greater the range of methods a committee can use and the more likelihood there is that the committee will be able to reach the sections of the public it wants to hear from. The earlier a committee can (a) flag its intention to conduct engagement work on a particular topic and (b) flesh out the brief for that engagement work, the better.

• Limited evaluation: Stretched resources can mean that engagement work is not always evaluated (in terms of both process and impact). This can slow organisational learning about the most productive and efficient ways of working.

1.2.4 It is also the case that committees sometimes do not undertake public engagement at all on inquiries that would benefit significantly from the types of evidence described in paragraph 1.1.2. Publishing an open call for written evidence is not enough by itself to engage the public. Only a small proportion of the public is likely to hear about the call and choose to respond; these people are unlikely to be representative of the wider public or section of the public that a committee is hoping to reach. Again, Involve’s work suggests that there are a number of common barriers to more bespoke public engagement taking place. We have listed some below.

• Concern about what the public will say: Commissioning bodies can be concerned about undertaking public engagement work because they are worried that the public will have views and opinions that it is undesirable for them to act on, for example because they are unrealistic. There are a number of important points here:

-          Committees need to be serious about listening to the outcomes of public engagement work if they are undertaking these activities. It is a waste of the public’s time to take part in activities that are there to simply tick engagement boxes. Committees should therefore only undertake public engagement where they are genuinely interested in using public input to inform their thinking.

-          Taking the result of public engagement seriously does not mean committees need to do everything the public say. For example, committees can be clear that public engagement work is just one part of their evidence gathering and that they are also taking written and oral evidence. It is perfectly reasonable for committees to balance what they hear across all evidence channels when reaching their conclusions.

-          Where committees are asking a representative sample of the public to provide their opinion on different policy options – as with the Citizens’ Assembly on Social Care described above – public engagement professionals will work particularly closely with committees. They will ensure that participants understand what combinations of options are feasible, and ask them to make any relevant trade-offs between their preferences until their recommendations are internally consistent.

• Undermining the representative role: There can be concerns from MPs that public engagement of this kind undermines their representative role. In fact, public engagement is about enhancing this role; it is there to ensure that MPs have the best possible information and evidence available to them when undertaking their representative function. Tailored engagement on specific issues adds to the valuable knowledge that MPs already have from their work with their constituents.

• Uncertainty about innovation: It is human nature to be unsure about change, but this not a reason to avoid innovation. In this case, public engagement is a way to preserve the UK Parliament’s status at the ‘mother of parliaments’, delivering its traditional representative function in ways newly possible in the modern era.

• Lack of capacity: Public engagement takes time and skills. It is important that thought is given to how to dedicate sufficient capacity to it. It is also important to provide training for those being asked to commission public engagement (internally or externally) where this has not previously been part of their role. Such training could look directly at how to commission public engagement most effectively. It could also provide trainees with an overview of the field: it can be challenging to request public engagement work without a broad understanding of what modern techniques and developments make possible.

1.2.5 In addition to the areas outlined in in paragraphs 1.2.3 and 1.2.4, Parliament may also faces some unique barriers to public engagement. These focus particularly on how public engagement fits with existing procedures and inquiry timetables. For example:

• There is no one single place in which public engagement best fits within an individual inquiry process. Instead there are options for committees to choose between. As seen from the examples in Boxes A and B, engagement can take place between the collection of written evidence and oral evidence sessions, or alongside the latter. It could also take place at an earlier ‘framing’ stage: once a committee has decided on the broad topic of an inquiry, it could use public engagement to help shape the inquiry’s terms of reference and inform the specific questions it asks. This may be particularly useful to committees where certain members of the public have lived experience of an issue, such as knife crime.

• There is some uncertainty and inconsistency of practice in how evidence from public engagement activities is incorporated into committees’ inquiry reports. We recommend that evidence from public engagement sessions is incorporated into the main body of inquiry reports rather than included as an appendix or separate section. This shows that the committee has used the evidence collected during public engagement as part of its main deliberations. The results of public engagement activities should also be published as a standalone document(s)/ output(s) for reasons of transparency.

Given some of these options and uncertainties, it may be useful to produce a guide for committee clerks and specialists on options for how public engagement can best fit with committees’ work.

1.2.6 A final barrier to committees receiving quality evidence through public engagement can be funding (please see paragraphs 2.1 and 2.2 below). It is important that committees are sufficiently resourced to obtain the evidence they need to scrutinise government and represent the public as effectively as possible.

2. Do select committees have the right resources to get the job done?  Do they have access to the expert advice and commissioned research they need?

2.1 Select committees have historically lacked the resources to fund some of the more costly public engagement methods, such as citizens’ assemblies. Citizens’ assemblies are not a method that should be used for every inquiry. On the contrary they should only be used selectively for issues that are particularly politically intractable or controversial as outlined in paragraph 1.1.2. Select committees do however consider issues of this nature and should be able to use citizens’ assemblies where appropriate.

2.2 The forthcoming independent evaluation of the Citizens’ Assembly on Social Care (CASC) by Stephen Elstub and Jayne Carrick from Newcastle University recommends that Parliament establishes a Review Committee to hold an administer an annual budget for parliamentary mini-publics.

“Review Committee could include members and parliamentary staff (not connected to any particular committee), academics with expertise on mini-publics, and/ or practitioners with experience of organising them. Committees who would like to support their inquiries with a mini-public could then apply for funding.”

We support this recommendation.

Public engagement and profile

3. Are there any methods of involving the public that have worked particularly well, or that would be open to select committees who wish to innovate in new or different ways?

3.1 The House of Commons’ Select Committee Engagement Team currently offers methods including the following:

• Deliberative Workshops
• Open Space Technology
• Filmed Evidence via Semi-Structured Interviews
• Photographic Evidence via Semi-Structured Interviews
• Conversation Cafés
• World Cafés
• Distributed Dialogues
• Go-To Democracy
• Pyramid Events

These methods are valuable tools for committees. It would be helpful if (1) all committee clerks and specialists were familiar with this offer, and (2) method descriptions and case studies of each of these methods were available to them as a quick-reference guide. Any such guide should also include the methods described in paragraph 3.2 below, and indicate to committee officials when different methods might be suitable for their work. The Select Committee Engagement Team is also well-positioned to provide committees with advice on appropriate method choice.

3.2 The Citizens’ Assembly on Social Care (CASC) described in Box B above is an example of a further group of methods called ‘mini publics’. These are methods that bring together representative samples of the population to learn about, discuss and reach conclusions on topics. The most relevant ‘mini public’ methods for select committees are:

• Citizens’ assemblies: These typically bring together 50 to 150 participants to consider a complex issue. The assembly produces a range of different outputs usually starting with some form of key principles or underpinning guidelines, before moving on to specific policy recommendations. They can last one day but usually run over two to six weekends, with the exact length determined by how much evidence participants need to hear and what outputs they are being asked to produce.

• Citizens’ juries: Citizens’ juries bring together a smaller group of people than citizens’ assemblies; usually between 12 and 24. They typically produce one output in response to a single clear question – for example, a yes/no response to a binary question with a rationale, or a set of principles or conditions that should underpin a decision. Citizens’ juries usually last between one and seven days, sometimes spread over several weekends.

• Citizens’ panels, forums or advisory groups: These are all methods that see participants meet over a longer period of time. They can happen online or offline, and be very large (a group of several thousand online respondents) or much smaller (a group of 10-30 people who meet face-to-face). Such a group could follow the process of a committee’s inquiry: providing initial input to help frame an inquiry’s questions; inputting questions for, or responding to evidence provided in, oral witness sessions; and feeding in their own answers to the inquiry’s questions. While these methods are usually done as mini-publics with a representative samples of the population, a variation on them could see a group of people with relevant lived experience (e.g. of knife crime) inform a committee’s work throughout an inquiry. In this case, one further input that participants could provide for a committee, if so desired, is advice on how best to engage their peers as part of the inquiry’s wider evidence gathering work.

3.4 Method choice is a key factor in making public engagement a success but it is not the only factor. Other important considerations include:

• Accessibility (e.g. when and where events are held, meeting physical access requirements, avoiding jargon and complex language, addressing any financial barriers to participation etc);

• Managing participants’ expectations (e.g. being clear that the committee will be considering the results of the public engagement alongside other evidence);

• Flexibility about roles: Some of the engagement methods described above require committee chairs and members to take on different roles to the ones they may be used to. For example, for the Citizens’ Assembly on Social Care the two committee chairs observed part of the event, and addressed participants and took questions over dinner. They did not facilitate the event itself. Depending on the engagement method used, the most appropriate role for committee chairs and members may be as chairs, facilitators, hosts, speakers, observers or, indeed as participants themselves. These are all vital roles.

• Where committee members do not attend events in person, consideration needs to be given to how to make the outputs of events available to members. This could be through the use of written reports, film or photographs (as described in Box A above) and/or by bringing some participants to Westminster to meet committee members. The results of engagement activities could also be presented to committee members in (private) evidence sessions.

4. How well have departmental select committees worked alongside initiatives in public engagement and information within parliament such as Parliament Week and Vote100?

4.1 Parliament may wish to encourage a committee(s) to collaborate with Parliament Week each year around one of its inquiries. This would give participants in Parliament Week the chance to be part of a real parliamentary process, whilst also generating useful evidence for the committee. For this idea to work, the inquiry’s topic would need to match the audience that parliament hoped to engage through the Week. It does not seem inconceivable that a committee could time a suitable inquiry to coincide with Parliament Week. 

4.2 Pursuing the above approach could allow Parliament Week to include events on the history of parliament’s contribution to particular issue areas, with the Week focusing on a different issue area each year. Indeed, even if the Week did not generate evidence for a committee’s inquiry as such, it could still use a current inquiry to provide the theme for the week – allowing parliament to demonstrate to participants the relevance of its work to an issue they care about, and generate discussions amongst participants about the issue area.

Joint working, cross-cutting scrutiny, and the role of the Liaison Committee

5. Could the Liaison Committee take an increased role in cross-cutting policy issues, and if so, what changes might be needed to its standing orders to achieve this?

5.1 There is potential for the Liaison Committee to conduct inquiries and commission relevant public engagement on:

• Cross-cutting issues that affect so many committees that it is impractical for them to be dealt with through joint inquiries: Brexit is, for example, an issue that affects numerous policy areas covered by multiple committees. A cross-cutting inquiry on public views on the shape Brexit should take could benefit the work of multiple committees.

• Views or priorities of sections of the public: Particular sections of the public, for example young people or those living in rural areas, can feel that the political process gives insufficient attention to their interests and views. The Liaison Committee could undertake work to better understand the concerns and priorities of these sections of the public. This could help inform various committees’ future agenda by suggesting interesting topics for future more specific inquiries.

Such engagement would help to plug perceived gaps in how well Parliament – and the political process more widely - represents the public. As such it would help to bring Parliament and its processes closer to the public and the issues that affect their lives.