Written evidence submitted by Stephen Elstub (Newcastle University and Study of Parliament Group Member), David Farrell (University College Dublin), Jayne Carrick (Newcastle University) and Patricia Mockler (Queens University) (CAUK0024)

We are submitting this evidence on the basis of our official evaluation of the Climate Assembly UK (CAUK) that was commissioned by the UK Parliament. Our full report will be available soon on the assembly website (https://www.climateassembly.uk/detail/evaluation/index.html). Our evidence fits within the enquiry’s focus on the impact of CAUK. Specifically, our submission focuses on: What impact has Climate Assembly UK had more widely? How do you perceive Climate Assembly UK to have affected the work of Government since the Assembly’s report was published (10 September 2020)? To what extent do the Government’s actions since then reflect Climate Assembly UK’s recommendations? What would a good response to Climate Assembly UK from the Government look like? What would a good response from Parliament look like?

Executive Summary

Overview

Impact on Assembly Members

Impact on the Public

 

 

 

Impact on Government

Impact on Parliament

 

Recommendations

Government Response: The government should provide a public response to all of the CAUK recommendations explaining which ones they will adopt, how and when. If there are some that they are not willing to implement, an explanation should be provided as to why.

Parliament Response: Each select committee that commissioned CAUK should provide a public response to CAUK recommendations that are relevant to that committee’s focus and explain which ones they think the government should adopt, how and when. If there are some that they do not think the government should implement, an explanation should be provided as to why. The CAUK recommendations should shape forthcoming committee inquiries.

Assembly Member Input: climate change and decarbonisation are huge issues in scope. The split into topic groups to address this was not a success. Rather, assembly members should be empowered to refine the scope of the assembly and the types of information they receive.

 

MPs Attending: if an MP is a member of a committee that commissions a mini-public then they should attend as an observer. The first-hand experience of seeing the process makes it much more likely that they will see the value of it, and this increases the chances that they will take on board the mini-public recommendations.

Ongoing Information: regular updates about the progress of the mini-public should be provided to the relevant parliamentary committees throughout the process, to ensure committee members are kept on board and can invest more in the process.

Timing of citizens’ assemblies in the electoral cycle: to reduce the disruptions that elections can cause to parliamentary committee memberships, mini-publics, commissioned by the committees, should be held towards the start of a parliament, where possible.

Mini-Publics Review Group: Parliament should establish a group to manage a discretionary budget for running mini-publics, to determine which inquiry topics should be supported by this engagement process, and to ensure the committee(s) have clear plans for how they will deal with the recommendations before they receive them.

Mini-Public Report: the length of the report on the mini-public can affect engagement with the recommendations. Key results could be made available in more diverse and digestible forms. For example, interactive digital content could be generated.

Communications Strategy: in order to promote broader public awareness and engagement with mini-publics there needs to be a bespoke and co-ordinated communication strategy that is sufficiently funded.

Public Engagement: Opportunities for engagement with members of the public, who are not recruited as mini-public participants, should be built into the design of the process.

 

Evaluation of CAUK

Our evaluation was commissioned by the UK Parliament in autumn 2019. It assesses the extent to which CAUK promoted norms of deliberative democracy and met established standards of citizens’ assemblies. We also assessed the relationship CAUK had to parliament, climate policy, the media, and the public. In this submission we present evidence from four data sources:

 

What impact has Climate Assembly UK had across your sector, and more widely?

We have evidence on the impact CAUK had on the AMs and the wider public. We deal with each in turn. First, we look at the impact CAUK had on the AMs’ knowledge and opinions on climate change and the extent to which these opinions influenced the recommendations, political participation skills and views on the UK political system. We then consider public awareness, engagement, and trust in CAUK.

 

Impact of CAUK on Assembly Members

Climate Change Knowledge: To assess the impacts of participating in the assembly on AMs’ knowledge about climate change and Net Zero, the survey asked AMs to report their level of knowledge about climate change. The answers were provided on a five-point scale from ‘nothing at all’ (5) to ‘a great deal’ (1). This self-reporting was done at the beginning of the first weekend and at the end of each subsequent weekend.

 

Most AMs indicated that their knowledge about climate change increased over the course of the assembly: 46 respondents (59%) indicated that they knew more about climate change on the last survey at the end of the assembly compared with their level of knowledge at the start of the assembly. Figure 1 shows the direction and extent of changes in AMs’ self-reported knowledge over the course of the assembly. The vertical axis labels show the number of levels and direction by which members changed their self-reported knowledge. The bars indicate the number of AMs who changed their self-reported knowledge by that many levels. To illustrate, the top bar shows that four members indicated that their knowledge increased by 3 levels. As an example, an AM who indicated that their knowledge was at a level 5 in the first survey and level 2 in the final survey would be included in the count of members who moved ‘3 towards a great deal.’

 

 

There is also a statistically significant difference between the mean knowledge reported on the first and final surveys; the mean on the first Friday was 3.3 on the 5-point scale (where 1 = a great deal and 5 = nothing at all), compared with 2.46 on the last survey, suggesting AMs (on average) felt that their knowledge of climate change increased over the course of the assembly.

 

However, there are limitations to subjective assessments of knowledge gains by the AMs. Therefore, to further understand AMs knowledge about climate change and decarbonisation, AMs were asked four true or false questions related to climate change to objectively measure knowledge. The following questions were selected from information provided to AMs in the first weekend of the assembly:

  1. The main cause of increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the burning of fossil fuels 
  2. Overall food crop yields will increase due to climate change  
  3. Climate change reduces the frequency of heavy downpours 
  4. The planet will continue to warm until we reach net zero emissions  

 

Figure 2 shows that the proportion of correct answers to these questions increased between the first and last surveys, indicating that AMs knowledge increased over the course of the assembly.

 

Taken together, the data from the self-report and objective knowledge questions demonstrate that participating in the assembly increased the AMs’ knowledge about climate change and decarbonisation. This suggests that the extensive learning opportunities built into the assembly’s design were effective in fostering learning.

 

However, access to sufficient information was limited by splitting the AMs into three topic groups on weekend 2. The lead facilitators told the AMs that there would be opportunities for each group to hear about what other groups discussed; however, these opportunities were limited. It was decided that AMs should only vote on recommendations from their own topic group because the other AMs had not had enough opportunity to make a sufficiently informed vote (Interview CAUK Organiser).

 

Assembly Member Opinions and Recommendations: To understand how their perspectives evolved throughout the process, AMs were asked how achievable they thought the set target of reaching Net Zero emissions by 2050 was. AMs provided their assessments on a scale from 1 (easily achievable) to 7 (difficult to achieve). This question was asked at the beginning of the assembly and on all subsequent member surveys. There is a statistically significant mean difference between the first survey completed on weekend 1 and the last survey, with the mean response moving towards easily achievable (from 5.45 to 4.17). In addition, 72% of AMs changed their ranking of the task’s achievability by moving toward thinking that Net Zero is easily achievable by 2050, as opposed to moving toward thinking that Net Zero is not achievable by 2050.

 

AM opinions also influenced the final recommendations from CAUK. There is a statistically significant relationship between the extent the AMs in each topic group felt they had influenced the decisions made. Most (88%) of AMs in the ‘what we buy’ group agreed ‘quite a lot’ or ‘somewhat’ that they influenced the decisions made online, whereas in the ‘travel’ group the distribution was more even across the categories. Comparatively, a large proportion of the AMs (35%) in the ‘in the home’ group only agreed ‘a little’ that they had influenced the decisions made online as shown in Figure 3.  It is not clear why as each thematic group were engaged in a very similar process.

 

 

In commenting on the division of the members into topic groups, some AMs raised issues with the final recommendations, noting that they were not given adequate opportunity to participate in the production of recommendations by topic groups to which they were not assigned. Some felt that the process of reporting the work of the topic groups was not sufficient for members to provide an informed vote. One participant raised the issue of the recommendations being presented to the public as reflecting his perspective, when he had not participated in the deliberation and drafting of recommendations of the two other issue areas: ‘Again when it says the Climate Assembly supports this decision, I’ve not had any information about what to do in the home. I’ve not had any information to do with the farming or anything like that. Even though we got that information afterwards, it was always the stuff that had already been agreed rather than the information that led to that decision, do you know what I mean?’ In the open text comments on the member survey complaints about being split into topic groups were frequent such as ‘Not being involved in the other two discussions’ and ‘Missing the other topics.’ Overall, many members suggested the process was too short: ‘Ideally the assembly should have been more than four weekends to discuss further options and more proposals.’

 

 

Political Participation Skills: After CAUK, AMs were more likely to report that they enjoyed participating in discussions and debates, they were comfortable challenging someone else’s opinion, and they were also less likely to report being nervous to speak in front of a group. AMs developed confidence in these specific skills and capacities throughout the course of the assembly. In addition, AMs were more likely to agree that they knew enough to participate in politics at the end of the assembly. 

 

Views on the UK Political System: Among those who indicated that their attitudes toward politics had changed, a few key themes emerged. Many referred to an increased understanding of how decisions are made and reported taking a more critical stance in consuming political news. Others referred to doing more research on their own political views. Some noted that the assembly experience introduced them to the options available to them to get engaged in politics.  Two assembly members offered concrete reasons as to why they felt their understanding of politics had changed. One noted that the opportunity to discuss the issues and be involved in group decision-making had increased their confidence in sharing their perspective. Another noted that the presence of an MP during the assembly and the presentations about the role of the select committees also helped in the development of greater understanding of politics: ‘I’m more interested in it because now I’ve experienced…what it’s like to sit down in a large room and have a discussion and use these big fancy words. So, it’s kind of opened my eyes a bit to how one person’s opinion can sway a group of people’s. So, I am definitely more interested in voicing my opinion and more confident in being able to voice my opinion.’

 

Impact of CAUK on UK Public

The results of the population surveys show that at each milestone, most respondents (37% to 42%) indicated that they knew nothing about CAUK (category 0[1]), as shown in Figure 4. Although the median response, for those that did have some knowledge of CAUK, increased from category 1 in the 1st wave, to category 2 in the second and third waves, there is no statistically significant correlation between survey wave and knowledge of CAUK. This indicates that public awareness of CAUK did not change over time between the milestones in the CAUK process.

 

 

The population surveys asked if, and how, the respondents had engaged with CAUK. In each survey the vast majority (between 83.6% in the first survey and 84.3% in the second) of respondents had not engaged with CAUK. Figure 5 shows that if the respondents had engaged with CAUK, in all three surveys, most had done so via TV or radio (5.9%-6.7%). There was no statistically significant correlation between the survey waves and engaging with CAUK via TV and radio indicating this did not change over the course of the three milestones.

 

 

The population surveys asked how in favour the respondents were of CAUK undertaking various tasks.[2] Figure 6 shows that in each of the three surveys most respondents (23%-31%) were strongly in favour of CAUK identifying challenges facing the UK. There is a statistically significant (0.01), very weak (0.98) correlation between the survey waves and how favourable the respondents were to CAUK identifying key challenges facing the UK; the respondents were more favourable with each wave. This indicates that the public’s approval of CAUK identifying key challenges facing the UK increased over time, between the milestones in the CAUK process.

 

 

The population surveys asked how in favour the respondents were of CAUK proposing policy solutions for the challenges the UK faces (e.g., new laws). Figure 7 shows that in the first survey, at the start of CAUK, most respondents selected category 5 (of the 0 to 10-point scale), however, in the second and third surveys (at the end of CAUK and at the report launch, respectively), most respondents were strongly in favour (category 10). Analysis reveals a statistically significant (<0.01[3]), very weak correlation (0.094) between the survey waves and how favourable the respondents were to CAUK proposing policy solutions. This means that that the likelihood of the public approving of CAUK proposing policy solutions increased with each survey, across the milestones in the CAUK process.

 

 

Finally, the population surveys asked how in favour the respondents were of CAUK identifying ways the UK can reduce carbon emissions. Figure 8 shows that in each survey most respondents were strongly in favour (category 10) of CAUK identifying ways to reduce carbon emissions. The respondents were more favourable with each survey. This analysis indicates that the public’s approval of this task increased over time.

 

 

According to our interviews with CAUK organisers and communications teams there were concerns that the communication budget was insufficient to achieve broad public awareness of CAUK: ‘If we’d had more resources do I think we could have got more coverage?… What we could have done was support assembly members to engage with their local press and also support them to engage with their local MP’. It should also be acknowledged that the task for the communications team was made extremely challenging due to the broader news context of Brexit and the pandemic that coincided with CAUK. Nor should attempts to gain public awareness rely solely on media exposure. Broader public engagement can be built into the process. For example, the British Columbia CA on electoral reform involved the AMs holding public hearings in their local area.

 

How do you perceive Climate Assembly UK to have affected the work of Government since the Assembly’s report was published (10 September 2020)? To what extent do the Government’s actions since then reflect Climate Assembly UK’s recommendations?

 

To date, the government’s uptake of CAUK has been limited. The CAUK recommendation that the path to Net Zero should be fair and protect the most vulnerable has been picked up in energy policy though (Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy 2020). In our interviews of Committee Chairs and Clerks, when we asked them to speculate on how the CAUK report might resonate with government, there were some who felt that its direct impact would be quite limited. One of the Chairs expressed the view that s/he was ‘not sure that this really gives us much more leverage’. Similarly, one of the Clerks commented: ‘I don’t think there’s necessarily going to be a direct outcome in terms of us taking each of their recommendations and then pressing government on the delivery of those recommendations’. But against that, there were other interviewees who felt the report could be very influential with government. One Clerk commented: ‘We’ve got a lot of interest in Whitehall amongst policy officials. It’s a really valuable tool for policy making to see not just the recommendations but what’s underneath it. … The sense I’m getting, for officials in Whitehall it is really a valuable tool’. For another Clerk, it could be ‘quite helpful to have a cross party committee say actually something really needs to happen here. In similar terms I would have thought if you were a policy maker in a government department, actually having this report to rely on might give you some leverage to make progress in some difficult areas’. One of the central government civil servants we interviewed made the observation that the degree to which the government might pay heed to the CAUK recommendations would depend on how much attention is paid to them by the select committees (s/he referred to the ongoing BEIS inquiry on the CAUK process as ‘a very smart way of holding government to account about these recommendations’). For this interviewee, the key thing is making the public aware of the recommendations so that it becomes harder for government to ignore them. However, the evidence we present above suggests that public awareness of CAUK is very low.

 

We also have evidence that indicates that splitting CAUK into topic groups reduced the impact it had on government policy. This was done, in part, for logistical reasons. There was a limited budget and limited time to address the complex and broad agenda set for CAUK. The alternative to using separate groups would have been either to curtail the agenda or to reduce the length of time on each theme. For some of the civil servants we interviewed this was ‘probably the most problematic thing. Because … you have to tell a minister that only actually 36 or 37 people voted on a certain thing. … it’s hard to … convince them of the weight of it’. This concern was shared by another, who noted: ‘Government might not do something because 17 out of 30 people said they voted for it’.

 

What would a good response to Climate Assembly UK from the Government look like?

Although CAUK was commissioned by the UK Parliament and not the government, the latter should still provide a response. The CAUK recommendations were made by a broadly representative selection of the UK population after seriously engaging with a range of relevant information and evidence about how the UK can decarbonise. The government should therefore provide a public response to all of the CAUK recommendations explaining which ones they will adopt, how and when. If there are some that they are not willing to implement, an explanation should be provided as to why.

 

What would a good response from Parliament look like?

As Parliament, and more specifically the 6 select committees, commissioned CAUK their response to the CAUK recommendations should be substantial. They should not have commissioned the assembly unless they really needed to know how an informed and representative sample of the UK public collectively think the UK should try to reach Net Zero. Indeed, select committee use of citizens’ assemblies, and similar processes, can enhance the epistemic qualities of inquiries by broadening the range of evidence received, increase committee leverage over Government, and help build trust amongst the public (Beswick and Elstub 2019; Elstub and Carrick 2019; Elstub et al. 2019a; Elstub et al. 2019b; Elstub and Carrick 2020). As a result, the CAUK recommendations should feature predominantly in the 6 committees’ scrutiny of government on decarbonisation in the coming years. The CAUK recommendations should be used to determine the focus and scope of committee inquiries but also the substance of the resulting recommendations. It should therefore have a privileged role beyond the other evidence submitted during these inquiries.

Each committee should therefore provide a public response to CAUK recommendations that are relevant to that committee’s focus and explain which ones they think the government should adopt, how and when. If there are some that they do not think the government should implement, an explanation should be provided as to why.

Through our evaluation we identified some reasons why this type of response has yet to happen. Firstly, at the time of our interviews, it was apparent that plans had yet to be drawn up on how to deal with the CAUK report, as the committees focused their attention on Brexit and COVID 19. A common theme in the interviews was a recognition that the CAUK recommendations must be engaged with, combined with a certain lack of clarity over how to do that. One Clerk commented: ‘Committees have got a tendency to do something, finish, park it and move on. I think the challenge for the members, but also the staff in advising the members, is to use this and to maybe think about our ways of working and processes, so how we engage with it going forward in a meaningful way’. As one Chair admitted: ‘We’ve not really met as a group of Chairs and discussed this. We’ve done the promotional stuff but we haven’t all sat down around a horseshoe and said, “Right, what shall we do next with it?”’.

 

Secondly, matters were not helped by the election that intervened mid-stream, resulting in quite a high turnover in Committee Clerks and memberships. As one Clerk noted ‘there has been a change of personnel amongst committee chairs as well …. Some are more engaged than others. Exactly how that works out across the whole of the recommendations, I’m not sure’. This change of personnel and the mood music in committees was raised by a number of our interviewees. One Clerk noted a distinct ‘change in the level of engagement amongst some of the committees who were originally participating in the process’. A Committee Chair commented that ‘the new committee is … a bit more libertarian, particularly the Conservative members. … [T]here are some members of the committee … who are going to be resistant … to this being a big focus of the committee’s work’. All this leads another Clerk to reflect that CAs should probably be ‘more of an early to mid-parliament activity, rather than late-parliament to make sure that you’ve got a group or groups of eleven members signed up to what they’re seeking to achieve and in saying, okay yes, we’ve commissioned this research and … we pledge to do X, Y and Z as a result’. However, the fact that the UK had three general elections in four years between 2015-19, shows how difficult it is to ensure this.

 

Thirdly, a prominent theme in the interviews was the length of the report and its breadth of coverage.  Steps had been taken to provide personalised briefings to the committee Chairs and members, but even despite this it was apparent that some Chairs and Clerks were struggling to assimilate the detail of the report and its recommendations. One Chair noted that s/he still had ‘to get more to grips with [it] to understand, so I know what their recommendations were and … [the] underlying criteria … that led them to make particular recommendations’. One Clerk noted that s/he had ‘not read the whole report but look[ed] at the bits of interest to us’. Another had given that task to a colleague. It should be noted that the report did have an executive summary, and a summary report had previously been published. There were also a series of slide packs from the launch events.

 

Fourthly, one committee Chair who had not attended the assembly regretted the lack of regular updates as the work of the CAUK proceeded, noting that ‘there wasn’t an information feed coming through to me in terms of what was going on’. But of those who had attended the view was that it was a well-run, ‘slick’ process. There were references to ‘the engagement in the room’, to the discussions that were ‘respectful and constructive’, to the inspiration of seeing ‘people [who] were taking it so seriously and had a sense of duty’.

 

Recommendations

We conclude our report with some recommendations that draw lessons from the notable strengths of the CAUK process, but that could also help enhance its impact on Parliament, Government and the Public.

 

Government Response: The government should provide a public response to all of the CAUK recommendations explaining which ones they will adopt, how and when. If there are some that they are not willing to implement, an explanation should be provided as to why.

Parliament Response: Each select committee that commissioned CAUK should provide a public response to CAUK recommendations that are relevant to that committee’s focus and explain which ones they think the government should adopt, how and when. If there are some that they do not think the government should implement, an explanation should be provided as to why. THE CAUK recommendations should shape forthcoming committee inquiries.

Assembly Member Input: There were limitations to the manner in which the topic groups were used in CAUK. Some AMs were reticent about not being informed about all topics: it compromised their willingness to endorse recommendations from other groups and reduced the impact of the recommendations on those external to the assembly. A better approach would have been to enable the AMs to refine the scope of the assembly themselves, once they had become more informed about climate change and decarbonisation.

 

MPs Attending: if an MP is a member of a committee that commissions a mini-public then they should attend as an observer. The first-hand experience of seeing the process makes it much more likely that they will see the value of it, and this increases the chances that they will take on board the mini-public recommendations. This would be easier to achieve if the mini-publics were held in London, but this would also increase costs. It is worth the UK Parliament considering developing a suitable space to host mini-publics within the place of Westminster itself in the forthcoming refurbishment.

Ongoing Information: regular updates about the progress of the mini-public should be provided to the relevant parliamentary committees throughout the process, to ensure committee members are kept on board and can invest more in the process.

Timing in the electoral cycle: to reduce the disruptions that elections can cause to parliamentary committee memberships, mini-publics, commissioned by the committees, should be held towards the start of a parliament, where possible.

Mini-Publics Review Group: parliaments should have ‘Mini-Publics Review Groups’ to oversee the use of mini-publics across the committee system. The review group could manage a parliamentary budget for this type of public engagement, ensure that the planned remit is appropriate for a mini-public, advise on the most appropriate type of mini-public given the remit, and ensure the committee(s) have clear plans for how they will deal with the recommendations before they receive them. This would ensure the committee had the commitment and cross-party support to take onboard the mini-public’s recommendations.

Mini-Public Report: we found that the length of the report on the mini-public can affect engagement with the recommendations. Whilst there is a need for full documentation of the process and outcomes, key results could still be made available in more diverse and digestible forms. For example, interactive digital content could be generated, particularly for large scale, and national, mini-publics like CAUK.

Communications Strategy: in order to promote broader public awareness and engagement with mini-publics there needs to be a bespoke and co-ordinated communication strategy that is sufficiently funded. It is not too late to invest in further communications around CAUK to raise its profile.

Public Engagement: mini-public organisers should not solely rely on media coverage to promote the process to the public. Opportunities for engagement with members of the public, who are not recruited as mini-public participants, should be built into the design of the process, especially when it is a large-scale national process like CAUK. Therefore, timescales and budgets should be such as to allow this to happen.

May 2021

 

 

References

Beswick, D. & Elstub, S. (2019) ‘Between Diversity, Representation and ‘Best Evidence’: Rethinking Select Committee Evidence-Gathering Practices’, Parliamentary Affairs, 72(4): 945-964.

Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (2020) Energy White Paper: Empowering Our Net Zero Future, Crown: CP337.

Elstub, S. (2014) ‘Mini-publics: Issues and Cases’, in Elstub, S. & McLaverty, P. (eds.) Deliberative Democracy: Issues and Cases, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Elstub, S., Carrick, J., and Khoban, Z. (2019a) Evaluation of the Scottish Parliament’s Citizens’ Jury on

Land Management and the Natural Environment, Newcastle: Newcastle University (Available at: http://whatworksscotland.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/SPCJLandManagement.pdf).

Elstub, S., Carrick, J., and Khoban, Z. (2019b) Evaluation of the Citizens’ Assembly on the Inquiry of Long-Term Funding of Adult Social Care, Newcastle: Newcastle University

(Available at: http://whatworksscotland.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/SPCJLongTermFundingAdultSocialCare.pdf).

Elstub, S. and Carrick, J. (2019) Evaluation of the Citizens’ Assembly on the Inquiry of Long-Term Funding of Adult Social Care, Newcastle: Newcastle University.

Elstub, S. and Carrick, J. (2020) Comparing Mini-Publics in the Scottish Parliament, Newcastle: Newcastle University, (available at: http://whatworksscotland.ac.uk/topics/mini-publics/).

 

 

 

 

[1] The survey asked, on a scale of 0-10, how much the respondents thought they knew about CAUK: where 0 = I know nothing and 10 = I know a lot.

[2] Given that most respondents had no knowledge or understanding of CAUK, they were given a short description of the process to enable them to answer this question: ‘by “Citizens' Assembly”, we mean a group of people who are brought together to discuss an issue or issues and reach a conclusion about what they think should happen’.

[3] There is a less than 1% chance of the results occurring by chance.