The Politics of Polling (Political Polling and Digital Media Committee Report)

Lord Norton of Louth Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome this report. It is well researched, informative and balanced. It draws out clearly the political weight attached to polls and the challenges to ensuring accuracy in reporting.

As the report recognises, there are problems with the actual polling methodology, the reporting of the polls, and the lack of critical interrogation of the polls by the public. As we have heard, there are pressures on the print media to report polls in sensational terms, which lead to distortions and a focus on politics as a race, rather than an informed reporting of substantive issues. Where policies are covered, the surveys may be interpreted in crude ways, either wilfully or out of ignorance. There is, as has been touched on, the added dimension nowadays of how polls are covered on social media. As the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, mentioned, there are issues with digital media that go beyond the commission’s remit and require addressing with some urgency.

I want to focus on the dimension of public understanding of polls. Improving methods of sampling and ensuring greater transparency in the methodology— and, if necessary, sponsorship—are necessary but not sufficient to ensure greater public understanding of polls. As the polling organisations put it to the committee,

“it is up to readers of all media to decide whether and what to believe”.

In its coverage of digital media, the committee notes that some witnesses,

“suggested that better education to support improved digital literacy amongst the population could help to tackle some of the issues associated with social media”.

That, in my view, applies also to polls and how to interpret them.

As the report shows, some media cover polls in a way that is wholly misleading, placing a weight on the data that they cannot bear. Readers may be too prone to accept the interpretation offered. This may affect behaviour. The committee recommends that the Department for Education ensures that critical literacy and digital skills are taught to people of all ages, including children and young people at schools and colleges, so that they can assess and analyse the information they read online. I think that the skills are needed not simply for what is read online, although I appreciate that, increasingly, information is accessed online. The key point for me is the need to enhance public understanding, not only to combat deliberate disinformation but to deal with poor coverage or ignorance in reporting. The problem at times is as much ignorance on the part of those disseminating material as it is wilful manipulation of data.

I therefore welcome the committee’s report. It identifies well the problems and advances recommendations to tackle them. It engages with what is a serious issue in maintaining a healthy democracy. The Government in their response acknowledge the seriousness of online manipulation and outline some of the steps being taken, including internationally, to tackle the problem.

However, the response is in part disappointing. The Government are overly dismissive of the committee’s recommendation that the Electoral Commission should have an enhanced role in monitoring voting intention polling. I am not necessarily advancing a greater role, at least not yet, but I recognise the committee’s reasoning and I was not impressed by the Government’s failure to engage with it. The response appears contradictory. The relevant paragraph opens by stating:

“The Government believes that regulation is a matter for the polling companies”.


It ends by stating that,

“the Government’s approach is to consider regulation as a last resort rather than the first option”.

The opening sentence implies that it is not an option, be it first or last. Perhaps my noble friend Lord Ashton can clarify what precisely is the Government’s stance in the event of self-regulation failing to achieve greater transparency.

However, my main concern is the weight that the Government attach to the citizenship curriculum in helping pupils to distinguish fact from fiction and to explore freedom of speech. To read the response, one would think that the opportunities mentioned are available and being utilised. There is nothing in the response that commits the Government to doing anything beyond what already exists. It neglects the fact that there is what I regard as a crisis in citizenship education. How can the goals embraced by the Government be achieved through citizenship education when there are not the teachers available who are qualified to teach citizenship? In a recent Written Answer, my noble friend Lord Agnew of Oulton revealed that of the 4,800 teachers in secondary schools teaching citizenship in November 2016, it was estimated that fewer than 9% had a relevant post-A level qualification. Even if one includes those with a post-A level qualification in history, it remains the case that eight out of 10 teachers teaching citizenship have no post-A level qualifications in the subject.

Although citizenship is on the national curriculum, schools lack the incentives to take it seriously. Your Lordships’ Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement provided a damning critique in its recent report, The Ties that Bind: Citizenship and Civic Engagement in the 21st Century, concluding:

“The Government has allowed citizenship education in England to degrade to a parlous state. The decline of the subject must be addressed in its totality as a matter of urgency”.


The Government’s response needs to be read in the light of that conclusion. There appears a mismatch between what is in the response and what is actually happening in our schools. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister will tell us what the Government plan to do to ensure that the teaching of citizenship meets the claims made for it in the response.

Citizenship education can fulfil an invaluable, indeed necessary, role in ensuring that we have a citizenry that understands our political system, including how to interrogate polls and look critically at information disseminated through social media. As the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement noted:

“Citizenship education can also go some way toward mending the democratic inequality that exists in society”.


James Weinberg of Sheffield University told the committee:

“We have evidence … that citizenship education, where it is done effectively and consistently, can predict political efficacy, participation and levels of knowledge”.


I reiterate my congratulations to the Select Committee under the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, on producing this important report. I hope that my noble friend Lord Ashton will be able to go beyond the printed response to tell us what the Government are doing to ensure that the committee’s concerns are met. The issues raised in this report are not simply technical points for polling nerds but issues crucial to the health of our political system.