Referendums: Constitution Committee Report

Lord Wills Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I rise to welcome the report from the committee, to which I gave evidence when I was a Minister. The report is comprehensive, practical, thorough in its analysis and wise in its conclusions—which is not a surprise given the distinguished membership of the committee, many of whom we have already heard from today. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Jay on assuming the chairmanship of the committee.

It is a timely report, given the new interest in direct democracy. The reasons for that have been frequently rehearsed. There has been a well documented decline of trust in politicians and increasing disengagement from formal democratic processes, and disadvantaged groups and younger people, in particular, are increasingly unlikely to vote at elections. The weakening of old collectivist structures and historic social identities and the rise of a professional political class have all served to undermine engagement with the party politics on which our system of representative democracy depends. Those problems are real and need to be addressed. So it is not surprising that there has been growing interest among commentators and politicians in direct democracy but, as many noble Lords have already pointed out, we need to be very careful to think about improving representative democracy, not replacing it. If nothing else, the history of the 20th century reminds us of the dangers of plebiscitary democracy, and ought to remind us of the virtues of representative democracy.

In the current climate, we cannot take the virtues of representative democracy for granted, so I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I briefly rehearse what I think they are. Representative democracy allows, through the power of universal suffrage, for the fairest distribution of power among all citizens. It offers space for scrutiny and deliberation on complex issues, and it does so continually as such issues arise, which, in my view, inevitably makes for better policy. Crucially, it fosters the articulation of the needs and aspirations of the inarticulate and the protection of the interests of minorities, all of which are hallmarks of a decent and civilised society.

However, representative democracy can and should be augmented to adapt to new circumstances, and referendums can have their place in that. The arguments for their use are well set out in the report. I share the committee's view that there are “significant drawbacks” to their use, and not simply because of any threat to representative democracy. For example, referendums can be vulnerable to manipulation by the wealthy and the powerful, who can dominate single issue campaigns more easily than they can the complex layers of political activity that characterise the operation of parliamentary democracy.

I recognise the committee’s concerns about the use of referendums as what it describes as a,

“tactical device by the government of the day”,

and I recognise its cogent arguments for defining when referendums should be conducted, but I also read with great interest the evidence from distinguished experts, who laboured to produce such a definition of the terms. For all their wisdom and ingenuity, none of the proposals in the report would be immune from interpretation. In the end, I still believe that, in the absence of a fully codified constitution, it is difficult to avoid a central role for the judgment of politicians on the circumstances in which a referendum should be held.

That is why, incidentally, I think that the committee's approach in drawing up a practical, although not exhaustive, list of instances where a referendum should be held is more helpful than an attempt to construct a theoretical framework. However, I am not as worried as are the committee and many of its witnesses about a central role for the judgment of democratically elected politicians. Of course, politicians will often seek to use referendums for their political ends—that is not a surprise—but they are, in the end, accountable for their decisions. That includes the holding of referendums and their considerable expense—about £100 million, or up to £120 million, if some witnesses to the committee are to be believed. That democratic accountability allows for at least some protection against flagrant abuse.

As the committee concludes, referendums are not a panacea. They are also not the only way of increasing democratic engagement. Some such methods, such as citizens’ initiatives, have considerable drawbacks as we have already heard from my noble friend Lord Hart, but I would have hoped that the committee's tepid conclusion that,

“such tools as a citizens' assemblies and citizens' juries may be worthy of consideration”,

could have been a little more enthusiastic. I hope that it will consider returning to that specific issue in a future report.

New methods of engaging the public in policy formulation through deliberative democracy are potentially very important, in my view, in both engaging the public in politics between elections and improving public policy. Citizens' summits, for example, bring together between 500 and 1,000 people to deliberate on policy, exposing them to a range of opinions and policy options. Those involved are selected randomly but filtered to ensure that they are demographically broadly representative. Such exercises can enable the public to bring relevant knowledge and experience to bear on policy formation that may not be so available to cloistered Ministers and officials. Engaging the public in that way can help to legitimise and entrench policy that might otherwise be unnecessarily contentious.

In a policy paper entitled A National Framework for Greater Citizen Engagement, published two years ago, the then Government set out when they thought that national policy formulation would benefit from greater public participation in such ways. Those circumstances included: where issues will result in significant constitutional change; where individuals themselves need to act in addition to the Government to make a significant impact—for example, on behavioural issues such as obesity or smoking; where there are several policy options on which the Government have an open mind; and where there is public benefit in exploring complex and difficult trade-offs between different policy options—for example, between a personal desire to purchase cheap flights and the societal need to reduce carbon emissions. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, may infer from what I just said that, although I still stick to my view that the composition and further reform of this House is not a suitable topic for referendums, for some of the reasons that I have already given, I think that it would be wholly appropriate for that sort of deliberative engagement with the public. I will wait with great interest, as I am sure he will, for what the public may decide after due deliberation on the issue.

Any new such mechanisms to re-engage people with democratic processes and improve policy formulation will succeed only if they fulfil five conditions. First, they must register with the public, and that means that they must be regular and pervasive. Secondly, they must be credible—people must believe that they matter. So they should be open and transparent. Participants must be aware in advance how much influence they might have, with a shared understanding of when and how these mechanisms will be used. The Government must not embark on engagement for the sake of it with no discernible outcome. Thirdly, they must be systemic; otherwise people could too easily regard them as a version of the politicians' tactical device that the committee so deplores. Such deliberative assemblies should represent a permanent change to the process of policy development. Fourthly, they must be representative, as accessible as possible and include a broad spread of the population. Finally and importantly, such mechanisms must also be consistent with the primacy of representative democracy. Such new mechanisms should feed into parliamentary consideration of issues, not replace them.

Towards the end of their time in office, the previous Government conducted an exercise, unique in this country, in such popular, deliberative policy-making. It was conducted by TNS-BMRB, a well known market research company, independently of government. This project explored the potential for a written statement of values, perhaps to act as a preamble for a Bill of Rights, the merits of such a Bill and the potential for a written constitution. The results of these deliberations were not always comfortable for the Government and their stated policy and led the debate into areas that the Government had not always expected, but the deliberations were notable for their seriousness, the commitment of those taking part and the good sense of the conclusions. The Government learnt valuable lessons about the conduct of such exercises for the future. The general election intervened before the Government could build on this work, but TNS-BMRB produced a detailed and comprehensive report, and I commend it to all noble Lords with an interest in our constitutional arrangements. I hope that this Government, who in theory are committed to such innovations, will take note and continue the work of their predecessors in this area. I hope that the Minister can give me some comfort in his reply. This report on referendums makes an important contribution to a debate which will undoubtedly continue, and we all owe the committee our thanks for its work.