Just under a year ago I was at Conservative HQ having lunch with the head of Digital Comms as part of Common Purpose’s excellent “Power Dynamic” workshop. One question I asked was, when you are talking to people, how do you respond when they suggest something contrary to policy? The answer was telling: “We have a pre-worked out answer. We refute contrary opinion.” There was no understanding that there could be value in listening, in collecting opinion and challenging one’s own assumptions. Politics hears what it wants to hear, it does not listen.

Skip on to now and UK government has run three open-ended consultation exercises. The message has been, “Government is listening, we are collecting your opinions to help us develop policy in hard times.” The first of these is now completed and sadly very little seems to have changed (read the Guardian’s article on this). Politicians and departments have used the gathered opinion to validate their current approaches. They are hearing what they want to hear and not listening.

Government has complained of the lack of engagement of the public in the political process. This is why: the public is not listened to. A decade ago I set up a forum as part of a consultation for Further Education teachers. The forum attracted a lot of comment and the policy team acknowledged and adapted several ideas into policy. That was until ministers got whiff of what was happening. The forum was immediately shut down and the policy changes reverted.

In every consultation I’m aware of, policy has already been developed (the party has decided) and the consultation exercise is run to validate the decisions already made. I would love to hear stories of how policy has been developed based on real (not focus group) input from the public, from suppliers, from stakeholders and from internal staff. There must be some promising stories out there. Let’s hope the other two consultations bear more fruit.