2 January 2007
Ordinary people will have the chance to directly influence government decisions as part of a major policy review starting this month.
Members of the public will be consulted in a "deliberative forum" that will put them in the shoes of decision makers in government. Cabinet Office Ministers Pat McFadden and Ed Miliband will support them throughout the process.
The February meetings will see 100 delegates study official papers currently under discussion, and then consider the same dilemmas which Ministers face on a daily basis before making their final decisions.
They will discuss a number of areas, including:
Cultural change and how can the state support and encourage citizens to change their behaviour to significantly improve their life chances and well-being. Ministers have been struck by the fact that more than half of all years of healthy life are lost as a result of behavioural factors such as smoking and poor diet.
They will also look at how public services are viewed by citizens, and in particular how public satisfaction measures can be used to drive improvements in public service and offer a more personalised level of service. Retailers already do this with storecards.
The third area under discussion is how the use of "contracts", which have already been introduced within the public sector, can be extended
These questions and challenges will provide the framework for this consultation process.
The groups will be structured to ensure that the genuine views of the public rather than those of lobbying groups are given an even greater voice.
The groups will come together in March for a day long public services "summit" which is likely to be held in No10 Downing Street, and the conclusions will be presented to the Cabinet in mid-March.
Minister without Portfolio Hazel Blears will support this process and undertake a stream of work to widen the use of citizen engagement programmes across Government.
These plans for next year build on a range of new consultative forums that have had an impact in Whitehall throughout 2006. These include:
- The "Your Health, Your Care, Your Say" engagement process which fed into the Department of Health’s Community Health White Paper
- The DWP’s consultation on Pensions which established the basis for the government’s plans to support low cost saving and link the basic state pension to earnings from 2012
- The Downing Street "e-petition" service which since its launch in November has seen over 1,000 petitions posted on the site and more than 150,000 signatures
The policy review process was launched in October, the outcomes of the review will flow across a range of government business from the Spring onwards (conferences, speeches, on-going business and other plans to be announced)
delicious
digg
facebook
