Complete and Utter Zebu

One of our bugbears is the consultation exercise. They are a bastardisation of democracy, giving the impression of listening to the public while usually ignoring anything inconvenient that is said. We quote several examples in the book, one of which is the consultation arranged by Royal Mail in 2008-9 when they rushed through a programme to close 2,500 post offices.

The report of the Public Accounts Committee has now been published and it makes for depressing reading. It concludes that: “Too little time had been allowed for consultation, that the decisions had already been made and that the public were not being listened to properly.” Apparently “only a small percentage of people” were aware that they had only six weeks notice to save their local post office and, “because the total number of closures had already been determined, local concerns about the scale of the programme were ignored”.

Even more dispiriting, the supposed financial benefits were “relatively modest”, with Ministers and the Department for Business using “inadequate” three-year-old research to justify the closures. Committee chairman Edward Leigh seeemed to sum up consultation exercises in general: “The consultation process appeared to the public as little more than a piece of window dressing for a decision which to all intents and purposes had already been taken. The consultations to which Post Office Ltd has committed itself on any future proposals for permanent closure of branches must allow the public to have a real influence on the outcomes.”

Anybody think that will actually happen?

In an earlier post about consultations, we mentioned Ken Livingstone going ahead with the western extension of the Congestion Charge Zone in London, even though a majority was against it. “I think it’s a complete charade,” said Mayor Livingstone. “I think I should make the decisions for London…A consultation is not a referendum.”

We were contacted by Damian Hockney. “The situation with Ken Livingstone and the C-Charge was a classic case, and the then Mayor at least had the honesty to admit the process was a charade. I was a Member of the London Assembly (the body which is supposed to hold the Mayor to account) at the time and was with him when he said it. You are right about ‘what is the point?’, but of course without having introduced these cosmetic exercises pretending that the people have an input, there would literally be nothing left. No party to vote for that can implement what you want, no account of what you want. All decided behind closed doors by an elite. ‘Consultation’ is their new pretence at ‘engagement’ and it it is the new substitute for what we once had – an albeit imperfect elected democracy.”