I have never been a huge fan of opinion polls but this government seems to think a continual barrage of consultation is a good idea. Now consultation has its place, and people’s opinions do matter, but in terms of government it is usually a good idea to consult before you start the legislative process, not after.
The Red Tape Challenge is the flagship initiative meant to give people a say on a huge number of regulations. But like all consultations it has its flaws. It can only be as good as the people that take part. In any consultation process you usually find a very low level of public awareness, except for the interested groups, and that means only those with strong opinions take part which skews the results. A continual barrage of consultations doesn’t do much to help either, it just desensitises people – “numbs down” the process as it were.
Even worse, with no feedback or further consultations on what has been discovered as a result of all that consultation process and with Ministers popping up everywhere announcing the next abolition of some regulation or removal or rights, how are you meant to understand how they arrived at that decision. Inevitably it is always based on some report or another which supports their opinion, but that report wasn’t part of the consultation.
Does all this frantic action get to the root of the problem ….no…it just highlights how badly legislation was drafted in the first place, how all those debates in parliament failed to spot those mistakes and how often politicians draft legislation as a knee-jerk reaction – a quick fix to some problem that has hit the headlines. And just to add to that heady mix how many politicians and their departments get involved in one area or topic simply creating a spiders-web of regulations with no real central direction or objective.
In a sense the Red Tape Challenge exposes those problems, but the Challenge does not help redress them. A popularity poll is no way to consider equality or employment issues. It’s not about what business thinks and is prepared to implement, it is about making opportunities open to everyone – life chances is the sexy in phrase. As some of the businesses are the cause of some of the problems, it’s a bit rich to determine policy based on their opinions only.
And that is where parliament comes in – it is meant to balance things out – consider the problem holistically, taking everything into account, and then if necessary, and only then, to frame the legislation, debate it and then pass it. So perhaps its time for parliament to step up to the plate – if the legislation is wrong, by all means consider it, but do it properly, no more quick fixes and off the cuff solutions.
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