Tracey Brown asks what consultations are for

To consult or not to consult? That seems to be the question facing government departments and executive agencies daily. They had issued 583 public consultations - and counting - at the last annual performance report.(1)
 
Well, actually, it’s not the question. Instead we need to ask, what do all these bodies think their consultations are for? Are they to find out whether a policy move will be popular? To take the sting out of a difficult proposal and share around a bit of the responsibility? To find out something in earnest or a delaying tactic to avoid a decision? Make everybody feel listened to? Pass the departmental review with all boxes ticked?

Beyond challenge

The urgency of these questions has been thrown into sharp relief again at the beginning of 2007, with the publicity about the government’s proposed changes to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFE) Act. These changes include a proposed ban on the mixing of human and animal genetic material in vitro for research - a ban that has taken scientists, and many people in public life, by surprise. They had assumed, since they had no reason not to assume this, that the same regulatory regime for human embryos in research would be applied to those with 95.5 per cent human genetic material.
 
What they hadn’t reckoned on was the consultation. Or, more precisely, the Department of Health’s (DH) reaction to the consultation. The DH has given no scientific or ethical reasoning for its proposed ban. Instead, it has blamed it on the public’s alleged ‘unease’ at such ‘unnatural’ procedures. This unease has been revealed in a consultation, so it apparently puts the Department beyond criticism or challenge because, according to the case they present, they are only doing what the public want them to. Nobody at DH, it seems, expects to explain the uncritical use of the term ‘unnatural’ (or why that wouldn’t include everything within the remit of the HFE Authority). It’s the consultation, stupid.

Unrepresentative views

If the DH had paid more attention to their consultation responses they would have noted that, discounting the approximately 200 people claimed as respondents but who didn’t actually comment on the proposals, many of the remaining 300 respondents turn out – don’t faint with surprise! - to oppose embryo research completely. That doesn’t make those views vanish or irrelevant, but it does make it surprising that the DH is so sure of the public’s view from this very particular set of objections.

The DH is not alone. I have encountered several situations in the past year when a government agency has, when criticised for the deficiencies of its decisions, waved its arms in the direction of the consultation (the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency on efficacy of homeopathic medicines, the Food Standards Agency on traffic light labelling, and the Health and Safety Executive on MRI scans, if you’re interested).
 
The Commons Science and Technology committee identified this problem with impressive subtlety in its report on the government’s use of evidence last October, when it recommended that the purpose of consultations should be more explicit and that a distinction should be drawn between seeking technical advice and soliciting public opinion (in which case, opinion surveys might give clearer results than invitations to stakeholders).

Group hug

Unfortunately, this fails to recognise the dislike of accountability. Keeping consultations vague makes them more susceptible to whatever interpretation is preferred. Later questions about gaps in evidence or unintended consequences can be waved away with that other increasingly popular line: ‘didn’t you respond to our consultation?’ Er, no, actually, somewhat busy with a day job and the other 582 consultations, not to mention the European ones and the ‘horizon scanning’ for new legislation.

Objections, you see, are only eligible within the ‘consultation period’. Thereafter, you are the subject of raised, ‘you’ve only yourself to blame’ eyebrows. It’s another way to hold inconvenient problems at arm’s length – a kind of big, civil service group hug, swallowing and muffling criticism in its stakeholder love while keeping it at a safe distance: ‘we would have loved to have heard from you back then, when the consultation was open’.

The contribution of science is particularly damaged by this use of consultations to parry and contain critical scrutiny. Although often treated as such, scientific scrutiny is not a stakeholder position: its value is, in policy terms, as one set of criteria by which an option can be evaluated. Criteria that, on scientific and medical matters in particular, should surely pertain throughout the policy process.

1.  Annual Report on Consultation 2005, Better Regulation Executive, The Cabinet Office, 2006 (PDF)

Tracey Brown is the Director of Sense About Science