We are curating a thought leadership series about opportunities for participatory and deliberative processes in a shifting political landscape following the 2024 general election.
This will inevitably be a time of change — and we want to take this chance to think about some of the key issues, tensions and arguments that surround deliberative and participatory democracy in the UK and beyond.
📖 Read our fourth blog, titled: ‘Making a success of the clean energy mission’ by our Director of Innovation and Practice, Stephaine Draper below.
The new government’s agenda includes several new Bills aimed at fulfilling the ‘Mission’ — to make the UK ‘a clean energy superpower to create jobs, cut bills and boost energy security with zero-carbon electricity by 2030, accelerating to net zero.’
The set up of GB Energy — a publicly owned company that will invest £8.3bn in renewables contributes to our urgent need to address the climate emergency. At its launch it was combined with the Crown Estate Bill that enables more investment on our ‘marine estate’ and it also clearly linked to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.
It is exciting to see this Mission become more tangible. But the how of these Bills, including how they reach their policy positions, is as important as the what. We have already laid out a number of ways to do involve people in decision making across the issues that the government is grappling with, including for the newly introduced Better Bus Bill. The opportunity to involve people in determining their own futures by giving them power in decisions that affect them, at a local and national level is especially prudent when talking about climate change and energy security.
These Bills are important and focus heavily on the technological and financial aspects of clean energy, but fixing these challenges takes more than technology. We have learned time and again that you have to do it with people. The government must take account of the litany of bad examples of ‘consultation’ leading to local resistance and disenfranchisement on measures like Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. These types of changes are both environmental and social, and must have equity and justice at their heart — that starts with really involving people.
What’s exciting is that we have the ‘social technologies’ to do this. We have a range of participatory processes that allow dialogue and deliberation on critical issues that start with where people are. Climate Assembly UK and Scotland’s Climate Assembly have given us a clear steer on what a representative group of the public want on climate change. They want action to centre around fairness; they want a focus on the co-benefits where there are health benefits, or improved business opportunities; and they favour a local approach where people are able to choose what works best for their communities. In Climate Assembly UK, 108 people from different walks of life also explored trade offs with one discussion resulting in an 80% support for carbon tax on those that fly more often, or further, with the money being ring-fenced and transparently spent.
We have learned and done so much more since then. We have applied approaches at City and Council level including Camden’s Climate Assembly and standing climate panel; Southampton Climate Assembly on transport and Hackney’s recent Citizen Jury on dealing with extreme heat. All of these have brought groups, reflective of their population, together to review information, to deliberate and come up with workable recommendations for policy makers and other actors. When taken up, the recommendations deliver better decisions and a public empowered to take action themselves.
Encouragingly, more and more people are embracing and seeing the benefits of participation and deliberation. Chris Stark, the new lead of The Clean Energy Taskforce has seen these first hand as an Expert Lead on Climate Assembly UK. As he said at the report launch “This is the first time…that we can say that we really understand the views of the UK citizens” adding “This was a tremendously valuable process which could, and I think really should, be repeated.”
Deliberative processes, meaning those that take local people beyond consultation instead resolving the trade off they face as communities, need to be applied to investments in new infrastructure; to the new National Policy Statements on planning; and embedded into the modernisation of planning committees. This may sound like it slows things down, but it actually allows policy makers to go further together and get it right the first time. The individual processes need to be underpinned by a participation strategy, owned by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, that ensures learning and joined up thinking about systemic challenges to maximise impact (Scotland already has one).
This way of thinking and working is what we’ve been doing at Involve for over 20 years. We have a range of public deliberation tools on offer, not just citizens assemblies, that can support a more equitable and just transition to clean energy. Several are laid out in our practical guide for engagement on climate and our recently launched Citizen White Paper with Demos. We need to put people first — not tell them what to do, but ask them. In a new project, part of Innovate UK’s Net Zero Living Programme, we are using Citizen and Community Visioning to ask 25 communities from all four corners of the UK what they value about their place and what they want to change, for example.
Let’s continue to work together to create a culture of participation on climate, energy and the way the government designs policy more broadly.
Top photo by Ethan on Unsplash
>> This is part of our 10 Opportunities for the first 100 Days series.