The challenges facing the country and the new Labour government are daunting. From broken public services to a sluggish economy, with an electorate worn down by the cost-of-living crisis and a chronic breakdown of trust, the period ahead will be marked by difficult decisions in a fiscally-constrained environment.
Taking the public on this journey will not be easy.
Our Citizens’ White Paper sets out why, when and how the government could embed citizen involvement in national policy making to tackle the complex and potentially divisive challenges facing our country and deliver on the Prime Minister’s promise to restore trust in politics.
Our paper, produced in collaboration with the participation charity Involve, makes the case for putting citizens at the heart of an evolution in policy making, bringing their insights, experience and collective judgement to bear on the challenges ahead. This will help create the governing mandate needed for change and ensure that citizens can partner with the government to deliver on the actions needed for national renewal.
The Citizens’ White Paper sets out a practical, costed roadmap to change, deliverable over the next parliament, that enables citizens to participate in the policy decisions that affect their lives. Recommendations were developed with civil servants, parliamentary officers, academics and experts from across the field. They include:
- Immediate steps: to be taken within the first 100 days, including setting up flagship ‘Citizens’ Panels’ to feed into each of the government’s new mission boards, helping to refine priorities and work through difficult trade-offs. And creating a central participation hub to provide support for policy teams across government to build participatory approaches into everyday policy making.
- Short-term actions: developing the levers to normalise participatory policy making and build a culture of participation across government. And announcing a programme of at least three national citizens’ assemblies to tackle politically and publicly salient issues in the first term, establishing a new relationship between state and citizen.
- Longer term plans: to embed new ways of working deeply in policy making systems and parliament. Including a Duty to Consider Participation to hold bill teams to account for demonstrating how they have involved the public before a bill can be introduced in Parliament; citizens playing a stronger role in post-legislative scrutiny, and independent oversight of standards.
We don’t just need new policies for these challenging times. We need new ways to tackle the policy challenges we face – from national missions to everyday policy making. We need new ways to build back trust in politicians to govern. The Citizens’ White Paper proposes that involving citizens in national policy making is one route to that new relationship between citizens and state.