How Parliament’s campaign of attrition forced the government to open up about Brexit

The issue of whether the government would allow Parliament a vote (it seems as though it will) and whether any such vote will be meaningful (it won’t be) has dominated Brexit coverage since the referendum. This has been a distraction from the main event – not least because the EU Withdrawal Act makes any vote meaningless. When the Conservatives and Labour whipped their MPs in the same direction, they whipped away Parliament’s power and gave it to the EU and UK government.

The place where Parliament has actually had most success is not  taking back control of what’s happening, but actually finding out what’s going on (or not going on). This was symbolised by the apparent success last month in forcing the government to release the 58 studies about the likely economic impact of Brexit.

MPs and the public first got wind of these ‘studies’ back in the summer when David Davis mentioned them on the Andrew Marr show: (see p.11 of this transcript):

“That  data’s  being  gathered,  we’ve  got  50,  nearly  60  sector  analyses already done, we’ve got planning work going on in the customs,  we’ve  got  planning  work  going  on  22  other  issues  which  are  critical,  127  all  told.  All  of  them  have  got  to  be  grounded  before  we come to a conclusion what it looks like.”

Repeated FOI requests for the studies by the MEP Molly Scott Cato and others failed, as the government appeared to argue it would undermine their ability to negotiate (and there are certain protections under FOI that might support this rather bland statement).

In November, Labour then used an obscure piece of parliamentary procedure to force the government into releasing its Brexit impact studies, as this blog by Andrew Defty explains. Using a motion for a return, Labour ‘transformed a non-binding opposition day motion into a binding resolution of the House’ (see more on these here in this 1999 report Section 3 (ii)).

However, the government then responded with an admission (or confession) that the ’50’ or ‘60’ – or possibly 127 – pieces of analysis are not what they seem: “As we have made clear, it is not the case that 58 sectoral impact assessments exist”. The statement went on to explain that the papers are a

“… wide mix of qualitative and quantitative analysis, contained in a range of documents developed at different times since the referendum. It examines the nature of activity in the sectors, how trade is conducted with the EU currently in these sectors and, in many cases, considers the alternatives after we leave as well as looking at existing precedents. This analysis ranges from the very high level overarching analysis to sometimes much more granular level analysis of certain product lines in specific sectors.”

At some point, a discerning reader could conclude, Davis was being ‘economical with the truth’. Either the impact studies exist (or existed) in some form, or they didn’t. It now seems that ‘Brexit studies’ doesn’t mean, as it were, ‘Brexit studies’. And whatever they are, they won’t be fully released (though the ultimate power may lie with the DExEU committee here).

Back in July of 2016, when Brexit meant Brexit and Theresa May had a majority, her new government asserted that it was for government to declare and trigger article 50 and then conduct the subsequent negotiations in a confidential way. The government were keen to keep things closed and secret. There was to be, famously, no running commentary.

In September 2016 Davis, the new secretary of state for Brexit, made it clear the limitations of any openness, saying he would be “as open as I can. More accurately, the Government will be as open as they can”. He argued that it may be ‘the most complicated negotiation ever’ but there would be ‘debates, reports by Select Committees and hearings’ and he promised:

“We will certainly match and, hopefully, improve on what the European Parliament sees. At given times, that will be tactical, I am afraid. I do not want to be boring about it, but this is likely to be the most complicated negotiation of modern times. It may be the most complicated negotiation of all times. By comparison, Schleswig-Holstein is an O-level question. We will not always be entirely free agents, but we will be as open as we can be.”

He also spoke of the impossibility of secrecy:

“… I will seek to be as open as is possible…Even were I to decide that I was going to behave like Rasputin and keep it all entirely secret, I would fail. It would not be possible… other Governments would do it. In the Government’s own interest, it is a better idea to be more open than is perhaps traditional, but always subject to the overriding point that we cannot pre-empt the negotiation.”

 In October the report from the House of Lords EU Select Committee took a rather stronger view of what right Parliament had (2016).

“One of the key objectives of parliamentary scrutiny is to ensure transparency – to cast a light on the actions of the executive. It is, we suggest, essential that many elements of the forthcoming negotiations – for instance, negotiations affecting acquired rights, or future cooperation between UK and EU police forces—should be conducted transparently.” (House of Lords EU 2016a).

Since then, Parliament has been the key to shining more light on Brexit. The sheer volume of investigation and scrutiny can be seen below:

Scrutiny of Brexit by Parliament, 13 July 2016 – 19 June 2017

Written questions	490
Written answers	819
Select committee inquiries begun	55

(House of Commons/UK Parliament: IFG)

Select committees launched more than 55 inquiries into various aspects of Brexit, though some were curtailed by the June 2017 General Election. In December 2016, the Liaison Committee was the first body to subject the Prime Minister to detailed scrutiny of the government position on Brexit revealing, perhaps inadvertently, that her approach was one of secrecy and that she appeared unaware of how exactly article 50 functioned. In one day in November 2017, in a ‘bumper day for select committees’, six select committees questioned different officials and Ministers on various aspects of Brexit. In March 2017, the new DExEU Select Committee scrutinised the government’s objectives and positions and questioned Davis, who confessed there had been no preparation for what would happen in the event of Brexit talks breaking down and that any financial settlement will favour the EU. The debate around the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) bill from January to March 2017, triggered by the Supreme Court ruling, also gave a focus to discussion and debate and revealed more about the prospects and government plans.

All this pressure has given us far more information that the government seemed prepared to give before. We have had two major Prime Ministerial speeches and one, heavy, evidence session (with another due December 20 this year). Ministers have appeared and explained (and sometimes contradicted each other) regularly. We’ve also had a Brexit White Paper (that, you’ll be pleased to know, gave us all 14 weeks holiday a year).

Brexit has not, of course, been fully opened up by Parliament. The government refused some of the more transparent options, such as a cross-party approach via Royal Commission, in 2016 and again in 2017. The January White Paper was described as ‘largely devoid of content because the UK government’s concern about negotiating secrecy’ and offered ‘as few concrete positions as it is possible to imagine’. The government also resisted Parliamentary motions to mandate regular updates on Brexit to Parliament in the future.

Nevertheless, Parliament was key in forcing appearances. Far more is known than before, and benchmarks have been lain down with the legislature’s action leading to far greater understanding of the government’s views and preparation. And here is what has proved so damaging: the lack of preparation. Westminster’s digging and pressure have revealed not what has been done but what has not been done. There is no hidden grand plan, but a void at the heart of government thinking on the most important event in the last 60 years. And this is what the ‘58’ studies symbolise. As General Montgomery once said: “I have not been told of any master plan and I must therefore assume there was none.”

Lifting the Cloud? Donald Trump’s Secrecy Problem (part 2)

              (Cover of Time Magazine 18 May 2017)

Not all secrets are bad. Keeping secrets is part of what makes us who we are. As Sissela Bok pointed out, we want, expect and need some level of confidentiality in all sorts of areas of our life, from job interviews to juries.

Nor is the revealing of a secret necessarily bad for politicians. Revelations are not always damaging or destructive. Some can survive or even thrive after exposes. President Mitterrand shrugged of a series of damaging revelations from his past while Bill Clinton’s impeachment led to greater popularity. The danger for a politicians is when secrecy and exposure either reinforce commonly held (negative) perceptions about you (let’s call it the Cameron or Clinton effect) or makes you do stupid things (let’s call it the Nixon effect).

The Clinton/Cameron effect

In terms of the Clinton/Cameron effect, exposure hurts worst when it confirms what the public already knew rather than reveals something shocking. Bill Clinton was seen as a liar and a womaniser and the Lewinsky affair in 1996 told America probably what it knew (or should have known) already. Similarly Hilary’s email ‘scandal’ reinforced what many felt, namely that the Clinton’s were dishonest. David Cameron’s 2016 tangle over his tax affairs again reinforced the view that he was a super-rich elitist out of touch with the country-a revelation, according to Tim Shipman, that helped swing the Brexit referendum towards Leave.

For Donald Trump the latest wave of revelations about Russia and his tangled attempt to get out of it confirms a great deal that we already know. For example, what does his leaking of classified information tells us? Trump is utterly lacking in caution and possesses a truly astonishing talent for self-defeating actions. There’s an interesting side debate over how a President can simply declassify information at will but a more worrying discussion over how, in doing so, Trump may have now breached his oath of office. Taken together, his actions on the Russia scandal tell us something we know already: that Trump appears, by an objective measure, unfit to be President. And those close to him such as Jared Kuschner, are under deep suspicion. Even the T word now being bandied about.

The Nixon effect

The second effect is that the need to conceal leads to a series of mistakes that deepen the crisis. Think of David Cameron’s strange present tense denials or Clinton’s lying under oath. Even by the standards of an impulsive, inexperienced leader Trump’s response has been extraordinarily self-defeating. His every action, every tweet or comment sinks him deeper. As Nixon’s former Counsel pointed out, Trump’s actions are not those of someone innocent. Trump’s actions have probably taken him far into impeachment territory.

And now?

The question is what happens next. From one point of view the new special counsel could give Trump a respite. Perhaps a formal investigation will slow or stem the leaks that flow continually from, well, everywhere while? Could it be that the formal investigation gives everyone a break from Trump’s uncontrollably impulsive actions? For all the furore it’s unclear what power the counsel will have. More importantly for Trump the findings are secret.

In fact, though the Counsel’s investigation may be secret, its very secrecy makes it even more attractive and interesting. Any findings from the Counsel will not be leak proof and this administration has proved by far the leakiest in history. It is very unlikely any potential leaker or journalist could resist trying to get it. Nor will what the counsel discovers stay safe from Congress as their report can also be subpoenaed.

Gradually small pieces of a complex jigsaw are being gathered together. None of the small parts of the puzzle are wholly incriminating. It’s not even clear what the big secret is or if it even exists. But each is incriminating of something odd or not right. Elsewhere I wrote that Trump’s bizarre cover-up tactics meant there’d be so much smoke that the existence of any fire would become immaterial. Post-Comey it looks as though Trump is purposely starting bigger fires amid an already burning White House.

Now the talk of written evidence or captured conversations means there could be a detailed paper trail, as seen with Comey’s statement (some context here). Will Trump, a president created by virtual celebrity, fake news and ephemeral information, find his fate is sealed by formal documents and record trails? If the evidence doesn’t get him, the allegations and his impulsive responses probably will: Trump the self-incriminating president may well be Clintoned and Nixoned simultaneously.

(See part one here)

FOI U-turn: Is the Government Getting Cold Feet?

Is the government, like so many others before it, considering a u-turn on FOI reform? According to the Sun it seems the  answer is yes. The Sun editorial quotes a ‘ senior Tory minister’ as saying ‘nobody in the Government wants to touch this now, it’s a very hot political potato’ and points out that the government itself has failed to present any evidence to the Commission. So why the cold feet?

• Civil society has marshalled a large array of bodies and groups, as seen with 140 signatory letter earlier this year and is (presumably) responsible for the majority of the 30,000 submissions to the Commission.
• Parliamentary arithmetic: there is opposition to FOI reform not only from Labour (who has launched its own review) and the SNP but the so called ‘Runnymeade Tories’, a group of up to 12 or so libertarian Conservative backbenchers. Should some of the changes require primary legislation, or even secondary change such as a statutory instrument (a touchy subject these days), David Davies speculated that it ‘may also have dawned on ministers is that they are have no majority to do this in either the Commons or the Lords’. Conservative Home, seen as the voice of the grassroots of the Conservative party, is also opposed to any change-and is actually pressuring to extend the Act.
• Media opposition to change: papers from the Sun to the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail have joined the opposition, with the Mail’s editor Paul Dacre making a personal intervention.

For a party with a working majority of 17 in the Commons, no majority in an already unrully House of Lords and a Prime Minister committed to lead the most open government in the world, it’s beginning to seem that FOI reform simply isn’t worth the candle. The symbolic damage sustained by cutting back on FOI will do the government far more harm than good with some of their core constituencies in the party and media. The great 2015-2016 pushback may join a long list of other attempts that (almost) all failed: 

• Introduce fees or change the cost limits (2006)
• Remove Parliament (2007)
• Removal of Monarch and Heir and exempt Cabinet documents (2010)
• Clampdown on ‘industrial users’ (2012-2013)

That may not, however, stop other bodies trying to get out of FOI…

 

Analysis of the Draft Italian Freedom of Information Law

See the Italian Draft Freedom of Information law here

Here is my analysis:

Overview

The legislation is clear, succinct and well-constructed. Particularly noteworthy are:

• A strong and clear purpose clause at the outset, emphasising the importance of transparency to the workings of Italian democracy and access to information as a right. This is important in sending a signal to those working with the legislation of its importance and can also play a part in determining later legal rulings
• The law is wide in applicability including a variety of public bodies and entities providing a public service.
• There are clearly expressed exemptions and a public interest test mechanism.
• There is a good oversight regime located in an already established body.
• Importantly there is a clear sensitivity to data protection and privacy.

Thoughts on the Proposed Legislation

The Request

• The request can normally be made by anyone with a valid email address.
• The draft law states a ‘name and address’ but that could be clarified to explain it does not mean a residential place (i.e. home) but simply an email.
• Some thought could be given to the form of requests, as the UK also now allows requests via social media-see page 22 of this guidance from the UK Information Commissioner.

The Appeal System

• The appeal timelines may prove difficult to work in practice. The draft law gives a rather short time limit of 30 days. All FOI regimes are affected by delay and appeal systems particularly so. The danger with such a timeframe is that delay will build up and slow down the system with a detrimental effect on confidence.
• Across different FOI regimes there is discussion as to whether any appeal body dealing with FOI should either (i) work closely with (ii) be the same body as that which oversees Data Protection appeals. Many appeals and complex requests concern the interaction/tension between the two principles.
• There is also an issue of who the appeal system reports to e.g. is it government or the legislature. This may lend a body independence politically and help in terms of resources.

Duty to help and assist see UK

• One very basic but helpful feature of an FOI law can be a statutory duty on authorities to assist requesters with their questions i.e. to help. See below for an example from the UK law where a body must ‘advise and assist’ e.g. in how to refine a request:

‘16 Duty to provide advice and assistance.

(1)It shall be the duty of a public authority to provide advice and assistance, so far as it would be reasonable to expect the authority to do so, to persons who propose to make, or have made, requests for information to it.

(2)Any public authority which, in relation to the provision of advice or assistance in any case, conforms with the code of practice under section 45 is to be taken to comply with the duty imposed by subsection (1) in relation to that case.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/16

Pro-Active Publication

• The draft law contains some interesting ideas on pro-active publication and how it can be promoted. The republication idea here is a good one.
• Evidence from different systems points to ‘Publication Schemes’ (i.e. mandated searchable lists of available documents displayed by each public body) as being rather outdated and rarely used by the public.
• One more promising feature are ‘disclosure logs’ whereby all previous requests and answers are listed and can be searched publically (also useful for the public body to be able to search for answers to repeat requests). Here is an example from the UK Ministry of Justice and this one from local government body Coventry City council which has a breakdown of topics and a search engine.
• Many countries are also adopting central online portals for FOI-see the US central FOI computer system e.g. US FOIA portal https://open.foia.gov/ or Mexican Federal tracking system.

Coverage of the Act: Covering new bodies

• Many laws contain a power for Ministers to add new bodies to the legislation as they are created-see here for the section of the UK law
• One body frequently discussed is Parliament. Many legislatures are partially covered for ‘administrative’ aspects of their work while the more party political aspects of their work and other confidential areas (e.g. correspondence between constituents and Members, the private work of committees) are restricted. In the UK the Speakers of both Chambers are given an exemption power to cover Parliamentary privilege (that is actually rarely used).
• The President /Quirinale should also be covered. There may be a similar need to cover some potentially sensitive correspondence as happens elsewhere.
• Other bodies of note include the police and health authorities.

Coverage of the Act: Private Bodies

• This a key area as privatisation and public-private partnerships mean private companies carry out more and more public work.
• Some FOI regimes actually cover of private bodies-both the Nigerian and South African laws cover private entities in certain situations. It is not clear how effective these parts of the legislation are or if they have significantly opened up private bodies.
• India has a different approach where you can use the Act to find out if the government is investigating a particular body, and access the information that way- see this blog for a discussion.
• The Irish FOI Act can potentially cover any body in receipt of ‘substantial’ funding from government.
• UK has currently opted for the insertion of standard transparency clauses in contracts with providers. There are numerous other options-see this discussion document from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Oversight/Implementation [including thoughts on once the law is passed]

• Separate from the appeal system, there is a need for a body to oversee implementation, particularly in the early years to promote the Act and ensure standards.
• In New Zealand there was a specific body, the ‘Information Authority’, external to government that promoted the Act and provided guidance and information that was then disbanded after 5 years.
• The UK had a body within the Ministry of Constitutional Affairs called the Information Clearing House that was more practical and dealt with compliance, requests across government and maintaining standards. Again, this was disbanded after a number of years.
• It is important that public bodies maintain and publish statistics on use of the Act and requests made to them for monitoring purposes and to get a sense of how the Act is working.
• A further important factor is to ensure political support, to persuade and create compliance, and gathering of evidence to offset concerns/anxiety among government. Frequently there are
  • Concerns over resource costs (often a camouflage for a political discussion-see this paper from Ireland and this from the UK Constitution Unit)
  • Concerns over decision-making and procedures (well protected decision-making exemptions/exclusions are the answer)
  • Concerns over ‘abuse’ (this is often centred on ‘vexatious’ requesters and journalists but here statistics and positive examples can help)
• Publicity is important in raising awareness among the public and encouraging use-the Scottish Information Commissioner ran a series of TV advertisements to encourage use and India has a state run TV show on its Right to Information Act.
• Legislation can also usefully be reviewed by Parliamentary Committees at certain intervals once the law is in place. In the UK, for example, a Parliamentary Select Committee reviewed the Act one year on and there was further detailed post-legislative scrutiny in 2012.

Further Links

• Analysis of the Italian law by the Centre for Law and Democracy here
• UK Post-legislative scrutiny by the Justice Select Committee in 2012 see here.
• Analysis of a number of older FOI regimes from 1999 based on the UK’s draft FOI see here.

Which online tools can really help you decide how to vote?

The 2015 election has brought voters a plethora of helpful tools. Here’s how to use them. Away from the ground war in the streets and air war in the mainstream media, the 2015 election is, in many ways, an online affair. The parties are spending big on social media campaigns and even offering reward points to supporters for sharing content.

The election is also driving a whole new suite of online voting tools for voters.These new tools can help the electorate find out a great deal about an election, from basic information such as who is standing, to how your MP has voted and even the “power” of your vote. Here’s a selection of some of the top sites.

Who should I vote for?

Vote for Policies allows you to assess the policies of different parties “anonymously”. It offers you a list of policies in areas such as immigration, the economy or education, without telling you which party they belong to, and asks you to select which most applies to your views. It then tells you which party best reflects your answers.

A recent survey of the site found that 50% of users surveyed considered changing their vote after having used it – and a full 63% were surprised to discover which policy belonged to which party. And in the same vein, Who Gets My Vote offers a range of policies, one at a time, and asks if you agree or disagree with them.

If you’re looking for something with a little more local flavour, the crowdsourced database of 2015 candidates yournextmp offers a snapshot of everyone in your constituency who wants to be your MP and is running. It also contains links to their history in the area, Wikipedia mentions and their social media presence. It’s still under construction so keep checking.

Does my vote count?

Tools are also available to help you understand the local context of your vote too. The democratic dashboard tells you your local constituency results since 2005, to help you find out about how your party of choice has fared in the past before you cast your vote. It also includes information on the deprivation ranking of your local area and the amount being spent on campaigning there by different parties.

Perhaps most importantly, it also offers a voter power index, which explains how much your vote is worth. This tells me that my constituency is a fairly safe seat, so my vote has 0.29% (or a third) of the power of the one person one vote we are all supposed to have. This helps make the case for proportional representation, which is beginning to rumble again.

Are they worth my vote?

If you want to check up on how sitting MPs have performed during their time in Westminster, the famed TheyWorkforYou scrapes data on all sitting MPs. It can tell you how an MP has voted on issues that matter to you and what they have said in debates.

This site attracted record numbers at the 2010 election, including one in five users who said they had not previously engaged in politics. You could even cross reference what you find out on this site with the information available on public whip to see who voted the way you would like in the House of Commons.

And if you want to see if your local candidate is making promises they can’t keep or maybe playing fast and loose with the truth, you can use Full Fact to see if their policies bear any relation to reality. Further down the line, you might want to remember just what it was candidates were promising when you voted for them. Perhaps my favourite site for this is electionleaflets.org.

This is an online notice board where users can upload images of election leaflets to record what their local candidates say they will do if elected. You can search for leaflets by party or by local area. It’s aiming for 10,000 leaflets uploaded by 7th May and has an archive of 6,000 from the last election. That’s a lot of information that could prove very useful for holding your elected representative to account over the course of the next parliament.

Will it work?

All these tools enable us to know far more about candidates, policies and, more generally, what they have been doing than ever before. They could make things messy, chaotic and unpredictable by challenging our long-held beliefs about the parties and the candidates. But they may also enable voters to become players in the political information cycle rather than just passive recipients of election spin.

With voters now more focused on single issues, these new sites give us a way of quickly finding out who has said and done what or who stands for what across many different issues. This time around, we won’t need to wait for a YouTube mash-up to know if the next Nick Clegg has u-turned.

This article was originally on the Conversation.

 

 

What Do People Want To Know at This Election?

The Guardian’s data editor Alberto Nardelli says the top 10 most-Googled topics in the UK today are all about the election.

1. Who should I vote for?
2. Who are my local candidates?
3. How do I vote?
4. Where do I vote?
5. Where is my polling station?
6. What is the ‘who do I vote for’ quiz?
7. What do I need to vote?
8. Can I vote online?
9. Who will win the election?
10. Who can vote in the UK?

What Did People Want to Know During the Debates?

In the UK we have just had our one (and only) Leaders’ Debate involving seven of the UK’s main parties (Labour, Conservative, SNP, Liberal-Democrats, Party of Wales, The Greens and UKIP-though oddly excluding those from Northern Ireland). Here’s the top ten Google searches made during the debate, courtsey of Alberto Nardelli:

Google has been sharing with us the most googled questions through the debate. They were:

1. Who is winning the leader’s debate?
2. Who should I vote for?
3. Who is Nigel Farage married to?
4. What is a referendum?
5. Where is Natalie Bennett from?
6. Can I vote for the SNP?
7. How do I register to vote?
8. How tall is Nigel Farage?
9. What is austerity?
10. What does Plaid Cymru mean?

 

And the leaders in order of the popularity of their google search:

1. Leanne Wood

2. Nicola Sturgeon

3. Natalie Bennett

4. Ed Miliband

5. Nigel Farage

6. Nick Clegg

7. David Cameron

You can see analysis from the three way 2010 debate here and a very good article by Andrew Chadwick describing how social media has changed who has the power to shape such important ‘political events’, through opening up what he calls the political information cycle.

‘Cash For Access’: Will Miliband’s Plans Work?

In the wake of the latest ‘Cash for Access’ revelation, Ed Miliband has committed to limit MPs outside earnings to £10,000 per year and introduce a ban on all second jobs. The Labour party will start tomorrow, using its opposition day to propose a bill on the subject. These proposals fit with a series of steps since the 1990s designed to open up and regulate this area as controversy has grown about extra earnings and work. But how will these latest changes impact on MPs and the public?

In terms of MPs, the two issues are whether the new proposals will be implemented and whether they will work. Implementing a ‘cap’ and (eventual) ban on outside earnings would represent an easy win for a new Labour government in 2015, a symbolic step that would have ‘signalling effect’ for the new government’s attitude towards such behaviour. On a more partisan level, it will hit Conservatives much harder than Labour. Research by the Guardian indicates that this would impact on 63, or 1 in 5, Conservative MPs who currently earn over £63,000 as against only 20, or 1 in 12, Labour MPs. You can see more numbers from the Telegraph here.

However, it all may depend on whether Ed Miliband has the numbers in the new House and what politics exists around the change. As Meg Russell pointed out, a number of things need to align for any reform of Parliament to happen – a mixture of a relevant crisis, political will and the right context. Remember David Cameron’s cutting down of the House of Commons to 600 MPs?

The second question for MPs is whether it will work. The reforms are part of a longer trajectory of change towards regulation and transparency. The danger of is that such change can drive poor activity into hard to reach places, away from publicity and into dark corners. It could also trigger other unwanted debate, such as around what MPs do with their time or, more disturbingly, Members getting a pay rise – new Prime Minister Miliband is not likely to want to propose bumping up salaries to £150,000.

What of the public? The new proposals are designed to help increase trust and put an end to lobbying scandals. One basic question is whether the public will notice. It is claimed that few even know the name of their MP, though recent research has challenged this. The public does support a complete ban on second jobs (see page 6 of this polling) and, as research by Rosie Campbell and Philip Cowley shows, they do not approve of wealthy MPs, objecting to both the ‘sums and the source’, with a particular dislike of directorships. Their experiment concluded that any sum of money earned while an MP, whether above or below the cap, is problematic.

Whether this will then increase public trust is a far bigger, and more complex, question. It may reduce the space or room for manoeuvre in this one area. However, hopes of ‘improving trust’ over-simplify how we think and process information – the MPs’ expenses scandal ‘confirmed’ to many that MPs were corrupt rather than ‘revealed’ it to them. Voters generally suffer from  a negativity bias and the continual string of ‘cash for…’ revelations are likely to have fed already deeply held views about UK politics. Nor will it end other sources of Parliamentary controversy, from the revolving door to the picking of leaves. So while it may help change behaviour, looking at the graph below, it appears unlikely any one thing can dramatically improve trust in MPs.

Source: Ipsos Mori; House of Commons Library Research

The original is here

Secrets, Lies and Coalitions: Should Post-Election Negotiations be Secret?

An interesting point of view from Liberal-Democrat Minister David Laws reported in the Guardian on the need to keep post-election Coalition talks secret (with a Coalition of some kind looking very likely).

In a keynote speech at thinktank the Institute for Government on Monday, the Liberal Democrat MP for Yeovil said he thought that the way the coalition was formed in May 2010, without the then head of the civil service, Gus O’Donnell, in attendance, allowed politicians to “cut to the chase more quickly and have slightly more candid, productive arguments”.

He said that coalition talks are more effective when politicians don’t “feel they’re being minuted and recorded by civil servants than when they feel that everything is being done in a more public way”. Laws argued that it can be difficult for the civil service to maintain complete independence when it is drawn in to advising different political parties.

He continued: “I think it was William Hague in May 2010 who joked, when we locked Gus O’Donnell out of the door … that at least now he wouldn’t need to worry about freedom of information requests coming in about what we were discussing and, sure enough, on the very last day of the coalition talks … the civil service received the first freedom of information request from some industrious journalist asking for the minutes from all our coalition talks. We were able to say quite honestly that there were no government minutes.”

Two quick thoughts here. First, how democratic is  it to keep coalition talks secret? Second, why not just make an FOI for any emails or phone call notes (even texts?) between officials or others relating to what’s said during or after the event?

Who Will Win in 2015?

 

Not about Open Data but an interesting talk about the uncertainties in the UK 2015 General Election

Peter Kellner, expert pollster and President of YouGov, spoke to the Centre for British Politics and Public life last Wednesday. You can see some of YouGov’s latest polls here.

His talk is on a podcast here.

Peter spoke of how influential polls could be. He gave the example of the YouGov poll run by the Sun in August 2013 before proposed military intervention in Syria in 2013. This polling had a real impact on the subsequent debate and may have contributed to the narrow defeat of the vote on military action (or to put it more precisely, on the government motion).

Public opinion can also be fickle-see the changes here in public opinion over the War in Iraq and the fluctuation in the ‘support’ and ‘oppose’ column between 2002 and 2007 . The public can also get it wrong (see how mistaken we are about everything here). Peter spoke about the need for leadership and the fact that a leader’s job is to sometimes to tell people they are wrong. Immigration is good example-see this gap between perceptions and reality.

So how about the big question-who will win in 2015? In brief, it isn’t clear. Most elections are decided not by switches to Labour-Conservative but by undecided and Liberal-Democrat voters. However, for 2015 there is not one but, as Peter put it, 3 wildcards.

Wildcard 1: How will the Liberal Democrats do? We do not know whether or to what extent Liberal Democrats will suffer (or not) for being in government. Previous election results were based on Liberal Democrats as a ’third party’ and a ‘protest vote’. How many seats will they lose from their 57? Will they be down to 30? 20? Or will their famously efficient ground organisation machine save them? This analysis concludes ‘there are so many possibilities, you can make up your own mind what it all means’.

Wildcard 2 How will UKIP do? This is less about what seats they may capture-possibly 10 but more likely 4 to 6. More importantly, how may Labour versus Conservative seats will they throw in a particular direction? Here the number may be many more (see this blog by our own Eric Kaufmann and this analysis of UKIP support)

Wildcard 3: How will the Scottish National Party do? A recent YouGov poll gave the SNP an astonishing 19 point lead in Scotland, enough to capture 31 seats from Labour. Even if this does not happen, the SNP could capture enough of them to deprive Ed Miliband of victory. This is indeed Labour’s Scottish nightmare.

So these three wildcards may well shape who wins or loses, without mentioning even more complications such as the Greens, now polling higher than the Liberal-Democrats. The most likely result is some sort of ‘messy coalition’ made up of various parties of one combination or another. One thing is sure, as Peter puts it here, ‘Those days of decisive, first-past-the-post election outcomes might be over, at least for the time being’.