Citizenship Foundation Voices

I was pleased to see that the Speaker’s Conference on Parliamentary Representation recommended in their final report (published on Monday) that in ‘England, the Department for Children Schools and Families should work with headteachers and with Ofsted to ensure that the importance of citizenship is better understood and the subject is taught with quality and appropriate breadth. In the devolved administrations, the equivalent authorities should consider a similar approach in the relevant curriculum areas’. (more…)

That sounds like a massive question, doesn’t it?  Don’t read on if you expect me to answer it in this blog post – I’m merely aiming to think through the MPs’ expenses debacle and what questions recent events might raise for the Citizenship Foundation.

Over the past couple of days I’ve had conversations with Andy (Director of Participation and Social Action at the Foundation) and Tony (our Chief Exec) about whether or not the Foundation has something to say on the expenses scandal.  Over various discussions we all agreed that, as an organisation, we believe that that this is a time for everyone to take ownership of our political system and that we hope teachers across the country are using the debate as an opportunity to tackle some difficult questions around trust and democratic representation with their students.  Indeed, we’ve got lots to say on the subject, but I took the view that there probably wasn’t much point entering into the media scrum at the moment with a message that is positive and/or constructive.  Defeatist as this might sound, I think it’s fair to say that a measured response would be considered positively boring, what with all the back-biting and political manoeuvring taking place on our TV screens and in our papers.

So we’re not going to stand up and shout about what’s going on.  But that hasn’t stopped me – and I’m sure other colleagues – from thinking about the long-term impacts the scandal is going to have on public trust in politicians and our political institutions.  I think this is a systemic problem, one that has arisen because Parliament has been allowed to create the very system that is supposed to regulate their behaviour.  This is an obviously skewed arrangement; who knows how creative we all could be if we were allowed to write the tax policy, for instance, that applied to our own earnings?  From the fear of anarchy implicit in such a proposition, it follows that it is right for public decisions regarding issues of self-interest to be handed up to our political representatives; this is a basic principle of our democratic arrangements.  What puzzles me is that we don’t extend this logic to our representatives themselves.

As it stands now, an independent inquiry will look at the expenses system and make recommendations, which the Government and Parliament will either accept or reject.  We, the public, are supposed to be cheered by the independence of the review.  But I can’t be with final decision-making power still resting in the hands of the political establishment, rather than with – at least at some level – citizens.

And this is when I get to empowerment.  What has struck me about this whole mess is how confined public anger towards and interest in MPs’ apparent abuse of the system is.  Several representative groups have been polled to demonstrate the outrage.  Media pundits talk at length about the electoral impacts, both at the European elections in June and the General Election in, presumably, 2010.  But when it comes to the nitty-gritty – how to sort this out – the problems are for MPs themselves and not for us, as citizens, to think through.

All too often it seems to me that the ideal empowered citizen, from the point of view of the political establishment, operates on his or her own street, getting the council to fill a pot hole, or organising activities for local young people.  I would never suggest that these activities aren’t important, but I wonder if they are all that we should aspire to.

Can we be empowered citizens if we are only able to call our representatives to account at elections?  Can we be empowered citizens if our political institutions judge us too busy/uninterested/not clever enough to think through the checks and balances that should exist in Parliament?  Is there really a problem with public trust in politicians and institutions – or is the real issue that we, as citizens, are not allowed the national, political space to trust ourselves?

At last the government is being told to teach people how to speak effectively. Without that skill, the integrity of civic society is undermined by a noisy minority.

In his report published today, Sir Jim Rose has called for a stronger focus on “formal language, including standard spoken English in the primary curriculum”. This is to be welcomed, and is long overdue.

As viewers of BBC Two’s The Speaker might have noted in recent weeks, the gains that come with being able to speak competently and confidently in public - and in a range of contexts - go far beyond “word poverty”. Participants came out with higher self-esteem, and able to engage more effectively both in the community and as consumers; both of which will make them more employable.

But these skills also enable the more effective use of important social devices: advocacy, negotiation, leadership.

Time and again, speaking in public comes close to the top of public fear surveys - right up there with concerns about health and well-being, family stability and financial security. How many people won’t take a lead in their residents’ association because they’re terrified of speaking in public? How many great engineers do not, for the same reason, rise to the leadership of their companies? How often does the “quiet” student go unnoticed in class because of a nervousness in “speaking out”? How many people are treated badly as consumers because they’re afraid to voice their complaints?

And, crucially, how many people would be more involved in civic and political life if they weren’t afraid of speaking in public?

People who readily voice their opinions are the ones who get heard. The more of us that feel able to speak up, the more that public spaces - be they classrooms or council chambers - are likely to be reclaimed from the noisy few.

The Citizenship Foundation, SpeakersBank and Speakers Trust are among those organisations currently working together to build support for a broader campaign on this issue: a National Campaign for Public Speaking.

Yesterday, listening to Radio 4 while I got ready to go to work, I was struck by an exchange between the Cabinet Minister, Liam Byrne MP, and Jill Kirby, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies. Liam Byrne was announcing a new Government funded research scheme to ‘identify and promote innovative ways for the third sector to act as a strong voice specifically for the most disadvantaged people in society’. In other words, the fund has been established to help charities strengthen their campaigning capabilities.

Jill Kirby is not a fan. She is of the opinion that charities should be service providers, not campaigners. She was particularly scathing about children’s charities, such as Barnardo’s, who have been pressurising the Government to live up to their promise to ‘end child poverty’, when they could be using their resources to help children on the ground. Kirby sums up her position in a comment piece in the Times, saying: ‘I don’t want to pay for another billboard or opinion poll. But to fund a place of safety for a child being beaten or abused - that’s a cause worth supporting any day’.

Of course it’s up to Kirby to decide where she donates her money, but I think she’s presenting a false choice here. For a small to medium sized, or newly established, charity, having a strong, well-researched campaigning message that can be taken to decision-makers for action and, yes, put on billboards can, in the best cases, achieve two things. Firstly, a campaign that gets good publicity can bring more in more donations to the charity from ‘ordinary’ people, which in turn can fund more safe places for children (for instance). Secondly, it could achieve the political change it asks for, addressing the roots of whatever problem the charity has been set up to address. Here I’m thinking about the Government’s commitment to ending child poverty. It’s quite clear to me why Barnardo’s would have an interest in holding the Government to account on this.

In any case, it will be interesting to see how this new fund takes shape. It’s not being administered by the Cabinet Office, but by Capacity Builders, and not many details are available just yet.

Tony and Ade gave evidence to the Speaker’s Conference yesterday and I came along to provide moral support and take notes.

The Speaker’s Conference is investigating how to rectify ‘the disparity between the representation of women, ethnic minorities and disabled people in the House of Commons and their representation in the UK population at large’. That the Speaker’s Conference was established at all must mean that the House of Commons recognises that this is a serious problem - following from that, I assumed that there was, at the very least, a tacit agreement that the traditional routes towards becoming an MP (through the political parties) aren’t working. But, confusingly, no such agreement seemed apparent in yesterday’s session.

Indeed, the strongest theme to emerge from the questions asked of CF, ACT, the Young Foundation and the UK Youth Parliament was a preoccupation with driving young people towards political party membership, with Diane Abbott MP even suggesting that our organisations currently promote ‘value-free activism’. I know Ade has been thinking about this question since (and has blogged about it today), but I thought I’d also add in my two pence.

There’s nothing wrong with joining a political party, being active at a local level and gradually moving towards a seat in Westminster. Really, there’s a lot right with it, especially when an MP is able to draw on years of experience working in the communities they represent. And this party system has given us Diane Abbott (the first black woman MP) and Jo Swinson (another woman who, at 29, is the youngest MP in the House right now) - so it’s probably no wonder that MPs think that the old model simply needs to be reinvigorated or resuscitated to achieve the levels of participation a fair democracy demands.

And yet it appears that there is no going back, no magic formula that can recreate the conditions - industrialisation, world wars, the trade union movement, strong family associations - that drew so many people to political parties. This does not mean that I think that the political parties have had their day, but I do think they need to face up to the reality that the easiest way for organisations like ourselves to engage young people in politics is not to invite them along to a constituency party meeting where established party members dominate the agenda, but rather to find an issue that matters to them and support them in making change themselves. If the parties want to stay vibrant and viable, I think they need to make the same kind of offer.