Discussing motherhood and apple pie with Michael Wills

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Alexandra Runswick (London, Unlock Democracy): On the edge of your seat waiting for the latest exciting instalment on how the British Statement of Values and Citizens Summit is actually going to work? No? Just as well really, as the NCVO sponsored meeting last week with Michael Wills was certainly detail-lite.

Anthony Barnett has rebuked me for not sharing the scintillating insights and fascinating public policy lessons learned from the meeting but to be brutal; there were none. All I can report is that motherhood and apple pie AKA participation and engagement are generally considered to be good things. Michael Wills, as ever, was passionate about the agenda and committed to making the Citizens Summit a meaningful deliberative exercise. I have no doubt that he personally wants the British Statement of Values to be a radical citizen engagement exercise. However I don't see how it can be when so little policy detail is available at this late stage.

In December 2007 Peter Facey posed six key questions to determine whether this process would genuinely involve citizens or just be another exercise in window dressing. Six months on we're none the wiser. In February we organised a seminar on popular participation in constitutional reform specifically to focus this debate on how the process could be run. Again, no joy on the detail front, although lots of platitudes.

This meeting was all about getting grassroots voluntary sector organisations to buy into the process. But for people to believe that a process is going to be effective and worth them endorsing they need substantially more information than the proposals will be published in "weeks" and that the Summit will hopefully take place before the end of this Parliament. When pressed for specifics on issues such as how young people would be involved in the process; what funding would be made available to reach socially excluded groups; or what engagement exercises there would be around the Bill of Rights rather than the Statement of Values, no answers were forthcoming.

One thing I did find interesting was Michael Wills' repeated reference to the Magna Carta and 1689 Bill of Rights as successful examples of constitutional reform not initiated by the government. It's easy to romanticise both of those documents but they did both involve a significant shift in power. Where is the equivalent shift in power in the Governance of Britain proposals? Yes the Royal Prerogative is going to be reformed but in appearance rather than reality. It is difficult to imagine even an unpopular Prime Minister losing a vote about when to call a general election, for example. If the government really wants to engage people in a debate about the Governance of Britain they are going to have to let go of the process and be prepared to radically decentralise power in the UK. Otherwise what is the point?

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