The Review of the Funding of Political Parties Forum

URL

http://forum.partyfundingreview.gov.uk/

CASE STUDY OWNER

The Review of the Funding of Political Parties

LESSONS LEARNT

Strengths

• The Review’s methods were independent of the Cabinet Office Code of Practice on Consultations;
• Input from public and stakeholders was sought early on in the Review;
• Public and experts were invited to deliberate together;
• The Review team provided feedback to participants and contributed to the discussions in a facilitation role;
• The Review team posted regular discussion summaries;
• The weekly initiation of new discussion topics maintained momentum;
• There was continuity between discussion topics.

Potential for improvement:

• Frequency of input from experts was lower than anticipated by Review team;
• More encouragement to get involved should be given to those who are not politically motivated. This could have been achieved through more strategic communications and marketing;
• There should have been greater use of links to related websites, blogs and forums as on the main Party Funding Review website;
• More background information should have been made available to users on the forum site itself.

OVERVIEW

Sir Hayden Phillips was asked to conduct an independent review of the funding of political parties. In particular, the Review was to look into:

• The case for public funding of political parties;
• The transparency of political parties’ funding.

The Review was asked to report to the government by the end of December 2006 with any recommendations for change.

POLICY PURPOSE

The forum formed part of the engagement and opinion-seeking activity undertaken by the Review.

The purpose of the forum was to allow Sir Hayden Phillips and his team to engage with members of the public in a dialogue on the key issues. The forum was run prior to the formation of policy proposals, and afterwards following publication of an interim report.

MODEL

The website was an online deliberative forum.

Registration was required by those seeking to contribute, but the forums were available for general reading. The core user base was UK citizens.

Pre-moderation was carried out by the Review team, members of which also posted into the forum to facilitate deliberation.

Discussion on the website was structured around themes set by the Review. New themes were opened each week; there were only two themes live at any point: these were:

• Objectives of the Review (July 25 to August 4);
• Caps on donations (July 31 to August 11);
• Trade unions and party finances (August 7 to August 18);
• Limits on expenditure (August 14 to August 25);
• Are you involved? (August 21 to September 1);
• State funding (August 28 to September 8);
• How should party funding be accountable to you? (September 4 to September 15);
• What do you think the future party funding system should look like? (September 18 to October 6).

In addition to public and stakeholder participants, the Review invited subject experts (‘Opinion Leaders’) to participate in the forum by providing information and assisting in the facilitation of debate.

DURATION

The forum was open from July 25 to Oct 6, 2006

PUBLICITY

The forum was linked to from the main Review website.

It was also linked to from a range of interest group websites and by bloggers.

Press releases were distributed to mainstream media and via the Government News Network.

There was no paid-for marketing.

OTHER METHODS USED

Submissions were also encouraged by post and email.

USER PROFILES

358 registered users: 77% male; 12% female, 11% unspecified.

Of respondents to the pre-forum survey (n=69), around 95% said that they were regular internet users: the majority (67%) said that they accessed the internet from home.

Forum registrants had a high level of previous political engagement offline. However, 65% had never taken part in an online consultation, review or engagement process previously.

A significant proportion (42%) of those who had taken part in online forms of engagement previously were members of political parties.

Despite previous political participation in one form or another, efficacy was low in our pre-forum sample: 69% did not believe that the government listens to ordinary people. The same percentage believed that they had no influence on those making policy.

USAGE TRENDS

135 participants made a total of 217 posts.

Five opinion leaders posted 10 comments. The other five opinion leaders who had accepted the Review team’s invitation to take part in the forum did not post. Meanwhile, the five members of the Review team made 35 posts.

Most registrations and posts were received in the first full month of the forum’s existence. Where the rate of registrations and posts decreased, the rate of visitors and traffic remained consistent and was sustained long after the close of the live forum:

USER FEEDBACK

For the majority of participants (65%), the forum was their only means of engagement with the Review: 4% contributed to another forum; 19% wrote a letter and 8% submitted an email to the Review; 4% attended a private meeting.

Despite the low efficacy of participants, many believed that online deliberations provide a good form of engagement. A large proportion said that they would be happy to participate in online deliberations in the future and would recommend them to others. With regards to the Party Funding forum, some ambivalence was apparent. Participant evaluations are represented as percentages below:

Respondents to the post-activity survey (n=26) reported that they used the forum to read through the debate rather than contribute to it:

Respondents perceived that the majority of the deliberation was between peers:

DETAILED FEEDBACK

Public engagement was viewed as vital to carrying out an effective review. The Review team, however, was small and had minimal resources at its disposal. Online engagement methods, therefore, offered some distinct advantages. The Review team believed that an online forum could bring together diverse stakeholders and members of the public more easily than could be achieved via an offline meeting. Crucially, it could also maintain a structured deliberation that would make contributions easier to analyse.

The Review team made concerted efforts to engage citizens via the forum: prior to its launch, they took a considered approach to marketing and recruitment. The Review team went to lengths to moderate the forum in an open and responsive manner, to recruit expert stakeholders alongside public participants, and ensure that the online discussions were structured in such a way that maintained a consistency with other consultation routes.

As an independent review, it was not bound by the same consultation processes that a department would have had to adhere to. This flexibility of methods and depth of interaction certainly benefited the Review. Nevertheless, the Review did find itself dealing with similar obstacles to effective online engagement experienced by other case studies in Digital Dialogues.

Online consultations carry a risk that only the outspoken or the already engaged will take part. Effective recruitment strategies need to be in place to ensure that a range of perspectives is solicited. Interest groups took out high-profile media marketing to engage the public in their campaigns on party funding; the Review team was reluctant to undertake similar marketing (and was short on funds to do so) but could have used the media interest as a vehicle to bring a greater number and range of participants to the forum.

This case study illustrates how – at a general level – the use of new media can enhance democratic engagement. However, the public will remain sceptical unless systems of accountability and transparency are in place to reassure participants that their responses are not being skewed to suit particular policy objectives – perhaps an even more important factor in the case of independent reviews. The public also needs to be convinced that the system is safe in terms of data protection and privacy.

FOLLOW UP

The Review team undertook analysis of submissions, which fed into an Interim Assessment (published in October 2006). Further engagement on the key issues in the Assessment was carried out (see case study 4b.).