Consultation: Research tool or Democratic safeguard?

This is Blog No 108

Many people still struggle over the meaning and role of consultation.

Maybe it is because there are many definitions. Some are simple – indeed simplistic. We frequently hear that ‘Consultation is just listening.’                                                                                  (AI generated image)

Far better is the formula published in the 2025 House of Commons Research Briefing on Government Consultations. It says that “consultation is a process of inviting people to share their view on an issue to help inform decision-making”.

For almost twenty years, the Consultation Institute taught people that consultation was “The dynamic process of dialogue between individuals or groups, based upon a genuine exchange of views and, with the objective of influencing decisions, policies or programmes of action.”

This adds some extra nuances that can sometimes be significant, but the essence of the process is the reference to influence. In effect, a consultor asks consultees for advice specifically to consider when deciding or approving something. Those who have legitimate power to take such actions are not obliged to follow consultee advice, but they are obliged to ‘conscientiously’ consider what’s been said.

In reality, of course, there are many types and sources of information that contribute to complex decision-making and over the years many models have been developed to help understand how best to approach complex situations. Almost 50 years ago, I was shown how to use a structured technique developed by two Americans. Charles Kepner was a psychologist, and Benjamin Tregoe was a management consultant with expertise in organisational behaviour. They developed the Kepner-Tregoe company that pioneered the use of statistical techniques to ‘score’ various criteria, helped solve problems and take difficult decisions.

The result was a massive boost in the need for data. The ‘age of information’ had begun, because so many criteria for so many projects could not be assessed without numbers. Consultancies became numerate and survey firms expended. In particular, market research flourished. Back in the 1930s George Gallup had started asking people questions, experimented with sampling and ran the earliest surveys. In the 1960s, these now proliferated and suddenly, commercial companies – especially USA-based ones - started using them to understand consumer priorities and preferences.

It was only a matter of time before research tools like surveys, and their many off-shoots began being used in politics!  Because of the money available in the US system, early progress was across the Atlantic, but roughly since 1979, British public life has also been dominated by research – on issues, electorates and political personalities!  ‘Politics by focus group’ may be derided in some quarters, but it’s much relied upon. Those who commission and invest in such research obviously feel it is worthwhile.

But is it consultation?

In simple, mechanical terms, of course it is. Consultation uses many of the same tools as market research, and often in an identical form. In detail, there are differences, especially in selecting audiences and allowing all viewpoints to be heard, but let’s not quibble. Teaching public engagement teams how to use these research tools will certainly equip them to do 80% of the consultation job. Enough to get by. But maybe not everything.

That’s because consultation IS a wider concept. And in a liberal democracy, plays a wholly disproportionate role as policy-making safety-valve. In the UK, some of this has happened by accident. We still use first-past-the-post and resisted attempts to adopt a more proportionate electoral system – for Westminster anyway. So, as in today’s Parliament, we can have a legislature that is not very representative, and consultation is useful as a check on any imbalance in the election result  Secondly, we remain a  heavily centralised bureaucracy, so Ministers are very reluctant to delegate too much to the executive agencies, quangos and all the other agents of state. What they do is circumscribe their decision-making by instructing them to consult on many aspects of their brief. The result is that UK public bodies are committed by law – or guidance – to a massive agenda of consultation – ironically, far more clearly stipulated than the obligations on Government departments themselves!

Thirdly, our Courts have responded to the pressure from judicial reviews by developing a complex cadre of case law based around the doctrine of ‘legitimate expectation’ and the well-known Gunning Principles.

All this has created a culture that – for anything important, key stakeholders expect to be fairly consulted. And the public as well.  Neither group believes in leaving matters to the intermittent ballot-box, for they realise that events often frustrate best intentions and that the devil is in the kind of details seldom specified in a manifesto. Consultation is also a form of insurance policy for those who have to convert politicians’ aspirations into workable policies. It allows them to explore the practicality or desirability of different ways of doing something. They can indulge in some kite-flying, define some options and identify those most likely to be affected by the impacts.

Many active campaigners worry a lot about the future of democracy. Beset by deliberate or negligent disinformation, the difficulties of satisfying electorates who have seen their standards of living eroded and worried that trust in political institutions is declining, they argue for more participative forms of democracy. Many want Parliaments to surrender much power and hand it over deliberative assemblies of various kind, and selected by forms of sortition. No doubt some of these ideas will secure considerable support.

Consultation is part of the solution but is not concerned with shifts in the power dynamics. What consultation does is help the existing decision-makers work better. By ensuring that decision-makers MUST take account of the views of consultees, it reduces the risk of taking poor decisions, BUT DOES NOT ELIMINATE IT.

This means that those who organise consultations – and who carry the burden of analysis, interpretation and explaining its output to those in power – have a huge responsibility. Nowhere is the old Quaker phrase ‘Telling truth to power’ more applicable.

If the data you’ve gathered is just research, you can do much as you please with it. But if you have run a consultation – and told people that this is what you’re doing, then your obligation to convey the ‘truth’ that you have discovered is far more onerous. It is an important democratic safeguard in that it helps prevent capricious or ignorant abuse of power. Not perfect. Not infallible.

But a precious safeguard nonetheless.

Rhion H Jones LLB