Heads The Public Sector Wins, Tails The Public Loses

As anyone who follows me on Twitter will be aware, I was out of the country on Thursday when the government finally announced its latest pretence at listening to the public over plain packaging two months late.

The previous one showed that a significant majority think the idea to be pretty silly [pdf pg 31] ...

... but since when were the public listened to in a public consultation, eh?

What happened after the original consultation was that the Department of Health ignored all those hundreds of thousands of rejections and only focussed on what they called "detailed responses" for their big announcement.

Many thousands of responses to the consultation were received, and the views expressed were highly polarised, with strong views put forward on both sides of the debate and a range of organisations generating campaigns and petitions. Of those who provided detailed feedback, some 53% were in favour of standardised packaging while 43% thought the Government should do nothing about tobacco packaging.

Lo and behold, a majority in favour! It's almost like magic, isn't it?

Of course, if you were to download the full report, the true view of the public - which was ignored in the official statement, and about which Anna Soubry claimed ignorance - is crystal clear.

In total, 665,989 campaign responses were received from 24 separate campaigns. Around two-thirds of campaign responses received were from people who are opposed to the introduction of standardised packaging (total of 427,888 responses) and one-third of campaign responses received were from people who are in support (238,101 responses) as shown in figure 5.1 (that's that pretty pie chart above - DP). 

Hence the gerrymandering by only quoting the detailed responses in official communications.

However, by way of contrast, let's look at what happened when the government 'consulted the public' about banning tobacco displays in 2008.

Over 96,000 responses were received ... the largest ever response to a consultation of this kind. Responses overwhelmingly supported removing tobacco displays in shops, and tough action to restrict access to vending machines. Since the ban on tobacco advertising, retail displays in shops are the main way in which tobacco products are marketed to children

No mention of "detailed responses" back then, because the result went the 'correct' way. Or, as the Filthy Smoker observed at the time.

Of the 96,000 responses, only a handful came from private individuals. The rest came from block-voting by state-funded pressure groups and charities. 

Sure enough, SmokeFree NorthWest - with 49,507 votes - is entirely funded by the DoH. Direct Movement by the Youth Smokefree Team - with 10,757 votes - is entirely funded by SmokeFree Liverpool who are entirely funded by the DoH). SmokeFree NorthEast - with 8,128 votes - is entirely funded by...yes, the DoH. 

Weighing in with a further 1,562 votes were SmokeFree Action. 

Not so much a public consultation as a public sector consulation.

And that's not even mentioning the fact that the DoH airbrushed out 35,000 responses that they didn't like, as admirably reported by Medical News. 

So, what we can gather from what modern politicians laughably call public consultations is that if a postcard or quick click response is in favour of what they and their pet powerful vested interests want to do anyway, they'll shout it from the rooftops. But if it's not, it's time for plan B and to only look at the "detailed responses" which - of course - are mostly submitted by organisations whose only job is to do so on state-supplied wages. 

It stinks, as I'm sure you'll agree, and not something restricted to just this issue - this kind of abuse of democracy is happening every day in any number of different government departments, most of it beneath the radar of anyone but those who are paid to lobby Westminster. This is why, as well as adding your name to the No Prime Minister campaign if you haven't already, you should also consider adding a "detailed response" to this new second consultation. Regular readers of this blog will remember that many of us did exactly this for the original consultation back in 2012, which I'm sure had an impact in restricting the biased farce to only a narrow 53%/43% split.

Just like last time out, when I'm less busy I'll be drafting a consultation response on this site for anyone who wants to crib, or you can just go ahead and submit your own. You have a few weeks to mull over exactly how you want to word it as the process runs until August 7th, but do make sure you seriously consider doing so. The alternative is that, yet again, the state-funded public sector gets to dictate terms to the rest of us without fear of being challenged, and politicians get to find yet another way of lying to us ... as they repeatedly illustrate with their sham ploy of public consultations.

Full details are here (in many languages), with the online submission form available at this link. Do go have a look.