Where there's a Wills there's a way

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John Jackson (London, Unlock Democracy): Many political commentators are enjoying great sport by sniffing out and pursuing members of the presently besieged government who smell like attractive quarry. With increasing frequency the victims deserve this attention because of incaution, stupidity or breaking cover at the wrong time. It is rare for a minister to attract praise for doing something rather brave. One such should be Michael Wills at the Ministry of Justice responsible for the discussion paper "A national framework for greater citizen engagement" (pdf).

I have just reread Wills' paper "A New Agenda-Labour and Democracy" written when he was a backbencher and published by the Institute for Public Policy Research in June 2006. In the introduction he says "This essay argues for a programme of reform, that may have to be driven not by the political class who are seen as responsible for undermining faith in our constitutional arrangements but by the people themselves who are served by such arrangements. It suggests that the time may be coming for an elected, one-off, fixed term constitutional convention to heal the fracture in our politics".

It is easy to contrast that imaginative idea, set out in clear and refreshingly honest words, with the caution, correctness and need not to be too costly pervading the ideas outlined in the discussion paper and either damn Wills as a cowardly backslider with faint praise or dismiss him as someone of no consequence with caustic snidery. It would be wrong and unfair to do either.

It has long been clear that many, if not most, of Wills' parliamentary colleagues (of all parties) take fright at the implications of admitting a significant degree of deliberative democracy into our constitutional arrangements. It threatens their power base so often defended by reference to the supposed sanctity of parliamentary sovereignty. The political parties which under our present arrangements wield so much unaccountable power are far from enamoured of the idea either for obvious reasons of self interest. They will kill it if they can. The media tend to regard the notion as of no political merit because it is (they say) of little interest to the average voter who is concerned most with what hits their pocket. And the suspicion that the Civil Service instinctively tries to kill any attempt to remove influence from their base in Whitehall is well founded.

Against that background, and at a time in which the Opposition is seeking political advantage by sniping at any proposal that can be presented as unnecessarily costing the taxpayer money and Labour MPs with small majorities (of which Wills himself is one) are terrified of any ministerial proposal which might not play well with the media and the voters nearer the bottom of the pile than the top influenced by the media, the mere production and publication of the discussion paper must have required belief, tenacity and considerable political courage. It must also have required a more than encouraging nod from the top of the governmental tree.

The discussion paper itself reeks of compromise and passage through many interested hands determined that it should suffer the fate of a worthy experiment designed to fail. Of course deliberative democracy should complement and support the Parliamentary process (in so far as that reflects genuine representative democracy) but what that means to those who have tried to stop Wills is encapsulated in the astonishing statement "Representative democracy depends on political parties and governments getting their business through Parliament." Diane Abbot's bazaar!

Despite all that, those of us who applauded Wills' IPPR paper in 2006 and were encouraged by the apparent commitment of Gordon Brown to the Governance of Britain Green Paper a year later should be thankful that the notions of deliberative democracy and genuine respect for "we the people" are alive - just - and on the political table. What is proposed may be a puny start with massive vested interests lined up against it but it is a start and should be supported. Michael Wills needs help and should get it. Well done to him for sticking to a thankless task - and well done to Gordon Brown for supporting him.

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