To you and me, the purpose of a consultation is to consult – to seek advice and guidance from interested parties, and to use that advice to shape your plans.
This is not how the people behind the Medical Innovation Bill (the Saatchi Bill) see consultation. To them, consultation is a means by which you get people to answer your questions the way you want them answered. As Lord Saatchi himself put it in one of the many articles the Telegraph – the bill’s media partner – obligingly published for him:
In democratic politics, perception is reality. If the people perceive a problem, there is one.
