Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP
Department for Communities and Local Government
Eland House
Bressenden Place
London SW1E 5DU
E-mail to:
contactus@communities.gov.uk
decentralisation@communities.gsi.gov.uk
cc: Scrutiny Unit
scrutiny@parliament.uk
Re.
Localism Bill Part 4 — Community empowerment Chapter 1 — Local
referendums
Clause 53 Application to parish councils
Dear Mr. Pickles and colleagues,
We understand that it is the intention of the Minister to reform the
regulation of referendum democracy at the level of parish. We have
already submitted a memorandum about the Localism Bill to the Public
Bills Committee (1) and wish to present here some recommendations about
parish democracy.
Regulation of parish polls was included (for England and Wales) in the
Local Government Act 1972 but according to our information the option
remained largely unused until the mid 1990s. Since then a steady rise
in Parish Meetings calling on the District Council to hold a referendum
(poll) in the parish has been observed, mainly in England. Many
dozens
of polls have been held. This increase correlates in time with a
growing public demand for participative democracy, particularly
citizen-instigated referendum, across Europe east and west and in many
other countries of the world.
From reports and analyses of local direct democracy in other countries
(which almost invariably co-exists with indirect, representative
democracy) a fairly detailed assessment of quality may be distilled.
Our preliminary observations concern such factors as levels of public
information about the issue in dispute, rules governing right to
initiate a referendum, co-operation or hindrance by authorities or
interest groups, facilities provided for citizen-proposers,
"user-friendliness" of electoral procedures, e.g. timely information of
the electorate about the poll, and background of the issue at stake,
distribution of polling cards, convenience of polling arrangements,
option of postal voting, application of e-deliberation and availability
of e-voting.
The quality of local democracy enabled by the Local Government Act 1972
and subsequent modifications to the rules has been criticised for a
number of reasons. For instance there has often been low turn out to
vote in parish polls. Probably however this has *not* been to do with
apathy or lack of interest but more likely because most residents were
not informed about the issue at stake or were even unaware that a poll
had been organised. A major cause of low turn out is the poor design of
the existing referendum procedure. It takes just a handful of residents
to demand that a poll must be held. However, in order to ensure that
there is strong public interest, enough to guarantee a reasonable turn
out, a substantial proportion of the parish electorate should at an
early stage become involved by being approached and persuaded to
endorse the proposal. The ideal "hurdle" depends on the size of the
community, larger units such as a town requiring a smaller percentage.
A number of other aspects of design and regulation need to be improved.
Over the last decade our education and advocacy group I&R ~ GB has
circulated preliminary suggestions for reform of local (here parish)
democracy to active local electors, to councils and local
government
organisations (plus some MPs and central government departments). These
suggestions may be found here at our web site:
Reform
of Parish Poll and other Direct Democracy Regulations March 2009, memo
re. need for reform of Parish Poll and other DD rules
Reference to a related memorandum (1) and link to further reading about
procedures in local direct democracy (2) are to be found below.
Yours sincerely,
(drafted and signed by Dr. Michael Macpherson)
1.
Associated
Memorandum
submitted by Dr Michael Macpherson (L 40) 01.02.2011
2. Journal of the Association for Accountancy & Business Affairs
(Editor Prof. Prem Sikka) 2006
Vol.5, No1, 47-86. The
Citizens' Initiative and Referendum: Direct Democracy in 5
Countries
of Europe by Michael Wallace-Macpherson, Paul Ruppen, Roland Erne,
Radoslaw Gawlik, Ralph Kampwirth, Bruno Kaufmann and Arjen Nijeboer.
Via
http://www.iniref.org/learn.html
REPLY from UK Department for Communities and Local Government, June
2011 link: pickles reply.aug2011.pdf
