Openness and Transparency in Politics – Iain Dale’s Keynote Speech at Poltech
Iain Dale | June 8, 2011
I was delighted to deliver the keynote speech on June 1, 2011 at the Politics and Technology Forum held in Canberra. The theme was 'Openness and Transparency in Politics'. This blog is based on the speech I gave on the day.
Openness and transparency are quite possibly the two most overused buzzwords in any modern democracy. They are especially wielded during election time to try and convince the voters that politicians want to make politics more accessible. But what do these words actually mean? And what benefits, if any, will they bring to the ordinary citizen?
Transparency is often perceived as simply opening up the books and showing the public how the government is spending our money.
And that certainly is an admirable aim, but it is so much more than that. It is about holding the government to account and getting the people involved. It is about reminding politicians who exactly is in charge. Power rests with the people, not the other way around. And the transparency agenda is all about reminding politicians of that fact.
Britain has made significant strides in moving to a more open and transparent system in recent years, as has Australia signified by the Declaration of Open Government. Back in the UK in 2000 the Labour government passed the Freedom of Information Act; this fundamentally changed the relationship between the government and the people.
It was a major step in opening up government information and the public accounts. Hardly a day goes by without some newspaper or pressure group revealing council spending sprees, or government cover ups, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act. It is now hard to remember a time without this accountability, but with this all comes risk which is something I will look at later.
The Taxpayers Alliance is a pressure group that was set up in the UK in 2004 to hold government to account, and is by far the best example of an organisation that has fought to keep politics open and transparent.
Every year they publish the annual Bumper Book of Government Waste which uncovers financial mismanagement in government departments and local councils obtained by the Freedom of Information requests. This book has been published every year for 5 years and the openness it has brought to politics, means that local councils are very wary that they are being watched and thoroughly scrutinise their spending in fear of being caught out.
But the coalition government may have put the Taxpayers Alliance out of business because they are introducing a law under which government departments must publish every item of expenditure over £25,000 on their websites. Local councils are being told to publish every item of expenditure over £500 on their websites, so at long last we, the public, can see what our tax money is being spent on.
I truly think this is an historic reform. Because now, every public servant will have to justify every pound they spend. Gone will be the away days in luxurious hotels. Believe it or not we have found out the National Health Service spent £100,000 on a luxury yacht. No more. David Cameron once said that sunlight was the best form of disinfectant. In this case he really was correct.
I don’t want you to get the wrong impression of British politicians, but politicians and civil servants the world over have always been very suspicious of open government. They profess to be all in favour of it, but the reality when they wield power is somewhat different.
As someone in the BBC sitcom Yes Minister said: The less you intend to do about something, the more you have to keep talking about it
But the reality is that it is not necessarily only politicians who are rather reluctant to be open and transparent – it is civil servants. The FOI Act may well have been passed in 2000, but it took another 5 years for it to be actually implemented.
Then in 2007 an amendment successfully passed through the House of Commons exempting Members of Parliament from FOI scrutiny, but this was thankfully blocked by the Lords. Still the government or the Speaker of the House can block FOI requests if they think it will bring “Prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs”, something which was used to block the publication of MPs’ expenses for many years.
It is important to remember the internet has done far more for transparency than politicians have ever done, and government has been forced to open itself up to the scrutiny on the web. For example the government brought in e petitions in 2007, which allowed people to garner support for certain issues and make the government aware of them. At first they were useless – just used by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for PR. But there was no end result. A petition on road pricing got 1.5 million supporters, and the government did ditch its plans, but apart from that it was all window dressing. But the coalition has just announced new plans to make e petitions more effective.
If a petition gets 500+ signatures it is guaranteed a response, and if it gets over 100,000 it will be eligible for a debate in Parliament. This has opened up politics and enabled wider participation, yet it still faced by fierce opposition. Some MPs called e petitions “sinister”, while others resorted to harsher rhetoric claiming “Hitler would have loved the internet”. A bit over the top, I am sure you will agree.
Online consultations have also been increasingly used in recent years; these have allowed people to have their say from the comfort of their own living room. All you need is a computer and the internet and you’re away. Although, I am rather sceptical of public consultations. Often government has made up it its mind before going to the public and it just wants to look like it is engaging. It is a real challenge for governments to remove the sense of cynicism which surrounds public consultations.
Often the politicians didn’t listen, the public didn’t matter and all in all they were sham consultations. But what the web has the ability to do is indicate mass support or opposition to a policy in a very short space of time.
In recent months this has been a regular occurrence in the UK; the Coalition government was set to sell off much of Britain’s forests but was met by angry opposition during the consultation, resulting in a 500,000 strong petition against the plans. Feeling was so strong the Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman, was forced to apologise in the Commons for even thinking about selling the forests, despite the fact that the previous Labour government had been doing just that for years.
The government now has a new challenge on its hands, reform of the National Health Service. It has caused tension between the Coalition partners, opposition from the trade unions and now the public are going to have their say.
The government has promised to “pause, listen and reflect” and is conducting a genuine consultation. They are going to have to be open and honest, but most importantly they are going to have to listen. This is a defining moment for openness in British politics, and will decide the future of government consultations. If they force through unpopular policies they face a backlash for betraying the “openness and transparency” agenda they pledged in their manifesto.
It is important to note why this agenda has recently emerged. It can be traced almost entirely to one thing, and one thing alone, the MPs expenses scandal of 2008. It completely rocked the British political system to the core, and made us a laughing stock to the rest of the world.
It may have come as a surprise to some politicians, but the public don’t look kindly upon their money being spent on duck houses and moat cleaning. I often say that openness and transparency is like medicine. With the correct dosage it can heal a broken system, but when it came to MPs expenses it was more like a near fatal overdose.
Politicians have never been held in high regard. Shakespeare referred to those “scurvy politicians” in King Lear over 400 years ago and things haven’t changed much. What the MPs expenses scandal did, was it confirmed peoples worst fears that all politicians were in it for themselves, an unfair accusation in my opinion but this is the impression that has been given.
If it wasn’t for the openness and transparency provided by the FOI act and the media, MPs expenses never would have been revealed. And although the result was devastating to politics, and has certainly damaged the relationship between the people and the politicians, overall it was a good thing. It revealed something that needed to be fixed. It reinvigorated the transparency agenda, and caused the political parties to react to the public mood.
The Conservatives were quick to react and David Cameron immediately disciplined a few members of his Shadow Cabinet and ordered the rest to pay back their expenses even if they hadn’t actually broken the rules.
He recognised the anger of the public and this was clearly symbolised in his manifesto at the last election. Cameron boldly declared he wanted to create a “new politics”, making it more “accountable” and “transparent”. His plans to “clean up politics” included changing the expenses system, cutting the number of MPs and ministers pay, publishing the details of money government spends and giving people the right to government data.
During the election campaign “An Invitation to Join the Government” was launched by the Conservatives, encouraging greater participation. In office, this has materialised itself in the form of the Big Society, an initiative to foster community values and allow citizens to directly run local public services.
Whether politicians are doing this because they want to appeal to the public and win votes, or because they genuinely believe in the transparency agenda doesn’t really matter, because it still produces the same result. We get to shed light on what happens behind closed doors, and discover where exactly our money is being spent.
Someone who champions the transparency agenda more than any other is Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary. Not only is he an avid Twitterer but he has also slammed open the doors of local government and let the sunlight in. He made it compulsory for local authorities to publish the minutes of their meetings and their performance data.
All spending over £500 has now got to be published online. He enacted the Localism Bill giving more power to councils, and the ability for councillors to vote on the pay of excessive staff salaries above £100,000. More recently Mr Pickles has banned state subsidised local newspapers, which often acted as propaganda for the local council. He is still determined to widen access further, but so far I think it is a job well done.
Some politicians genuinely embrace openness and this is evident by those who opt to use social media and engage with a wider audience. Social media is a way of showing the public what they are doing, but more importantly it allows them to engage with politicians and participate in the political process. Politicians can use social media to their advantage.
It is a great tool for demonstrating that politicians can be normal people too. No, really! A great example is a friend of mine, the Labour MP Tom Harris MP; he maintained a successful blog, and now uses Twitter and Facebook, the result is that he is hugely popular online among all parties.
In today’s fast paced media cycle, politicians risk being left out of the conversation if they don’t engage with social media.
However, in this open and transparent world of the web, and particularly in the real time conversations and link economy of social media, there is nowhere to hide. This is why, before joining the conversation, politicians must make sure they know what they are saying. Twitter has claimed many a political scalp. If you say the wrong thing, you are out. It can also hamper a long term ministerial career, for although Tom Harris may have popular appeal, his colleagues are suspicious of him and it is a reason why he is not a member of the Shadow Cabinet.
This often makes politicians question whether it is worth being open and engaging with social media at all, especially when they know the media will always be there waiting for them to slip up.
The media can be a great help in promoting open government, but they often cross the line from what is the public interest to a complete invasion of privacy.
Earlier this year The Daily Telegraph used the illegal method of “subterfuge” to get a story – two young female journalists pretending to be the Business Secretary, Vince Cable’s constituents secretly recorded him during a private conversation when he “declared war” on Rupert Murdoch.
The next day it was on every newspaper and every TV bulletin. Was that transparency? I don’t think so. Journalists provide a good service. They shine a light into the nooks and crannies of government, exposing corrupt practices and politicians misdemeanours. But there is a fine line between investigative journalism and illegal or immoral practices.
This was highlighted by the latest phone hacking scandal in the UK, where it has been discovered that newspaper journalists have been hacking the phones of senior politicians and celebrities. That is not openness that is simply dirty journalism.
Is it ever right for journalists to break the law in the cause of openness and transparency? MPs expenses were uncovered via journalists illegally obtaining access to them, but that was in the public interest. More recently super injunctions have been broken on Twitter, with Twitter users revealing the names of celebrities and politicians who have had affairs but have used injunctions to cover them up.
So is Twitter going to lead us to the broad sunlit uplands of transparency and accountability, where elected officials are kept honest and randy footballers discouraged from playing away? Probably not.
Twitter and bloggers deliver a vital service. They can report things that other outlets won’t cover, and that is because they have fewer repercussions. It is very hard to sue the internet. But that provides a problem in itself. We praise bloggers when they expose what is going on behind closed doors. However they can, and some already have, spread malicious and inaccurate gossip around the web. So instead of providing openness they have actually aided the spreading of lies.
Twitter is so much more than a place where gossip is revealed, though. It has belittled both the power of the spin doctor and the newspapers. Paul Mason, the Economics Editor of BBC’s Newsnight, said “Twitter has the potential to partially or completely neutralise the ability of corporate media to transmit the dominant ideology. This has implications for the practice of professional journalism.”
When one of the BBC’s leading correspondents makes such a bold statement, it is time to take notice.
Not only are politicians losing their grip on power, but so is the media. The beauty of Twitter is that it is fast, very fast. Public reaction can almost be gauged instantaneously.
The newspapers are finding it ever more difficult to control the news agenda. Social media has given power to the people and has opened up politics in a way which hasn’t been seen since people were given the vote.
I am now going to turn my attention to Wikileaks. I have always tried to encourage public authorities to be more transparent and open about what they do, and often caused them a few headaches when they’ve refused. So you might think I would be a cheerleader for WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange and his self-styled mission to expose what goes on at the heart of government. You’d be wrong.
Far from being a 21st Century hero, I have come to regard Assange as a dictatorial charlatan whose real agenda is not the furtherance of greater transparency, but the furtherance of Julian Assange and his anti-American agenda.
WikiLeaks started off as a noble cause. It sought to shine light into the nooks and crannies of public life which had up until now remained closed off to us mere mortals. Whistleblowing is often uncomfortable, yet WikiLeaks provided a forum for the powerful to be brought to book. There was a point to it, as their work on scientology and the Trafigura scandal concerning the dumping of toxic waste in Africa showed. But its ethics and operations are now coming under serious scrutiny, and rightly so.
Whenever anyone – journalist, or otherwise – reveals confidential information there has to be a point to it. By releasing hundreds of thousands of random documents, illegally obtained from U.S. government computers, WikiLeaks put paid to its reputation in one fell swoop. Had Assange and his cohorts sorted through the documents and filtered out those with a genuine public interest, he could have been seen as a modern-day hero. But he released everything in the name of so-called transparency. He did it because he could – the prerogative of every dictator in history.
WikiLeaks caused lives and national security to be put at risk. But we shouldn’t be surprised.
Assange proved he was out of control in August when he demanded $700,000 from Amnesty International which had politely asked him to ensure WikiLeaks did not publish names of Afghan civilians who might then be targeted by the Taliban. Some called it blackmail.
It is, I suppose, possible to argue that every piece of government information should be made publicly available, but anyone who really believes that hasn’t given a thought to the anarchic consequences which would follow. Surely national security, at the very least, has to be a consideration? Julian Assange purports to believe in total openness – except when it comes to himself. He delights in asking politicians what they have got to hide.
We might ask Mr Assange the same thing. There is little in this issue that is about high principle. It is about political motivation and one man’s desire to be treated as a demi-god.
Assange is not a terrorist, as the increasingly ridiculous Sarah Palin suggests. But he is a narcissist and would-be dictator. Even would-be dictators have to face up to what they have done eventually, and Assange is no different.
I think we can all agree that transparency and openness is a good thing.
However it would be an error to assume the more transparency the better, as the Wikileaks example has shown. We must tread carefully when implementing transparency and openness. We can come dangerously close to crossing the line, to disregard privacy and the systems and institutions already in place. The agenda must be applied in four steps.
First you must recognise what you want to achieve from transparency. Secondly you must identify the problems that it can bring. Thirdly you must slowly and pragmatically open up the system and lastly you must constantly consider and reconsider how things can be improved.
Transparency and openness should be at the heart of every liberal democracy. It is the right of the citizen to know what is going on in government and it is the duty of politicians to be transparent and open. However this is not an absolute right, especially when it conflicts with other rights like the right to privacy.
So we must make our decisions on a “value-cost- benefit” analysis. Someone has to a make a judgement about how much transparency and openness to sacrifice in order to secure privacy. In cases like these you can’t just draw an arbitrary line; someone has to be able to exercise discretion.
This job usually falls in to the hands of the judiciary, or independent government commissions who can have access to governmental material without necessarily putting it in the public domain. A prime example is the Iraq War enquiry; the government can’t release private military documents which could threaten national security, so the job has been handed to an independent commission who reach a conclusion on behalf of the public.
Transparency and openness forces governments to be more efficient, as they have to be careful knowing they have to defend themselves against public scrutiny.
However governments can fall into the trap of “playing by the book” avoiding criticism, instead of making bold decisions for a better future. Transparency can often undermine a high quality democracy, so advisors fear giving frank advice living in fear it may reach the papers and be used against them. If a civil servant or political adviser cannot have a conversation with a Minister or write a memo without it being published, what sort of government will we have? Answer, the one we deserve.
If everything is transparent politicians may fall into the trap of spending much of their time image building to appeal to the appearance dominated media.
This often inhibits serious staff work such as policy implementation, as they spend all their time “double record keeping”, a process where documents are created to be transparent and open instead of “real” material. This often happens with MPs in Britain, as their parliamentary email accounts are subject to Freedom of information, meaning the public can gain access to all emails sent and received.
This has resulted in MPs using other email platforms to avoid the scrutiny, hiding private emails from the public eye.
But once you start going down the road of hiding things and secrecy, you can start to hide other things and politicians become increasingly susceptible to corruption.
An additional danger with overdoing transparency and openness is the motive it gives to politicians to avoid dealing with difficult issues, and to avoid revealing bold ideas. This is aggravated by the fact that transparency and openness is not used by the ordinary public, but by the mass media who are trying to expose corruption. This pushes politicians into a permanent defensive position, so they just avoid risk.
It also leads to the position where interest groups hold disproportionate influence, which may undermine the public interest, through the selective use of governmental material.
I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. I am completely for transparency and openness but we must be careful how far we allow this agenda to go because otherwise we risk moving from a quality democracy to a populist, mass media dominated democracy.
I believe the best way to promote openness is to increase participation in the political process. I know it is a lot easier said than done, but the public need to be engaged to contribute diverse views and values enhancing our democracy.
Politicians need to be more pluralistic taking into account the views of others, and transparency and openness will increase that input. But we must ensure that we differentiate between what directly concerns the citizen and other activities like long term policy thinking.
But I am more sceptical of transparency and openness when it comes to long term policy thinking. The public – and indeed the media – can be very short sighted.
The public will often act in short term self interest, but politicians must have the freedom to indulge in blue sky thinking without the constant fear that their discussions will appear on the front page of the Daily Mail through some ill intentioned Freedom of Information request.
To conclude, transparency and openness are fundamental elements of any quality democracy, but politicians must be careful how they implement these changes and be very careful to ensure necessary restrictions are used sparingly and carefully.
Governments need to be better at explaining their thinking, plans and decisions via green and white papers.
They need to consult better. Advancing transparency and openness goes hand in hand with deepening public participation at “street level”.
Independent bodies which oversee public governance need strengthening. Government communications needs improving. Governments need to be more reactive and flexible in taking on board public opinion.
Civil servants need to inject themselves with the openness gene and stop fearing the consequences of transparency. Only in that way can they be more inclusive and embrace public participation in the policy formation process.
We simply have to rid from the civil service of what Jim Hacker in Yes Minister called: The three articles of Civil Service faith: it takes longer to do things quickly, it's more expensive to do them cheaply and it's more democratic to do them in secret.
These recommendations I believe will help increase transparency and openness as part of an overall reform of public administration. They will help increase citizen understanding which is essential for increasing the positive effects of transparency and openness and reducing the negative ones.
Iain Dale is one of Britain’s leading political commentators, appearing regularly on TV and radio. Iain is best known for his political blog, Iain Dale’s Diary and football blog, West Ham Till I Die. He is a contributing editor and columnist for GQ Magazine, writes for the Daily Telegraph and a fortnightly diary for the Eastern Daily Press. He was the chief anchor of Britain’s first political internet TV channel, 18 Doughty Street.com. He appears regularly as a political pundit on Sky News, the BBC News Channel, Newsnight, Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live. He is the publisher of the monthly magazine, Total Politics and the author or editor of more than twenty books. He is managing director of Britain’s premier political book publisher, Biteback Publishing. Iain stood as a Conservative candidate at the last election and was Chief of Staff to the Rt Hon David Davis MP in the 2005 Conservative Party leadership election. He is a former political lobbyist, financial journalist and publisher and was the founder of Politico’s Bookstore. He is the creator and host of the theatre production A Night With Ann Widdecombe, which tours provincial theatres all round the country. He was the Founder of the Conservative History Group and co-director of the Campaign for Fixed Term Parliaments.
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