Published on July 18th, 2012 | by Edmund Beavor
Image © Launch of Peering in: An analysis of public and charity sector lobbying in the House of Lords With the House of Lords receiving so much attention at the moment, Esther Foreman, a social justice campaigner and Clore Social Leadership fellow, presented her timely research examining lobbying practices by the third sector. Peers are responsible for scrutinising large amounts of technical legislation yet have startlingly little administrative support or training to deal with lobbyists. Recognising online campaigning as an increasingly important feature of political discourse and engagement, the discussion centred around how this both this sector and the House of Lords need to evolve in order to foster effective interaction between campaigners and peers. Present on the panel for the debate were Lord Jim Knight, currently shadow Defra minister in the Lords, Dame Mary Marsh, founding director of the Clore social leadership programme, Dr Andy Williamson, an expert in digital democracy and engagement and David Babbs, Director of 38degrees.org.uk, an online campaign builder. The panel’s recommendations included bringing more focus and collaboration to lobbying activities in order to ensure coherent messages are communicated to the Peers, rather than an unfocused mass of emails. One way to achieve this would be for charities to instigate closer collaboration between their marketing and policy departments. Lord Jim Knight was keen to stress that while the generation of online noise certainly helped to build attention around an issue, succinct policy briefs from the sector backed up by solid arguments were also vital to ensure efficient progress on an issue. It was generally agreed that youth disengagement with politics has reached disastrous levels and finding ways to engage young people in a meaningful political debate was one of the most pressing current issues. While admittedly this wasn’t the central focus of the debate, there was a conspicuous lack of concrete ideas on how to tackle this. There were innovative new ideas to open up a space for debate that included the hosting of events that bring together members of online campaign coordinators such as 38degrees with political actors. An app that would allow peers to receive simultaneous updates on a policy brief was also suggested, although it was also pointed out that there was no money to fund such forward thinking ideas. The desired direction of movement was clear, along with the recognition that the Lords is an increasingly relevant arena for policy change. The challenge now will be to develop an online or offline space in the House of Lords that allows solution-based public engagement, rather than a general outpouring of one-way rage and indignation. A space not just for politically savvy campaigners but also for young people. Ideas anyone?