The Empowerment White Paper is out, and a summary is available here as a PDF. The full monty is here and is accompanied by a separate Evidence Annex
I’ve read the summary, and although it’s not earth shatteringly radical there are a few good ideas. In particular, it has a helpfully political take on citizenship- it sees the citizen primarily as a political actor rather than merely a consumer of government services.
Here are a few instant personal reactions.
Definitely good things:
- the duty on councils to respond to petitions, and ability for petitioners to force debates in full council where responses aren’t satisfactory
- public sessions to quiz leaders of public sector bodies such as hospital trusts
- £7.5m to support empowerment, as long as it’s used wisely
- community pledgebanks (hello, Tom)
Interesting ideas, but risky or unproven:
- participatory budgeting in every council
- community asset transfer
- changes to rules on political neutrality of local government officials (to increase the number of people standing for election as councillors)
- a duty on councils to promote democracy
- removing barriers to commissioning from faith-based groups
- community justice. It sounds rather like ‘people’s lynchmobs’ but means that community service orders will be more obviously linked to areas where local people think work is needed
Disappointments:
- the obvious padding – if the executive summary includes a pledge to continue working with various forms of media, the writers must have been running short of ideas
- the absence of anything really radical or directive around neighbourhood councils or involvement
- incentives for voting, which makes my toes curl – if you need to be given a scratchcard to vote, perhaps you don’t understand why it’s important