A few choice paragraphs the tot is top down AND bottom up:
“Our conclusions appear in Chapter 4. In brief, a number of our concerns about the Government’s approach to consultation are not allayed: and we are most troubled by an apparent absence within Government, in the Cabinet Office and in individual Departments, of a commitment to monitor consultation practice and to draw lessons of general application. …
… The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) laid the Local Government (Transparency Requirements) (England) Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/2680) which served to update the Local Government Transparency Code and make it mandatory through regulations. The Department had received 219 responses to its consultation on the changes: 91 opposed the use of regulations, and only 15 explicitly supported it. In our 11th Report,20 we noted a statement by DCLG that many of the 91 opposing respondents would have been local authorities “who would naturally tend to be against regulation”; and that it was “perfectly reasonable to assume that if the 113 respondents who did not explicitly express a view were sufficiently concerned about Regulation then they would have said so in their response.” We commented that this interpretation nicely supported a pre-determined intention, but did not indicate a Department open to differing views. …
… Finally, in our 18th Report,22 we pointed out that it was bad practice if Government Departments arranged formal consultation exercises which largely coincided with holiday periods, such as the month of August, since this made it difficult for interested parties to prepare and submit responses. Yet this was the course that had been followed over the summer by two Departments: DECC, for the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2014 (SI 2014/3125), and Defra, for the Non- Commercial Movement of Pet Animals (Amendment) Order 2014 (SI 2014/3158). While both Departments had explained that they took other steps to alert stakeholders, we reiterated our concern that the timing of the formal consultation process might have served to disadvantage interested parties. ..
… Information subsequently received from the Cabinet Office states that there were over 300 Government consultations in the first six months of 2014, by contrast with 179 consultations in the first six months of 2012; and that the time spent consulting on a measure dropped from an average of 10.5 weeks in the first half of 2012, to 7.6 weeks in the first half of 2014. These are striking figures: the number of consultations has risen by two thirds, while the average time allowed for responses has fallen by almost one third. We recognise that these figures lend themselves to different interpretations: but one that we see as entirely possible is that, by shortening consultation deadlines, Government Departments can carry out more exercises over the same period of time, irrespective of the capacity of third parties to respond.
… We pressed Mr Letwin on the issue of responsibility for the Government’s approach to consultation, and for tackling bad practice by individual Departments. He said that the consultation principles were the property of the Cabinet as a whole; the Cabinet Office had considerable influence over the principles; but “not even the Prime Minister, let alone the mere Cabinet Office, is in charge of the entire operations of every Department. Those fall to the relevant Secretaries of State in our system, so I cannot command.”45 We found this answer unsatisfactory, and troubling. If neither the Prime Minister nor the Cabinet Office is able to intervene where Departmental consultation is falling short, and if they lack either the information or the commitment to do so, something is badly wrong”.
East Devon Watch 