Consultation or nonsultation?

In the Daily Telegraph, Andrew Gilligan has been having a go at ‘nonsultations’ – cynical attempts by government to lend legitimacy to pre-determined decisions, masquerading as consultation exercises.

The purpose of nonsultation, Gilligan writes, “is almost never to act on the public’s views. It is to manage, manipulate, or suppress them”.

He is particularly scathing of the government’s current Spending Challenge, which seeks to gather suggestions for saving public money. Gilligan’s suggestion, predictably enough, is to scrap consultations.

“Nonsultation’s glossy brochures are no substitute for informed decision-making and real democratic engagement,” he argues.

Cynicism about public consultation exercises is, of course, nothing new, but Gilligan has given us a rather nice new term to describe it.