‘Citizens’ jury’ or show trial?!
James Gubb, 24 September 2007
The HSJ runs a headline article on Lord Darzi’s series of citizens’ juries, the first of which was held last week and attended by both the PM, Gordon Brown, and Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary. On the subject of these consultations, the enlightened Mr. Johnson said: “our principle aim is to get away from this view that the NHS is Whitehall – and DH-led – we want to get away from this top-down approach”. And then: “we want to create a healthcare system that is completely focused on patient care and moves away from structural change”. About time, one might think.
But then comes the shocking story narrated to a colleague of the consultant blogger, Dr Ray, who managed to attend this first ‘citizens’ jury’. Turns out it’s not a ‘citizens’ jury’ at all, more of a show trial for the NHS staged by the government. Afraid of something coming up you don’t like, what better solution than to hand-pick the audience and pay the ‘jury’ to say what you want to hear? One can only hope that Lord Darzi, a new-comer to the shady world of NHS politics, didn’t know this was happening.
Is this a big surprise? Let’s not forget that New Labour is the focus group party and the perception management (spin) party.
Gordon Brown is waving his hands and taking the clock back 10 years. He’s here to make a trustworthy government, improve the NHS and education…well, well, it’s Groundhog day…and King Spin is simply renaming focus groups
They started off as a way of getting to know what people wanted, then they changed into a way to know which people wanted what how much and how little issues could be translated into votes, an agglomeration of these groups and issues turns into electoral success.
Later Labour turned this into a way of persuading people on issues and getting a result that Labour wanted, Blair stopped being a ‘whaddya want’ guy and worked out what he wanted. He knew that focus groups and opinion polls could be manipulated and used to persuade people into saying what he wanted, of using them to justify polices…and he knew he could get them to say most anything.
Which all resulted in the Iraq war attittude. The people are stupid, they wanted Kosovo, this is the same, we can make them see ‘reason’…and he kept on trying but the magic had gone…unfortunately, by now he had nothing but contempt for people.
We know that public consultations, with their skewed data and their chosen members are a way of justifying policy, a way of directing thought so that an end question gets a suitably good response.
So, Brown calls it a ‘citizens jury’…well, that’s just spin…in some way it’s right though. A newly corrupted legal environment, bogus laws and directions…it’s echoing…like a Hutton report with government defined terms and government editing…but…really? It’s not a court, it’s not fair, it’s not a grand jury on an issue, it’s not independent…it’s achingly depressing.
Lastly, let us consider from these bogus opinion polls, distored press, these show trials…what will the government do with the information database. If Tescos uses our data to analyse and profile it’s customers will the government do the same? Will there be benefits…yeah, for some, but will they also use it to work out whom they can abandon, whom they can scapegoat and whom they can bribe into giving them perpetual power?