Richard Shaw | Manifesto

Manifesto: seeking your consent

If I were to say in a word what my programme is all about, I would have to say ‘CONSENT’.  How we arrive at and act upon CONSENT.  What follows is how this might look and be acted upon in some of the various domains which might otherwise be called areas of ‘policy’.

In arriving at consent, however, we also need to achieve a higher quality of MEETING and this too is implied in much of what is contained here. It is an indispensable component of finding new life, new ideas and new ways forward.    

The NHS: would we vote for this now if it were being offered to us in its present form?  This form is very different from how it was in 1945.  Ideas about what constitutes illness have changed since then.  Our consent is best measured by what we would pay for ourselves.  How many of the services currently provided by the NHS would we pay for if we were having to pay for them ourselves?  We have to be really honest with ourselves and each other if we are to arrive at a true understanding of what we mean when we say ‘Our NHS’.

When groups such as the Clinical Commissioning Groups are set up to cater for local provision, we need to be really clear about how far the needs being identified by them are catered for within existing budgets and what influences the size of the budget available.  Again, without this transparency, we cannot really exercise our consent.  And Brexit, in terms of local health provision, might mean that each local health area is self sufficient in terms of resources and service delivery.  How would this look without the cross subsidies which may make for better or poorer provision in our own local place?  

HS2 and other infrastructure projects: we have got used to motorways and other large infrastructure projects impacting our environment, and our enjoyment of our environment.  Noise pollution is one example.  This is the ‘price’ of progress.  But this balance between progress and environmental impact has always needed to be just that: a balance, with an attendant costs/benefit analysis.  We are now faced with the prospect of HS2.  How do we draw the line here between cost and benefit?

 The impacts are huge; not least on those who will lose homes or businesses to it.  Have we, the electorate, ever really been engaged or invited into a debate about this?  Who are the likely beneficiaries and how many and to what extent the losers?  What are we being told and what are the facts and how do we decide?  That, I think, is a question which has yet to be answered and should be before the project is finally approved.

Town Centre Regeneration: consent is also a factor, perhaps by determining one, here.  What level of town centre regeneration are we voting for with our cars when we visit retail parks or with our mouse when we do internet shopping?  Actions have consequences and we need to be honest with ourselves.  If we want our traditional high streets to remain, what are we all going to do about it and how do we work with our politicians and local development agencies around this? 

Development of any sort however requires enterprise and innovation and so there is a question of how the conditions for this are optimised.  Some people know what they want to do the right from the start and have the confidence and sense of purpose to achieve it.  Or they may be seized by some inspiration.  Others of us may need a lot more help to get there!  This is partly about help with making our idea into a reality when we already have this but a question even before that may be how we arrive at this idea in the first place.  Here I would suggest that we may have to be a lot more like the artist naturally is - to be able to observe and to be inspired by this towards a response.  So in terms of enterprise this would be how can we equip ourselves better to notice a need and engage with it so that we can then feel the inspiration as response to it: to know what we want to do and how to go about it.  To have the opportunity and encouragement to develop these skills could I think make for huge benefit all round.  So we need to ask how we provide for this.

You can’t just ‘magic’ enterprise into being - least of all by huge infrastructure projects which will assume once the form is created the right thing will appear to fill it.  No, the form has to grow from out of the imagination or inspiration experienced as a way of communicating it.

Administration of justice in an age of cuts:  I will highlight one particular area for development, which is around the existing idea and practice of restorative justice.  As this is presently administered, parties to a crime (victim and offender) can only be brought together, even with their consent, within a restorative and reparative  process once the guilt of the offender has been established (and both or all parties consent of course).  This makes it an addition to our normal justice process.  Without impinging on this, or diminishing the rights of the victim, could ways be explored to make this an alternative, as well as an additional, process - beyond the extent to which it already is?

This could make for resolution in many cases where the weight of evidence is just not sufficient otherwise to secure a conviction and when both parties, especially the victim, cannot therefore obtain closure through having gone through the criminal process. This may be especially relevant in sexual offences where victim and offender know one another, have been together in a social situation and a question has arisen around consent.

Where law enforcement is itself subject to budget cuts this seems an ever more important option to explore and probably, at a human level, much more satisfactory for the people concerned if they are duly supported.

Mediation:  There is scope for the reintroduction of mediation services to cater for a range of civil disputes, before they have gone to court, including neighbour disputes but not confined to those.  This would also relieve the pressure on policing services in areas like domestic abuse and neighbour nuisance where the Police can find themselves disproportionate called upon to get involved.  Such services used to be widespread in the UK but lack of funding has more recently lead to their almost complete demise. 

Provision has continued but only in the private sector beyond what most people can afford or would consider proportionate to the dispute concerned.  However this is a real social problem that needs to be addressed.  The number of police interventions for anti social behaviour is similarly disproportionately large and there could be other ways to marry the social phenomena behind this, again calling less upon Police involvement and more on community based responses.

Public/private finance and taxation: A corollary to budget cuts generally is how you square the circle, or solve the ‘impossible’ equation of lower taxes on the one hand and better public services on the other.  One way of course is to improve ‘efficiency’ but in not a few instances, including in the NHS, this is seen to equate with ever more ‘aggressive’ management styles, putting off recruits and disillusioning existing staff (so with problems for recruitment and retention). This also has consequences for job satisfaction and a sense of ‘vocation’.  (Short term and zero hours contracts are also of course a feature of this although I am now speaking more of the public sector.)

Another approach to this might be to encourage much more interface between not for profit organisations and industrial and commercial concerns in the ‘for profit’ sector. This would mean that the latter did more to support the former in their own local area of operation as a form of gift towards public provision outside the ‘enforced’ gift of taxation.  This again would build on real relationships formed, and a level of ‘consent’ achieved, in a direct way the anonymity of indirect giving via taxation can never achieve.  It may be especially important as a corollary to reduced corporation tax levels.  But all this would equally need to be carefully organized.

My manifesto is about consent, but it is also about representation.  And the ‘first past the post’ system presents only one model of this.  Increasingly it is felt to be an unfair model, leading to many of us feeling disenfranchised.  But it does offer the benefit of certainty or it has until now.  Increasingly however with hung parliaments and sometimes less clear differentiation between the parties a new model is called for.  Proportional representation will be one way forward but another way is to ask how we can improve the quality of listening between the parties so that better decisions and a better quality of representation can, through that, also be achieved. That is what is being asked of us now and is also what my candidacy is about. 

International aspects (including of domestic matters):

Immigration: the best way to tackle this is to help those who want or need to flee their own countries to lead more peaceful and prosperous lives where they already are.  This is what they also most want.

The factors working against this are economic and political.  We can do more to use our influence in the world to address this and more to help these countries to develop peacefully for their own sake, and not just for ours (our markets).

When we think about peace keeping, and sending military personnel in to achieve this, we should think at least as much if not more about peace building. This means using conflict resolution skills to turn conflict into progress.  ‘Conflict is the seed of the new in the husk of the old’ it has been said and we can help to make this a reality both in our own back yard and beyond our shores, possibly by mobilising an army of mediators when relevant towards the latter end!

How might it have been if we had had more of this attitude and approach back in 2003?  How much consent was there for the war in Iraq?  What happened as a result of this being ignored or falsely manipulated?

We need to be more honest with ourselves about all these things.  When we have become champions of the world in this sense - champions of the world’s causes – we may more readily become champions of the world in other respects too, including in terms of sporting success!

If this sounds far fetched, when we are more at peace with ourselves we can expect to be more effective in every respect.

Nurses: why don’t people want to work as nurses?  What is going on here?  Again, are we prepared to pay for what we say we want or, when actually purchasing something, do we actually pay for something less?  Are we prepared to pay the price which would mean everyone gets a living wage by public consent and commercial transaction within the operation of the market, as adjusted?  Or are we going to pay the price that draws in migrant workers as the social and economic equivalent of a law of physics? 

Referenda: Perhaps in other circumstances a decision as big as that of the future of the NHS might be referred to a referendum!  It’s too big for party politics. But we have such a poor record on referenda!  In the last one those providing the information were just seeking to persuade, not to help people genuinely make up their own minds.  People had to inform themselves to know how to vote. They had to do this in spite of the politicians rather than because of them.  This emphasises how much the problem with Brexit was that it was binary right from the start.

If we were to have another referendum it would need to be run differently and be more like a conversation than a debate.  This now goes for much of politics.

Voter intentions:  We keep being told there only Labour or Conservative can win this seat and the election itself.  What is here being suggested is that whatever the situation is telling us voters will go on voting in predictable ways.  This of itself speaks of the need to infuse into the system something else.  It is tired and needs to be revitalised.  And proportional representation might solve the problem or just place it somewhere else.  It is time to look at other possibilities, other ways of being inclusive and representative. 

Climate change, ‘engagement’ and voter intentions: whether it’s about climate change or voting intentions the important thing is to stay engaged and responsive to the situation at hand.  There is little doubt that climate change is a reality. Also that it is man made.  But even if it isn’t, the remedy to it lies in our hands.  We are asked to stay engaged and responsive to the needs disclosed. 

In determining how to vote in this election I would say it is the same.  The situation in which we find ourselves is telling us the current way of approaching the issues we face is not working well enough.  It’s not leading us to a good quality of discussion or decision or, once decisions have been arrived at, the delivery of them.  This has become self evident.  

A question came up at the NHS Hustings in Ilkeston about the qualities we would like our next MP to have.  I would say that the quality most needed now is the ability to see just where the problems lie and to put forward more progressive ideas as to how we respond. That too is what my candidacy is about. An independent needs to do this because it would be contrary to their constitution for any of the main political parties to do it. It would immediately strikes at the basis upon which they can even approach an election campaign!

Binary approaches: Returning Boris to number 10 will not ‘get Brexit done’ or will but only in the narrowest of terms.  The whole of the Brexit debate, its decision and the way people are trying to deliver (or frustrate) it, has been a testament to the unfitness for purpose of binary approaches.  This is there for all to see and yet we go on using these approaches.

The most important thing at this election the Brexit election is not Brexit itself but what Brexit tells us. It tells us about the need to improve our decision making processes so that they lead to both effective decisions and the ability to deliver those decision into practice without dividing, alienating and polarising us as a nation.  This is the most important issue and we are not addressing it.  We are allowing it to continue by perpetuating the old system and it is this which must change.

Homelessness: what goes for Climate Change and Voter Intentions goes also for homelessness.  We are surrounded more and more by the evidence of something amiss and are rightly called upon to respond to it.  To avert our eyes and cut off our discomfort is not really an option.  It would be uncharitable in every sense.

And what we need here, again, is a national conversation as to the cause of this phenomena and how it is to be addressed. That again is best conducted by our representatives but on other than party lines.

If they say they are doing this already then fine but clearly they are not doing it well enough as the problem is getting worse not better.  And much that is proposed would seem to cover the symptoms more than the causes.  So let’s put our differences aside to really tackle this. 

It’s not just for the people most immediately concerned.  It’s for us all as we attempt to tackle an indicator of something amiss in the midst of our lives and seeking to call our attention to it.

Mental Health Provision: the enormity of this problem is masked somewhat by the amount of medication prescribed and the provision of short term interventions within IAPT and similar services.  These offer a measure of ability to live with the condition.  But in many cases this is first aid or coping mechanisms to help as live with the situation rather than really get to the causes of it.

The message is well and truly out there now: it’s good to talk and to talk to one who will listen.  But most of all there needs to be the ability to speak to a professional over a longer period to get more to the bottom of things.

This is yet another ‘symptom’ of something wrong on a bigger scale within the very structures of our society and how it operates.  And all of these things are calling for a clearer examination of what is needed to address them free from all constraints save the discipline needed to frame and contain that examination itself.

There will always be limits to what we can achieve.  But at the moment the limits we set ourselves in so many areas are not allowing us to get to grips with the problem.  If we are to be a responsive society this clearly needs to change.

Social care/biographical note: for a time I left my relatively well paid work as a solicitor to become a support worker in an organisation providing support for the learning disabled.  Their Homes were well run but I discovered I could not live on the income.  This was not because my needs were lavish.  They were very modest.  But I had to give up my car and start cycling to work to live within the pay. I noticed it was the same with others. Only those could really afford to work there who had support from elsewhere: partners in work, living with parents or otherwise able to supplement their income.

This is highly responsible work and it struck me how incongruous was the difference between the personal responsibility for the work involved and the financial rewards offered.  Is this really how it should be?