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What proportion of human genetic
material would give a transgenic goat
human rights?
A) It should never have human rights
B) 25%
C) 51%
D) 75%
E) 100%
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What is public dialogue?
A process of engagement that brings
together members of the public, policy
makers and experts
• To discuss in depth, and where
possible reach conclusions about a
particular issue.
• To highlight the social, ethical and
practical issues raised by up-coming
policies.
• To make more robust decisions
reflecting (rather than at odds with)
public values.
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What does it mean in practice?
• Bringing together ‘the whole system in
the room’ – the public, experts and
policy makers
• Independent facilitators
• Clear expectations of the extent of
public influence (informing but not
deciding)
• An informed discussion
• Often meeting more than once,
allowing time for reflection
• Evaluation afterwards
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Impact on policy
• Opens up potential for movement on
controversial areas of policy
• Delivers significant cost savings
• Increases responsiveness and
accountability of policy
• Supports behaviour change
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Case Study – Carbon emissions
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) is
an independent statutory body under the
Climate Change Act 2008. Under the Act, the
CCC is required to have ‘regard to the
desirability of involving the public in the
exercise of its functions’.
The public dialogue project was set up to
feed into development of the Committee’s
advice to government as part of setting the
Fourth Carbon Budget.
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Carbon emissions - the challenges
The Committee on Climate Change
needed to develop an idea of the
public’s understanding of and views
towards the role of the UK
government in addressing the global
climate change challenge, and of how
different actions could affect the UK in
terms of energy bills, price changes,
economic costs and competitiveness.
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Public Dialogue –
Sciencewise’s Role
Commissioning body: Committee on Climate Change
(CCC)
Duration of process: the dialogue process took place
within a six-week time period in September October
2013, with the public involved over a 4 day period
Total public participants involved: 25
Total stakeholders involved: 8
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Public Dialogue – Aims and
Objectives
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• What is the public understanding of the
risks of climate change?
• What is the UK’s role and responsibility?
• What is the public’s understanding of
and attitudes to impacts of UK action on
energy bills?
• What is the public’s understanding of,
and attitudes towards, the wider
implications of UK action?
• Does the public think the case for UK
action has changed significantly since
the 4th Carbon Budget was legislated in
June 2011?
To help the CCC understand the views of the public
to inform its review of the Government’s 4th Carbon
Budget.
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How did we involve the public? (1)
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The public dialogue took the form of three panel
discussions held in London over a four-day period
in October 2013 with the same 25 members of the
public attending each event.
The first two events were in the evening and the final
event was on a Saturday. Each event lasted between
3 and 3½ hours.
The whole dialogue process, including preparation of
materials, took place within a six-week timescale. The
design for the public dialogue adopted elements of the
Citizen’s Jury model.
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How did we involve the public? (2)
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The dialogue participants formed a panel that
was supported through several stages of work
to enable deep engagement with the issues.
This started by exploring the context of carbon
emission reductions and moved on to making
recommendations to the CCC.
Before the first event, public participants were
provided with four short think pieces to
introduce them to the challenges of the issues
before they considered them in the face-to-
face sessions
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Key messages from public dialogue
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Attendees made the following recommendations to
the CCC:
• Greater public debate and engagement on the
sorts of measures the Committee is considering
in the 4th Carbon Budget review
• Education at all levels on climate change and
carbon emission reductions
• Acting now by investing in safe, renewable
energy sources
• Incentivising positive contributions by individuals
and business in the form of grants and tax breaks
• Keeping data up to date and using current data to
inform policy advice
• The issue of climate change is too important to
be swayed by party politics and independent
advice followed by legislation, as necessary, is
essential.
“A simple education
[programme] to explain
to us how climate
change will actually
affect our lives in
England and then
worldwide.”
Public participant
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Impact and Influence (1)
- The outcomes of the public dialogue
influenced the second part of the CCC’s
formal advice to the Government on the
4th Carbon Budget, which was
published in December 2013.
- The dialogue is referenced in the CCC’s
main advice to Government, while the
panel’s six key recommendations are
outlined in full in a supporting Technical
Report.
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Impact and Influence (2)
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• The public voiced strong support for the
UK taking an international leadership role
in this field
• The dialogue helped to identify specific
technologies that the public were
comfortable with and supportive of (e.g.
heat pumps) and those that they were less
enthusiastic about (e.g. Carbon Capture
and Storage); this gave the CCC “pause
for thought” on supporting specific
technologies themselves
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Impact and Influence (3)
Policy maker view
“The dialogue demonstrated that members of the
public were keen to engage on issues around
climate change, and in particular on the means and
costs of meeting the UK’s carbon budgets. They
were supportive of UK leadership, as well as
providing insights on specific measures. It was
reassuring that, in general, they understood and
supported the CCC’s emerging narrative on
emissions reduction for the fourth carbon budget….
It has raised the question for us about whether we
should be doing more on behaviour change and
factoring this into our analyses and projections.”
CCC interviewee
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“to seek public views on emerging IVF-based
techniques to prevent the transmission of
mitochondrial disease,” with support from
Sciencewise Expert Resource Centre
Conduct a public dialogue exercise to
explore:
• The ethical aspects and issues involved
in techniques to avoid mitochondrial
disease; and
• The practical implications of allowing
such techniques within regulation
Regulations would need to be passed in
both houses of Parliament
Mitochondria replacement: What
the government asked HFEA to
do?
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What is mitochondria replacement?
Mitochondrial disease caused by
faults in the small amount of DNA in
the mitochondria, inherited from the
mother
•Pronuclear transfer & maternal spindle
transfer: transfer nuclear material from an
egg/embryo containing unhealthy
mitochondria to a healthy donor
egg/embryo.
•DNA from parents and a donor
•These techniques, which are referred to as
mitochondria replacement, are illegal in
treatment in the UK.
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Mitochondria replacement: hopes & concerns
• Estimated 1 in 5,000 people affected by
mitochondrial disease, around 1 in 6,500 children
thought to develop serious mitochondrial disorder.
• Range of conditions linked to mitochondrial
disease – from mild to life threatening – no known
cure or treatment.
Hopes? …for women with mitochondrial disease who
want children genetically related to them without
passing on disease.
Concerns?... “3 parent babies”; akin to cloning,
genetic modification of humans; interfering with
natural or spiritual aspects of reproduction…
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Aim of the dialogue & consultation
To identify:
• The process of deliberation people
use to form views on mitochondria
replacement
• The differences between informed
and uninformed public views on
these techniques
• Interested stakeholders’ arguments
for and against the use of the
techniques
• Analysis of the ethical and
regulatory issues involved.
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Multi-method approach
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Selected public audiences
(“uninformed”)
•Public representative survey –
1000 face to face interviews/
“top of head” views with little
information
•3 sets of deliberative public
workshops (met twice) – 90
participants in total.
• Scientists & Bio-ethicist
specialist input
• Videos, posters, quizzes,
info sheets, presentations
& questions
Self-Selecting/ Interested
audiences (“informed”)
•Open consultation website
& questionnaire
•2 x Open public
consultation meetings
•Patient focus group –
those affected by
mitochondrial disease
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Key messages from deliberative workshops
Broadly agreed support for the new techniques with caveats
and conditions:
• Individual parent choice
• Provision of information to make an informed choice
• Regulated environment
• Parents should be offered counselling
• Donor’s identity should be protected – though maybe some
information to the child?
• Fair access to the techniques – available on NHS free of
charge
• Only to produce a healthy child, no other purpose
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Impact & Influence
• A total of 3,004 public and stakeholder participants
involved:
• 1,069 public participants - 90 in deliberative
workshops plus 979 in poll survey;
• 1935 stakeholders - 7 in focus group, 92 in open
meetings and 1,836 responses to the open
consultation questionnaire.
• Led to direct policy influence, outputs integrated into
the HFEA process to develop recommendations to
Government
• Enabled promotion of new legislation (draft regulation
for consultation – earlier this year) to allow and
regulate the use mitochondria replacement techniques,
by demonstrating public support in principle, and the
precautions necessary to retain that support.
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Impact & Influence #2
• Sciencewise was seen as bringing a
'badge of quality'.
• Evaluation & feedback, suggests this was
an exemplary process, particularly the
stakeholder engagement in the
governance, and the multi-strand
consultation.
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Public dialogue is particularly valuable
when….
• Policy is at an early stage of development and public interests
and concerns may be satisfied if understood and responded to
early
• Issues are /potentially contentious and there is potentially
strong public interest
• Technical expertise and stakeholder views alone are not
sufficient
• Successful implementation will depend on getting the
practicalities right
Go through bullets, and then before next slide
Why does this matter?
Go through bullets, and then before next slide
Why does this matter?
No conferring – please just write down your answer to the polling question. Now, I’d like a show of hands – who is comfortable that they’ve got the right answer?
Now, I’d like you to share and discuss your response with the rest of the people on your table for a couple of minutes…
…ok. Time’s up. I’d like another show of hands – who is more comfortable or less uncomfortable with their answer now?
And who has come up with some new issues or insights in the discussion?
And who needs more time?
This is what Sciencewise is hugely expert in: dialogue
Not just a one way information push, but rather a two way process, a conversation
It’s not as fast as a poll, though they may be able to support you if you do need to poll…
Dialogue – participants takes part over two weekends
1st weekend: given information, access to experts etc
2nd weekend: time to debate and discuss
Done well, dialogue is an open interactive process that can help you
explore and understand the risks and benefits of new technology,
how to minimise the risks and maximise the benefits
and give you a better basis for investment decisions.
Go through bullets, and then before next slide
Why does this matter?
Bottom line
The public are the ultimate customer, innovation will only work if it brings mutual benefits
PAS 2014:
7 in 10 people said scientists should listen more to what ordinary people think
Half of them think that technologists are very secretive
73% want technologists to share information on technology before it is developed
Engage to reduce risk of failure and learn from your customers – benefits outweigh costs
For example, Sciencewise sponsored work on cyber security cost £140k, industry wide benefits of billions
Go through bullets, and then before next slide
Why does this matter?
What department has decided (ie things that are no longer open to influence, even if there is significant pressure or backlash)
What are department preferences (but these may be open to negotiation, change or influence if particularly strong views, important information or insights come to light from stakeholders)
What is open (department has no preference)
Go through bullets, and then before next slide
Why does this matter?
The impact of deliberative engagement on policy
1. Supports the development of policy that goes with the grain of public opinion gives government the confidence that a potentially controversial policy is possible
A Sciencewise sponsored dialogue on Mitochondrial replacement, run by the Department of Health, was part of a suite of public engagement activities aimed at opening up to public views on the ethics and science of new IVF-based techniques designed to avoid hereditary mitochondrial disease, which can cause a number of rare but serious and potentially fatal conditions, being transferred from mothers to their children. One person in 6,500 has a mitochondrial disease that can lead to serious health issues meaning that around 12,000 live with these conditions.
In spite of significant and often negative press coverage (e.g. on 'three parent families'), public participants supported the new technique if it could prevent serious illness - as long as it was scrupulously overseen by an appropriate regulatory body. The final guidelines are expected to be published in December 2013 and evaluations indicate that the Sciencewise sponsored dialogue was critical for their development.
The 2010 Sciencewise sponsored dialogue on Animals in research , run by the Department of Health and the academy of Medical Sciences, identified the boundaries of public acceptability in these research areas, including those areas that would require special scrutiny in future when considering licences for research. This fed into the adoption in the UK of the EU Directive on experimentation on animals in research. The AMS believed that the dialogue had influenced the lack of an objections to the publication of the proposals by religious groups, following the well documented public input.
2. Delivers cost effective public dialogue which can lead to significant short and long term financial savings
The 2011 Sciencewise sponsored public dialogue on wellbeing (run by the Department of Health and new economics foundation in 2011) demonstrated that a national social marketing campaign would not be effective in achieving the desired behaviour change. The decision not to proceed with the campaign saved DH an estimated £10 million per year; the dialogue cost £264,000 in total. Private conversations confirm that the dialogue provided the evidence needed to inform the internal departmental debate that led to this decision.
3. Opens up the debate by engaging the public increases the responsiveness and accountability of policy.
The 2011 Sciencewise sponsored Synthetic biology, run by BBSRC and EPSRC, contributed to the ethical, social and regulatory elements of the Synthetic Biology Roadmap for the UK. The results also influenced the scope, tone and content of the Joint Synthetic Biology Initiative, which provides research funds of £24 million, and was seen by several policy makers involved as having avoided a 'GM situation'. The global synthetic biology market was estimated to grow from $1.6 billion in 2011 to $10.8 billion in 20165 ; the Synthetic Biology public dialogue cost £334,000).
In 2013 Sciencewise sponsored a health research public dialogue, run by the NHS Health Research Authority, to feed into a new agenda for Transparent Research. The agenda, which was published in May 2013, drew on a range of evidence including the results of the dialogue. The input from the public particularly affected the section of the agenda on publication of research results and has led to on going work to develop a public involvement strategy to set standards and guidance on how participants should be informed about the outcome of health research findings.
4. Supports behaviour change in complex and controversial areas of policy.
The 2009-2011 Sciencewise sponsored Low Carbon Communities Challenge (LCCC), run by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), resulted in 8,026 low carbon measures delivered in LCCC areas, from low energy light bulbs to a 1.2MW biomass district heating system, creating a theoretical annual carbon saving of 3,062,091kg of CO2.
Other outcomes included stronger local networks and greater levels of partnership working, the creation of new organisations such as mutual Community Energy Companies; and social outcomes such as residents associations, a community cinema, a community orchard and a community shop. DECC has since built on the LCCC by embedding the community led model into its thinking around new initiatives such as the Local Energy Assessment Fund (LEAF), and the move to involve community organisations in the delivery of the Green Deal.
Key message here is to get across what we are practically, but also what is different about us compared to other parts of government.
Brief detail
Sciencewise brings something different to the policy process from other bits of Whitehall.
has some resource;
SW has cross-Govt remit to do this stuff;
understands how engage public from better comms of issues to working collaboratively and specifically can support on more deliberative forms of engagement;
Go through bullets, and then before next slide
Why does this matter?
