This is important and well worth a read. Want to improve our welfare system? Here's how. The tips below come from someone who's worked on the other side of consultations, i.e. they know what they're talking about and how to make the Government listen:
If you care about the future of the UK benefits system (as I know lots of you do), you may well want to respond to a consultation document published today:
21st Century Welfare.
The document sets out Iain Duncan's Smith's plan for reforming benefits, and on page 40 has a series of questions about it (and about the benefits system in general. You can respond to them by post or email any time before 1 October
This page gives you the address to write or email to, plus links to the document in Welsh and other related info. You can order copies in audio, large print or braille by writing to the same address.
If you're not an expert on the subject, you may also want to refer to the
easy read version for clarification about the gist of what they mean. It's intended for people with learning disabilities, but personally I think they can be useful for anyone.
I have worked on analysing consultation responses before, and have a few tips for making a positive impact
1) You don't have to respond to every question if you don't want to.
2) Succinct responses tend to have most impact...
3) ...but don't let that make you refrain from saying things you think are important.
4) Think: "If someone were summarising my response to the whole thing in a single sentence, what would that sentence be", and then put that sentence somewhere appropriate (either at the beginning, or if there's a suitably wide question at the end). If you're writing a particularly long answer to a question, you can do something similar at the question level too.
5) Quantity of responses is more important than having beautifully worded and beautifully thought out ones. Put your efforts into persuading more people who agree with you to respond rather than in writing the most perfect consultation response ever.
6) The Government pays more attention to responses from groups (which they call 'partners' and which the Labour Government called 'stakeholders') than to responses from individuals. So persuade any relevant groups you're part of to respond, and consider forming something like an online campaign group and responding collectively, so the response will be grouped with that of other 'partners'.
7) If you have the time and energy, do your research. And make sure you're doing the right research, which in this case means reading the documents which the ministers and civil servants who will read your response have written or read. For example,
Dynamic Benefits: from welfare to work was produced by Iain Duncan Smith's think tank in September 2009 (you need to scroll down to get to it).
8) Be genuinely open to considering what the consultation is suggesting. Leave your preconceptions at the door. If there's anything in it you like, say so: don't make it look as though you would disagree with *anything* that a Tory Government could produce.
9) Realistically, suggesting changes to the system proposed to make it better is likely to more change of succeeding than telling IDS that the whole thing is rubbish. But if enough people do the latter, it will be hard for them to ignore entirely...
10) If lots and lots of people write saying the same thing (and it's not the case that more people have written to say the opposite), the Government *will* pay attention and it *will* be reflected in policy. Maybe not as much as it should be, but at least to some extent. Consultation responses tend to be better heeded than letters, protests or petitions.
the_alchemist has just delivered here. I'm REALLY excited about this and would love a contribution on my behalf.
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plunderpuss, is raising money NOT to pay for his one-year-old pit bull puppy's surgery, but so that he will be able to eat something other than rice, rice and rice, having already spent quite a lot of his money on fixing Hanzo's luxating patella.