Meeting Papers

AEBC/04/09

Proposed AEBC contribution to Government review - thoughts from Julie Hill

It is important that our performance should be evaluated against the real circumstances that we have faced, including the real politics and tensions of the areas we have been engaged in, and much of this is known only to Commission Members. Thus to assist the Government’s appraisal, I am proposing that we should feed in an agreed collective perspective.

I propose to draft a short paper which will set out the Commission’s own reflections on the AEBC. It will reflect both commonalties and differences in Members’ views about the emergence and the practice of the body.

The paper could cover:

• An account of the circumstances in which the Commission was formed
• The implications of appointments to the Commission of people with differing values and interests.
• The extent to which Members came with differing expectations of what the Commission was for and how it would work
• The implications of these differences for how we have worked, and engaged with the public
• The political contexts for our various reports
• The substance and nature of the Government responses to our reports
• Our relationship to key bodies, particularly during the conduct of the ‘GM dialogue’
• The meaning of ‘independence’ for a body such as ours
• What might be the future strategic needs in this policy area

Rather than interviewing everyone individually, which will extend the time taken to produce the paper, I am proposing to make a tentative draft and circulate it for comment, following up with discussions with individual members as needed to achieve consensus. The aim will be to make our submission within the period of the Government’s consultation on our review, which is likely to run from May to early-mid July.

Julie Hill
28.4.04