|
|
PUBLIC ATTITUDES SUB GROUP WORKSHOP
20 FEBRUARY 2002
DTI CONFERENCE CENTRE
1 VICTORIA STREET, LONDON SW1
MINUTES
Present
From AEBC working group
Dr David Carmichael
Professor Philip Dale
Dr Ed Dart
Professor Robin Grove-White (Convener)
Ms Judith Hann
Ms Chi Chi Iweajunwa
Workshop attendees
Caroline Hurren, Medicine and Society programme, Wellcome Trust
Paul Greening, Head of Consultation, Centre for Management and Policy Studies
David Coles, Office of Science and Technology
Dame Bridget Ogilvie, Chair of COPUS
Sheila Anderson, Head of Communications, NERC
Steve Rayner, Professor of Science in Society, Said Business School
Gary Cass, Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
Schia Mitchell, The Environment Council
Professor Ian Hargreaves, Centre for Journalism Studies, Cardiff University
Duncan Dallas, Science Cafe movement
Tom Wakeford, University of Newcastle
Also present
Clare Bennett, Welsh Assembly
Graham Davis, DEFRA
Sue Hattersley, Food Standards Agency
Richard Abel, AEBC Secretariat
Chris Hepworth, AEBC Secretariat
Introduction
1. Robin Grove-White thanked those who had come to the workshop. He explained that the thinking of the public attitudes working group of the AEBC was at an early stage. The question it was considering was how and when to promote an effective public debate on possible
commercialisation of the Farm-Scale Evaluation GM crops, who should be involved, and how to make the best use of the results of such a debate. Government had asked the AEBC for advice on this by the end of April 2002. The AEBC also had been asked to cover in its advice how to determine the public acceptability of GM crops,
in particular cross-pollination thresholds and GM presence in organic crops. The working group were seeking feedback on their emerging thinking from attendees and would welcome attendees' ideas about different possible approaches.
2. Robin Grove-White gave a short introductory presentation about the background to the issues and the working group's emerging thinking. A copy of the presentation is attached as an annex to this note.
Discussion
3. The following were the main points raised in discussion in the course of the workshop:
Purpose
- most attendees thought for any public debate to be credible, everyone had to be clear at the outset about its purpose. Embarking on a process which raised false expectations about how people's contributions made in the course of debate would be
used would simply give rise to cynicism about the exercise and make people doubtful about the value of taking part in it. Government would need to be explicit at the outset about what stimulating a debate was and was not intended to achieve. What were the objectives of having a debate?;
- on the other hand, there was a danger in trying to over-specify the outcomes of a debate, or seek to achieve a single end-point in the process. The outcome should not be a quasi-referendum. Nor was the purpose of the process to ask people in focus groups to act as proxies for Ministers.
It would be Ministers who would make the decisions. But a debate could help set the context of public interests and concerns which could, if not in an immediately obvious way, influence the decision-making process, albeit indirectly;
- differences between the positions of the devolved administrations, particularly Wales, and the UK Government on the issue of possible commercialisation of GM crops would need to be taken into account in designing the process;
- the recent Government consultation on radioactive waste management offered some lessons on how, and how not, to approach exercises of this kind.
Process
- the process proposed in the AEBC working group's presentation looked too controlled and unidirectional to a number of workshop attendees. There should be public involvement in setting the agenda for the debate. The assumptions made at the outset of the debate would frame the entire process and so were of critical importance.
Some attendees thought that stakeholder organisations should be involved at the outset in helping determine the issues and information which might be presented to participants in any discussion group or consensus conference-like event, whose discussions the AEBC sub-group had thought might form the basis of a film designed to stimulate debate in other arenas.
Others were more sceptical about involving stakeholders in this way. There was wider support for the proposal that the participants themselves, who would not be from any stakeholder organisation, should define what were the issues which need to be debated around the question of the commercialisation of GM crops in the UK. This would give some guarantee that the debate was not being artificially trammelled.
There was some discussion among workshop attendees and the AEBC group members about the extent to which and how best the group participants might be briefed initially about GM crops to get them started in the process. Getting this right needed care. It seemed clear that the participants in any discussion group or consensus conference-like event should have access to a plurality of sources of information;
- workshop attendees recommended that the AEBC should look at a plurality of approaches for stimulating debate on the issues. There was a danger in putting too heavy a reliance on distribution of a video to schools, community groups, etc. There was some scepticism that many people would be interested in a film of the kind envisaged. It did not sound to some attendees as if any commissioning editor would find the video very attractive.
Would it interest the groups that the AEBC wanted to reach? Any film would need to be sufficiently provocative to grab people's attention. Polarisation of public discussion along familiar lines was to be avoided; but an anodyne film would interest no-one. Most people watched TV and read newspapers 'defensively', discounting what they heard to a greater or lesser extent. Any fiIm would have to jump that hurdle;
- in general, there were lots of other techniques which could be employed to help stimulate a debate. Moreover, different people had different levels of interest in and knowledge about the subject for debate. A single film would be unlikely to be suitable for all those people. It would be better not to have all the eggs in one methodological basket;
- there was general agreement that the process should be conducted at arm's length from Government in order to give it greater credibility;
- one or two attendees expressed some disappointment that there seemed to be little novel in the forms of debate which the AEBC were planning to recommend. There was general support for evaluating whatever - it was hoped, innovative - programme of events was embarked on to gauge its value for policy-making in other areas; and the extent to which the debate impinged on policy-making around the question of commercialisation of GM crops.
Interactions
- any programme of debate that the AEBC recommended would not be the only show in town. The media would continue to write and broadcast on GM crop issues. The Westminster and devolved Parliaments and Assemblies would be examining and debating the issues. Non-governmental environmental and industry organisations would be seeking to play a role too.
It would be naïve to assume that command and control over the national debate would be vested in any process set off as a result of the AEBC's advice. There would inevitably be interactions between whatever programme of events is set out by Government and events outside that programme;
- the great majority of people's exposure to the arguments around GM crops was through print and broadcast media. Some workshop attendees saw the threat that the media would sensationalise the issues as one of the main problems with trying to stimulate a public debate and even more so with trying to involve or interest the media at large in it.
Other attendees saw merit in seeking to interest elements of the local, regional and national media from the outset in any process which would be set up. It was noted that the media was likely only to become interested in live issues. So if it was hoped to involve the media in some way in a debate on GM issues, one should not seek to stimulate a debate in a period when things had gone quiet.
Attendees mentioned a number of studies made of how the debate on GM issues in the media had developed in the United Kingdom which made useful reading in this context;
- the idea of seeking to interest one or more terrestrial or satellite broadcaster potentially had merit. Television, radio and the national media could achieve greater breadth of coverage of the population than other techniques;
- a debate about GM crops raised wider issues about people's attitudes to science and technology and the ability of scientists and Government to communicate effectively with the public and get their message across on complex issues;
4. Robin Grove-White closed the discussion by thanking attendees very warmly on behalf of the working group for their contributions to what had been a highly stimulating discussion which had given the AEBC working group considerable food for thought.
A note of the meeting would be circulated to attendees. If anyone had any further points to make following the meeting, it would be very helpful if they could pass these to the AEBC Secretariat. The minutes of future meetings of the sub-group and substantive papers would be placed on the AEBC website (www.aebc.gov.uk) and the working group hoped that attendees would take a continued interest in the AEBC's work in this area.
AEBC Secretariat
February 2002
|
 |
