Influencing policy workshop at Annual Conference – 02.11.16

Chaired by Anne Fox

Panel

Rod Clarke – Prisoners’ Education Trust

Ben Summerskill – Criminal Justice Alliance

Jenny Earle – Prison Reform Trust

Raheel Mohammed – Maslaha

Jenny Earle

Prison Reform Trust have three main methods of influencing policy:

  • Evidence gathering and publication (including government statements)
  • Parliamentary work – the organisation has a dedicated parliamentary team doing legislative work.
  • Use of the media.

Raheel Mohammed

  • Maslaha works from the ground up, rooted in local communities.
  • We capture the public’s imagination through creative methods such as the arts. The arts can break through the white noise around Muslim communities in wider society.

Rod Clarke

  • To gain influence and power, it’s important to position yourself as capable of solving the problems people in power identify.
  • Policy makers need individual stories – NOMS don’t maintain links with individual prisoners, so need organisations to fill in this gap.
  • Policy makers need solutions and best practice – we can bring out positives and demonstrate how to join up work.

Ben Summerskill

  • Think and speak in plain English.
  • Be conscious of who your audience are. For example, if you’re talking to right-wing conservatives, discuss efficiency rather than equality.
  • Don’t get caught making things up – incorrect facts and exaggerations discredit you.
  • Don’t be too antagonistic – you will have to work with the people you’re trying to influence one the argument is over.
  • Always try and measure impact.

Question from the group: How do we change things? Ministers move on and the agenda changes.

Anne: You can be the consultant. We hold a memory as a sector of what worked and didn’t work.

Jenny: As an advocacy organisation, we make sure we’re collating evidence of the impact on the voluntary sector.

Comment from the group: As a sector, we need to challenge ourselves and be real with ourselves, rather than stay in an echo chamber. We should spend more time with the people we disagree with, understand how far away the public are and that they shape policy.

Jenny: It’s important to mobilise people who aren’t the usual suspects.

Anne: It’s also useful to get other people to make your argument for you, so it’s coming from more than one group/area.

Question from the group: What if passion is taken as antagonism? It can be difficult to get into the policy circle without looking antagonistic.

Ben: When passion is underpinned by evidence, it is excused.

Anne: It helps to get supporters that the policy person knows to second you.

Comment from the group: What about the relationship between policy and practice? Policy change doesn’t always impact on the ground – it’s important to measure this.

Question from Anne: What’s your biggest policy achievement?

Rod: Policy does matter – there are positive policy decisions and we shouldn’t get too pessimistic. For example. The Prisoners’ Education Trust brought together a coalition of views on how the education contracts in prisons should continue. We produced a briefing before the election. What we were asking for has happened.

Raheel: Maslaha started after the 7/7 bombings. We stayed away from the topic of extremism to focus on other inequalities. Our work wouldn’t have been possible without the communities we work with – we want to give them a platform. Bringing them with us is a great achievement.

Ben: Getting the Civil Partnership Act through the House of Lords, which contributed to legalising gay marriage. We worked with Conservatives in the face of pressure from the Labour party not to do this. It was precisely through talking on their level – creating solutions to their problems (e.g. presenting the problem of gay business owners losing assets after the death of a partner) – that we did this. We also had to tell the story so the public felt it related to them.

Jenny: Section 10 of the Offender Rehabilitation Act – the recognition of women’s distinct needs. This hasn’t been delivered yet but is a lever and mechanism to hold the Secretary of State to account. There was lots of resistance initially and we had an effective champion in the House of Lords. It is important to build support from organisations outside of criminal justice.

Comment from the group: The reduction of numbers of children in prison is a huge achievement – I led a project to achieve this. It shows that you don’t always need a change in legislation to achieve huge things – this was done with hardly any change in the law.

Comment from the group: Sometimes it’s about hanging in there until the right moment. The Human Rights Act took a long time to achieve, influencers have to seize the moment.

Comment from the group: It’s important to talk to the people who implement policy. E.g. The Coates Review team came to HMP Whatton to talk to education providers.

Comment from the group: Mitigating against the worst possible outcomes is also important, though it doesn’t always feel like an achievement.

Comment from the group: Sometimes the sector can get in its own way through organisations campaigning for their own cause, i.e. funding. Devolution may lead to the role of policy influencing changing.

Comment from the group: There isn’t a joined up story board on policy regarding pre- prison and post- release at the moment. There isn’t a blueprint around rehabilitation and we need policy for all the way through. The RSA paper on this was good but it didn’t come from the voluntary sector.

Question from Anne: Can you give us one main point for people to take away from this session?

Rod: Present solutions to your audience’s problems.

Ben: Talk to people who disagree with you.

Jenny: Legislative change is not an end in itself.

Raheel: Keep your hands in the soil. Understanding complexities and sharing them can allow you to work the system.