Last updated 12:08, Friday, 17 October 2008

A consultation on new nuclear power stations came under fire today from a market research watchdog.
The government-led process breached the industry code of conduct because insufficient steps were taken to ensure members of the public were not led into giving the required response, it was ruled by the Market Research Standards Board.
It is the second time the process has run into difficulties, following a High Court ruling in 2006 which found the Government’s decision-making process had been unlawful as it had failed to engage in the fullest possible consultation.
Environmental campaigners Greenpeace said the ruling revealed the consultation to be “a sham and an insult to the people who took part” and left the government’s plans for new nuclear power stations “in disarray”.
But pollsters Opinion Leader rejected the criticism, insisting the MRSB had found against them only on a “technical complaint” and they were “completely satisfied that the project was sound and fair”.
The MRSB found that Opinion Leader failed to take “reasonable steps to ensure that respondents would not be led towards a particular answer” and ruled that “this was not a minor or trivial breach” of its code of conduct.
“There were a number of examples where ... objectively viewed, information was inaccurately or misleadingly presented, or was imbalanced, which gave rise to a material risk of respondents being led towards a particular answer,” it found.
The company, run by pollster Deborah Mattinson, who has frequently advised Prime Minister Gordon Brown, was required to take corrective action regarding the processes it used.
Following the 2006 High Court ruling on a complaint brought by Greenpeace, the government embarked on a new round of consultations run by Opinion Leader under the banner “Talking Energy”, which included a website where people could express their opinions at a series of “stakeholder meetings” and “citizen deliberative events”.
At these events, members of the public were given handouts and shown slides and video presentations before being asked to give their judgment on proposals for a new generation of nuclear power stations.
Although the material handed out had been reviewed by interested parties, including environment pressure groups and industry representatives, the MRSB found it was ultimately government officials from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform who prepared the final written drafts.
Opinion Leader itself did not independently verify the information, said the MRSB.
Greenpeace, whose complaint sparked the MRSB investigation, said the material contained questionable statements, such as a claim that nuclear power “is substantially cheaper than wind generation”.
The group’s director, John Sauven, said: “It’s now official, another nuclear consultation was fixed. The process was a sham and an insult to the people who took part. You have to ask where this leaves Government energy policy after this politically explosive ruling. The case for building new nuclear reactors is so weak that Brown’s personal pollsters tried to rig the process. Ministers claim this was just a small part of a big process, but that only holds water if you think the public is a small part of a public consultation.”
But Opinion Leader chief executive Vicki Cooke said: “We do not accept the MRS ruling, which we believe to be incorrect. We do not believe that the MRS - a market research trade body - is competent to assess these new forms of deliberative engagement. Instead we have been involved in developing new guidelines in collaboration with a team of experienced practitioners, commissioners and evaluators - the MRS has not been involved in this.
“Opinion Leader is the most experienced practitioner of deliberative engagement methods in the UK and has pioneered many of the techniques now being used. We drew on this expertise, as well as best practice from around the world, when designing this project and made every effort to ensure that it was as thorough as possible.”
Ms Cooke said Greenpeace “came to the project with a predetermined point of view, and are now seeking to damage the project’s reputation to support that point of view”.
A spokesman from the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: “This is a report on Opinion Leader’s management of a day of events which formed only one component of a wider massive consultation.
“The outcome of our consultation stands up whatever the view of the MRS of Opinion Leader’s role.
“This does not undermine our decision on the nuclear issue and the need to deal with climate change. It comes on the day we increased our target to deal with emissions to 80% by 2050, and nuclear will play a key role in achieving that.
“Greenpeace made in total five complaints to the MRS, four of which have been rejected and only one upheld. This fifth complaint is strongly disputed by Opinion Leader who have a high reputation in the industry. That’s why we asked them to do this work, after a thorough tendering process.”
Shadow work and pensions minister Chris Grayling accused Mr Brown of trying to “take the British people for fools” over the consultation.
Mr Grayling told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “He hired his pet pollster to run a pretty dodgy-looking consultation process so that he got the result he wanted and he has been caught red-handed doing so. What I can’t understand is why didn’t he just make the case for what he believed in publicly and openly instead of trying to gerrymander the process and making a fool of himself?”