12 December 2025
Centre for British Democracy partners with leading parliamentary body for workshop
The King’s Centre for British Democracy partnered with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) to host an event focussed on the recently held Citizens’ Forum on MPs’ pay and funding and the role of citizen engagement in decision-making.
The event took place on 18 November and was moderated by broadcaster and policy specialist Polly Mackenzie. Joe Attwood, researcher at the centre, opened proceedings, talking about the work of the Centre for British Democracy and his PhD project – another collaboration with IPSA – on “Understanding the Regulation of Parliamentary Expenditure”.
The event featured three panels. The first dealt with the Citizens’ Forum itself and the experience of designing, delivering, and taking part. The speakers were the IPSA Chair Richard Lloyd, Irenie Ekkeshis, co-founder and director of New Citizen Project (NCP), which organised the exercise, and Paul, one of the participants in the Citizens’ Forum.
Richard Lloyd described how IPSA had decided to hold the Citizens’ Forum as a way of engaging with a representative group of members of the public, in a way that could not be achieved through simply using a consultation paper. He saw this as a good model for organisations like IPSA to use in future. Democratic regulators need to communicate more widely and proactively, even if it meant starting with small groups like the Forum.
Irenie Ekkeshis described how NCP had used sortition to select the 23 Forum members, and how they were provided with information; NCP was very proud of the recommendations made. As a selected participant in the Forum, Paul described it as a positive experience. Sometimes, the members had agreed to differ, but they also reached solutions to the problems presented to them. Views changed over the course of the process. There was a shift in favour of the salaries paid to MPs, which a majority of participants came to recognise as reflecting the difficulties of the job. Paul would like to see the proposals the Forum made adopted; but also found the exercise itself valuable, teaching him the importance of seeing the bigger picture. Paul took a number of questions about the working of the Forum in the post-panel Q&A session.
The second group of panellists dealt with ‘Trust in democracy and a crisis of division’. Jon Alexander – co-founder of New Citizen Project and author of Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us – described how democratic institutions today constitute an aggregation of self-interest around a fixed set of options that is not very broad. This opens the path to populists who can be attractive for seeming to be willing to acknowledge the problem. Yet, we need to move from a consumer model of democracy to one which brings citizens back in. IPSA opening itself up in this way is brave and important – and the only way to restore trust.
Tom Brake is CEO of Unlock Democracy and a former MP. He described how social grievances have been increasing, and that ‘cleaning up politics’ is important to the public. For instance, a recent YouGov poll shows that people who believe MPs should have no second jobs outnumber those who think MPs should be allowed to have any second jobs by nearly 8 to 1. This is a problem that needs attention.
Gemma Mortensen is co-founder of More in Common and founder of New Constellations. More in Commons research reveals multiple divisions in public opinion, with 80 per cent of the public believing that MPs do not respect them. Restoring institutions was one challenge, but also there was a need to address the ethics of respect. One answer was to ask people across the country these questions about governance; and work on restoring local pride.
In Q&A there was a suggestion that the House of Lords might be transformed into a Citizens’ Assembly; and there were questions about the representative role of backbench MPs, compared to the possibly greater representativeness of the 23-member Forum.
For the third panel, ‘Citizen engagement: Looking to the future’, Richard Lloyd and Irenie Ekkeshis returned, and were joined by Sam Hartley, Director of Policy, Research and Voter Engagement at the Electoral Commission. Irenie Ekkeshis noted that Citizen Forums not the only approach on offer – there are other forums and formats possible.
Sam Hartley described the role of Electoral Commission as regulating the finance of political parties, but also ensuring the elections are fair, accessible and the public have trust in them. The Commission is also learning: it has started a qualitative research piece of work on party finance, as perceived by the public. The Commission is also focusing on education: educating people, especially young people, about participation in the democratic process.
Richard Lloyd closed by explaining that IPSA carried out a public consultation on the key recommendations from the Forum, in line with a commitment it made to Forum participants. Questions that needed to be addressed included how to put the recommendations into practice. He hopes that there would be a ripple effect, with other regulators of politics, ethics, and public standards following this example. Conversation continued in Q&A.
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Professor of Politics and Contemporary History
Professor of Political Economy