Previous Consultations

9th March 2020

Developing a 10 year Transition Plan for Farming

In Partnership with RSA Food, Farming and Countryside Commission

Farming is braced for a decade of change. With a general election just over, and Brexit getting ever closer, the future remains challenging and uncertain for UK farmers facing a new trading environment and an impending transition away from Common Agricultural Policy rules and payments. But we know an even more significant transition is coming, which is the change needed to mitigate and adapt to the climate emergency, and to restore wildlife and natural resources. Many farmers are already leading in responding to the challenges, but many others feel locked in to the current system through long term investments, circumstances and skills gaps.

We need a plan so that farmers can be confident of their future and plan for change. How can we enable farmers to take the driving seat in designing and leading the transition? What is the new financial deal for farmers that supports their wellbeing and ability to adapt? How much food will we need to produce and how do we ensure its affordability? What scenarios are likely to emerge and what support needs to be in place to accommodate them?

The actions we take together now will be vital in us avoiding the worst consequences of the climate emergency and halting the loss of wildlife we are seeing, as well as ensuring everyone has access to healthy affordable food produced in a way that enables us to meet the UK’s global obligations to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Agreement.

Our Consultation built on the two year inquiry and recommendations already developed with cross sector support as part of the RSA Food, Farming and Countryside Commission and brought together a range of leaders, experts and forward looking practitioners from within the agricultural sector and beyond.

3rd March 2020

Carers and Employment

In Partnership with Carers UK

The impact of unpaid caring on the everyday life of working age people is a critical and growing issue in society. As retirement age rises, people live for longer, and social care options are reduced, many of us may find ourselves providing unpaid care for a family member or friend during our working lives. This can have severe consequences, including a struggle to balance work with caring commitments, which may lead to stress-induced health problems and ultimately voluntary or involuntary loss of employment.
Caring also impacts employers and the state through loss of skilled workers and associated revenue, as well as costs associated with recruitment and unplanned absences. Through advocacy by Carers UK and Employers for Carers, policymakers and employers have begun to implement change to improve carers’ rights and available support in the workplace but more needs to be done.
16th January 2020

Climate Change among the Religions: A Forum for Engagement

In Partnership with Coexist House, the Lincoln Theological Institute (The University of Manchester) and the Reckitt Trust

What is the Forum trying to do? Informed by expertise on climate change, its aim was to create an event of mutual learning between and among religious traditions, and thereby inspire fresh action by religious communities. In other words, their aim was to support fresh thinking and action in the context of anthropogenic climate change at all levels in religious institutions.

In support of this aim, the forum had three objectives:

    1. To explore how religious traditions have interacted practically with and learned theoretically about climate change,  in order to evaluate difficulties that religious traditions have in engaging with climate change.
    2. To assess issues that inhibit action by religious communities in favour of climate change mitigation and adaptation.
    3. To devise practical strategies to address these issues.

To meet these objectives the Forum invited expert representatives from

  1. a range of religious traditions,
  2. scientific expertise,
  3. policy and institutional leadership.

The Forum had four outcomes:

  1. The building of confidence within and between religious traditions in the wisdom of aspects of their thought and life to make a contribution to change—personal, communal, social and global—in the context of climate change.
  2. Through a process of mutual exchange, to identify more clearly obstacles to religious engagement with climate change.
  3. To equip key change makers to generate change in their institutions.
  4. To provide an educational resource/legacy to support further processes of change.

The Forum is not interested in a parade of the ecological credentials of religious traditions. Such work has already been undertaken. Nor is the Forum concerned to provide an inventory of the pro-ecological activities of religious traditions—although this work is very helpful and the Forum seeks to enhance such work.

Instead, the Forum wanted to identify and address key questions that both support and inhibit engagement by religious traditions with climate change and our climate emergency. For example, do religious traditions have novel ways of supporting intergenerational solidarity? To what extent should religious adherents engage in political processes beyond voting and advocacy—especially acts of witness, lament, and even Non-Violent Direct Action? In the light of Extinction Rebellion, can disruptive action be affirmed? Religious traditions have regulations about food and diet: given the ecological costs of food production, are there religious obstacles to changes in diets but also religious resources for thinking differently about food production? Are religious traditions so strongly invested in the distinctiveness of the human that acknowledging the value of the non-human is difficult? Are there deep commitments in religious traditions that undermine the sense that the earth is “home”?

12th December 2019

Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues Consultation: Character and Sport

In Partnership with The Jubilee Centre For Character & Virtues

Character and Sport are linked; linked in the media, linked in practice, and linked in education. Sport builds character, or so the myth goes. Practising sport builds resilience, determination, self-discipline, teamwork, and a whole host of other virtues, whether you are kicking a football around on a field with jumpers for goalposts, or playing elite sport and competing in the Athletics World Championships in Doha. We don’t test this, it is taken as read. Elite sportsmen and sportswomen speak of ‘showing character’ in their performances, and pundits, journalists, and fans comment on the lack of character when it is absent from performances, or evident in scandals of questionable behaviour, or win-at-all-costs mentalities.

So what is ‘character’ in sport? Does watching, participating in, and teaching and coaching sport need a moral dimension? How does one learn about respect and fairness? How do you coach someone the ‘spirit of the game’? The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues has previously found that participating in sports is not necessarily a precursor to developing ‘good’ moral reasoning when presented with moral dilemmas, any more than participating in drama or choir is (Arthur et al., 2015). However, sport does have a hold over young people in terms of having a positive influence on their conception of what it means to live a ‘good life’ (Arthur et al., 2017). This consultation sought to bring together those researching, teaching, and delivering sport-based programmes in the community to discuss the place of a moral focus in sport, and how this can help individuals and communities flourish.

The full report from the consultation can be read here

3rd December 2019

Creating a long term plan for our country’s education system – a new approach

In Partnership with the Foundation for Education Development

You will be well aware that education policy in England is currently set by central government and driven by ministers of state. Over the past 60 years in England, the average tenure of a Secretary of State for Education has been two years. As a result, education policy has been determined primarily by the preferences of the incumbent Secretary of State and is more often than not, politically motivated.

The Foundation is convinced that a co-constructed  approach to research, development and setting of education policy is pivotal to an education system’s progress over time and we need your support to help make a once in a lifetime change that will leave an enduring legacy for many generations to come. 

The Foundation for Education Development is a newly established body which has already carried out informal discussions with leading representatives across the sectors. We would like to engage in this vitally important non-political joint initiative which aims to create a neutral space where we can explore how we might create a better future for our country’s education system.

17th November 2019

Post-Liberal Renewal

The last few decades have been dominated by social and economic liberalism. The economic and political shocks of the recession and the vote to leave the EU have exposed the limitations of this consensus. Blue Labour and Red Tory provided initial accounts of the crisis and a possible way out, but neither has yet generated lasting change. The political space in the country still exists, however, and this Windsor gathering bought together senior thinkers across the political aisle to clarify our diagnosis and begin to build a movement to respond to the contemporary challenges we face.

14th November 2019

Community Wealth Building

In partnership with Local Trust

The event discussed different approaches to community wealth building. Drawing on international practice, including the work of the Democracy Collaborative in the US, we considered whether and how such approaches might both be adapted and integrated in England to support our most deprived communities.  For the purposes of the consultation, we adopted their definition of community wealth building as  ‘a systems approach to economic development that creates an inclusive, sustainable economy built on locally rooted and broadly held ownership’.

1st October 2019

AI & Healthcare

We explored the potential benefits of applying AI in healthcare, as well as the risks to be faced. AI, as you know has huge implications for medical practitioners and patients alike. It has, for example, the potential to offer innovative solutions to longstanding challenges faced by the NHS by empowering patients to take more responsibility for their own care, so reducing pressure on an overstretched health system.

However, its use also comes with great risks: protection of patient data and the inclusivity of healthcare are just two areas of concern. How can the NHS best weigh the benefits and risks to ensure that all patients have access to the best possible healthcare within a system they can trust? What are the systemic changes facing healthcare provision? What are the attitudinal shifts required by providers and users? During our twenty-four hours together, we will look at how best to harness the potential of AI in healthcare from these and other angles.

The full report from the consultation can be read here

9th September 2019

Can anyone be an engineer?

In partnership with the Institute of Mechanical Engineers

Engineering is a central industry in the UK economy, yet it is a sector that is consistently misunderstood by the general public, leading to a serious skills shortage. Engineering remains worryingly unattractive to women and minority groups despite decades of intervention in schools and communities. It also remains an area of study that is side lined in mainstream education, and is for the most part accessible only through extracurricular enrichment opportunities. Efforts to place engineering at the heart of education, for example in University Technical Colleges, have encountered barriers to acceptance and integration in the current education system.

As we enter the Fourth Industrial Revolution do we need to change radically the way we think about engineering education, recruitment, and retention? What might be a new and compelling narrative for the engineering sector? What risks will be involved in changing the current system?

4th September 2019

Challenges for a world where drugs are legally regulated

In partnership with Transform Drugs

Managing the production, supply and use of illicit drugs is one of the most pressing issues facing global policymakers. Despite a continued commitment to the enforcement of prohibition in most of the world, drug markets continue to expand and countries are seeing a dramatic increase in the number of drug-related deaths. At the same time, the violence associated with the illicit drugs trade has continued to grow, with devastating consequences for some of the most vulnerable communities on the planet. 

This consultation bought together a range of international, cross-disciplinary experts to consider the ‘what ifs’ of a post-legalisation landscape. It did not dwell on the arguments for and against legal regulation, but rather considered the challenges and opportunities as reform becomes more widespread. They were seeking the broadest possible range of views, and consideration of the widest range of  actors. They want to move beyond some of the familiar debates about individual rights or the ineffectiveness of current policy to ask what we would need to be prepared for as policy changes. How might it affect the economy? How might we assess benefits and harm? How might we protect vulnerable communities in the developing world? How can we ensure policy protects public health?

The discussion opened the space for a fruitful and constructive exchange of views about the realities of promoting health and social justice in a world where drugs were legally regulated. By doing so, they hope to better inform the current debate on drug policy and ensure that, as things move forward, all the key issues are taken into consideration.

The full report from the consultation can be read here

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