It was reported a while back that the Citizen Juries that Gordon brown has implemented were paying the people that came along to them and were also shaping the way the meetings always seemed to conclude that the Government policy was the right one. In one health based event the particpants were each given £75 for their time.
That might have seemed a little high to some people, but the Cabinet office has bettered it. It held a deliberative forum during a whole day about the draft legislative programme. The 76 members of the "general public" (and I use that term loosely as you can almost guarantee most of them were local political activists affiliated in someway with the Labour Party) the average payout for the day was £207.
That average figures means they spent at least £15,732 on paying people for their opinion in just one day. It would be interesting to find out exactly how many of these Citizen Juries have been held across the whole of Government and how much cash has been handed over to the participants. One thing is true, it's better to be on a Citizens' Jury than to be a citizen on a jury. In the latter you get £29 a day to cover your loss of earnings.
Just think, if you knew the right people and attended four citizen juries a month you could earn around £12,000 PA for just 48 days of "work". I wonder if there are any of the "general public" out there that have done multiple events?
5 comments:
If they want to know what we "citizens" think, call a General Election. I wanted to be represeted by the MP I and my fellow constituents vote for, not some twat picked at random or, worse still, some Labour appartchik who will toe the line.
Private Eye has been on about this for ages - they also say, I think, that Brown uses it as a form of private polling...I don't know why it hasn't broken out into the mainstream media as more of a story.
Just thinking would this money that people get could it also be taxable?
I suggest you advise the Inland Revenue as these items should be taxable
I bet they put some grub on as well.
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