Whilst queueing Baroness Ros Scott’s piece on last week’s Lords debate on Labour’s plans for greater community engagement, I was moved to read the debate through.

And found this rather wonderful snippet from everyone’s noble friend, Tony Greaves:

[M]y first message for the Government is to ask them, please, to start using plain English. Having read the report we are debating today, I had a vision of someone saying to their husband or wife, “I’m just off down the neighbourhood hub for a bit of community empowerment. We have been quality assured by the national empowerment partnership, and tonight we are embedding our practitioner learning and capturing and sharing it through the national neighbourhood management network”.

Language like this is everywhere and sad to say, all too often, it is there to cloud meaning not to illuminate it. There is nothing less empowering than sitting in a public meeting and having half the content obscured by obfuscation sailing over your head.

Other issues identified in the Lib Dem-led debate were the dangers of residents no longer knowing who to contact to get a decision changed, now that many former powers of government have been removed to distant quangos, and consultation fatigue, where residents have said what it is they want to happen to too many different bodies, and have been put off by the fact that it never actually happens.