The Government has announced a delay to the progress of the Health Bill, and, we are told, an opportunity to ‘Pause, Listen and Engage’, spoken with the same cadences as those used by Rugby Referees these days when a scrum is ‘set’ .  Until relatively recently the rugby version was ‘Crouch, Touch, Engage’ and the introduction of the ‘Pause’ was intended to take some of the ‘sting’ out of the ‘Engage’, that moment when two mountains of muscle clatter together and begin an attempt to assault each other. 

In common with many other rugby fans I observe that this doesn’t actually work - instead there is an opportunity to brace for a still more ferocious engagement, in which victory goes to the side that creates the most impactful ‘hit’.  It’s a spectacle, enjoyed by many, but it doesn’t create a safer scrum, it doesn’t encourage the more subtle arts of scrummaging (there are some) and it isn’t ‘fairer’.

So, what of the Health Bill?  What’s interesting here is not just the use of language otherwise used in the context of the ritualised substitutes for warfare and tribal dispute we call ‘sport’.  The process matters too.  Isn’t it odd that the phrase starts with ‘Pause‘, and ends with ’Engage’?  Wouldn’t a better process start with engagement, with proactive listening?  Well of course its too late for that isn’t it?  Well perhaps - there is no denying the huge scepticism about the extent to which the exercise will involve real listening, listening which leads to change.  And of course the Government is inevitably then charged with having failed to listen in its initial consultation after last year’s White Paper, or of being inconsistent.  It cant win! 

I’d feel sorry for them were it not for the fact that this is how so much of governmental process has occurred over the ages, yet that process has been agreed to be inadequate for so long, without anyone having the courage to work differently.  Well almost. There are chinks of light.  I was reminded of one this week in the discussion over the High Speed rail line. As recently as 2005 the UK ratified its commitment in 1998 to the Aarhus Convention, by which Governments across the globe pledge to involve and encourage participation in decisions about our collective environment and to do so by a set of clear principles.  For example they pledge to encourage involvement BEFORE decisions are made, and do so as they acknowledge this leads to better decisions, better services.  Simples.

And there’s a link back to the rugby too.  Many fans (I’m one) believe the way forward for the scrum is to do away with all the crouching, touching and pausing stuff, and just to ‘engage’ ie the two sets of players knit together in formation and then ‘scrum’.  No hit, just engagement.  In the world of governments and politics that would be refreshing in itself, although I for one wouldn’t mind seeing a deal more pausing to listen too, especially if its done in the right order.  If the pause in the Health Bill is just an opportunity to prepare for a bigger ‘hit’ then this is just about the spectacle.  Or if it’s about pushing the politics to the far side of the May elections, then it’s a form of manipulation.  Perhaps we have a situation in which the politics of massive professional and local political (and national coalition?) unease will allow changes to be made that encourage greater accountability, greater openness, greater opportunity to engage.  Perhaps there is an opportunity to learn about how such processes might change for the better in the future.  Surely there must be some change beyond window-dressing or the politics wont change.  If so, great, whatever your view of the Health Bill.  However, even if that happens, my money is still on a return to the old form of engagement, the adversarial contest, the hit.  Now, where’s my whistle?