Forum topic: The Cycle Enfield "referendum" - comment by Basil Clarke

David Burrowes MP has published the results of his unofficial "referendum", designed to gauge public support for the Enfield Council's proposals for cycle lanes along the A105.  Of the votes cast, 76 per cent were against the proposals, 18 per cent were in favour and 6 per cent were partially in favour.

In his commentary about these figures on his website, Mr Burrowes says that "I will be meeting with Boris [Johnson]  this week and will be telling him that the majority of my constituents need to be listened to."  He then makes two claims about what the "majority of my constituents" think:

"75% of my constituents have said no to Cycle Enfield along the A105."

"It is clear that there is overwhelming opposition to the A105 Cycle Enfield scheme."

Neither of these statements is supported by the poll results.

Mr Burrowes has around 65,000 constituents.  In his poll 1,973 people voted "No".  This equates to approximately 3 per cent, so it is untrue to say that "75% of my constituents have said no".

Even taking the poll on its own (very unsatisfactory) terms and dividing the number of "No" votes by the total number of voting cards sent out (17,000), 1,973 only amounts to 12 per cent, so nowhere even remotely near a majority.

So the poll results do not indicate "overwhelming opposition".  If the opposition were really overwhelming, many more people would have taken the very quick and easy action of ticking the "No" box and posting the card back.  The only reasonable conclusion we can  make about those who didn't vote (the actual "overwhelming majority") is either that they aren't interested or that they prefer to leave judgements about complex and important matters to those people who, under our system of representative democracy, have taken on the responsibility of making such decisions.

Another leading Save Our Green Lanes member has claimed that "The People have spoken".  Well, actually, an overwhelming majority (83 per cent) of those People who were asked had absolutely nothing to say.

And, of course, fewer than half of the relevant People had a vote, because only one card was sent per "household", regardless of the number of people of voting age living in it.  While one might regard some of the policies pursued by the party of which Mr Burrowes is a member of taking us back to before the Second World War, we have not yet returned to the situation before the 19th Century Reform Acts, when only householders were entitled to vote.  By allowing only one vote per address, Mr Burrowes has ignored a fundamental principle of modern democracy.

So what conclusions can we safely reach? 

I think that we can disregard the "votes" for and against both in both Mr Burrowes' "referendum" and in the consultation results that the council announced last year.  In both cases the response rate was too low to be meaningful in terms of For or Against.  It would have been a different matter, perhaps, if nine or ten thousand people had taken the opportunity to vote "No" in the "referendum" - but they didn't.

In my view, the Council should not have released the headline For and Against figures in the way they did, because by doing so they gave the impression that this was a suitable matter to be decided by a popular vote.  They should have first collated and analysed all the comments they received, then carefully considered whether any showstopper objections had been raised, which necessitated abandoning the plans (and even if 99 per cent of the population were in favour, one sufficiently serious flaw in the plans should be enough to kill them off).  They should then have looked at other, less fundamental issues identified by respondents and considered how they needed to modify the plans in response.  Which is presumably what they've been doing since October and which  they will bring to next week's meeting of the Enfield West Partnership Board.