How do we reverse the collapse in voter turn-out over the past sixty years? How about we massively extend the funding and public service remit of the BBC?

The public’s mistrust of our politics is a problem that parties of all persuasions should be worried about. It is often said that it is the political games of a distant Whitehall, so removed from the ordinary lives of real people that are to blame for General Election turnout falling from 83.9% in 1950 to 65.1% in 2010.  

Such hand wringing is usually followed by calls for a more decentralised version of the state, handing power back to the people and giving them a greater say in our democracy. In principle I agree with this, the public however are lukewarm to the idea. 2010 local election turn-out stood at around 32% and the introduction of Police Commissioner Elections is predicted to result in a turn-out of just 18% - less than one in five are saying they plan to vote. 

Maybe my cynicism is misplaced and the public will warm to the idea of Police Commissioners (though I’d still suggest November probably isn’t the best time to hold an election) and some of the problems with local government are well documented. There certainly isn’t a silver bullet that can re-engage the electorate and those proposing decentralisation as a cure-all need to engage on a wide variety of fronts and not see the aim of driving power down as an end in itself. Further reform must be matched with deepening engagement or it simply isn’t worth doing.  

One issue that can address turn-out and help foster engagement is the chronic lack of accountability that currently infests local branches of Government. It saddens me that, and I say this as a Labour Party member, if you were elected as a Labour Council in 2010 than it almost doesn’t matter how bad you are or how many awful decisions you make as there is a 90% chance you will remain a Labour council until there is a change in Government.  

The refrain “send a message to the Government” remains the catch-all slogan that our parties use to fire up their base and gain control of Town Halls while remaining in opposition in Westminster. However, Councils make decisions every day and sometimes those decisions are bad ones and they need to be exposed and shown to the public so they can make an educated decision at local election time. 

Local newspapers, historically the place to inform you about local decision making, are seeing 10% year-on-year decreases in circulation. Steadily rising online readership is not making up for the loss in revenue and, consequently, dailies have become weeklies, journalists have been laid off and regurgitated press releases and human interest stories now take precedence over local scrutiny. It was hoped that the birth of widespread internet usage and the power of the blogger could fill the gap but, with honourable exceptions, that is still yet to happen.  

So what can Whitehall do to fill the gap? We have in this country a public service broadcaster which is trusted by the public and a well-used source of information. Why not empower the BBC to provide more locally focused news? Adding locally relevant stories to the news homepage based on your location could overnight increase the amount of local news coverage the average internet users receives on a daily basis. The BBC’s unique public service remit and heavily regulated impartiality make it the ideal platform, the public could even learn the name of their local Councillors once more and respond to the decisions that they are taking on their behalf.

This could also give the local-news blogosphere the jump-start it needs as a flowering of locally based content would no doubt also prompt competition from others keen not to toe the BBC line. Social media sites like twitter and Facebook would also see the news spread beyond those who just engage with the BBC.  

Ok, so a suggestion to increase the level of funding for the BBC is probably not an election winner, especially in times of austerity, but then again neither is spending millions on making our police electable. Driving power away from Whitehall has only succeeded in making the public even less aware of what politics can and should be doing, it’s time to make all our politicians accountable.  

This article has been published in the ResPublica Fringe magazine, a collection of articles and essays from our party conference partners.

A representative from the Fabian Society will be speaking at ‘Is the Party over?  Reconnecting people and politics’, a ResPublica public fringe series co-hosted with the Fabian Society and CentreForum at Liberal Democrat Party conference: Saturday 22nd September, 8.15pm – 9.30pm, the Grand Hotel, Brighton; Labour Party conference: Sunday 30thSeptember, 12.45pm – 2.00pm, Manchester Town Hall and Conservative Party conference: Tuesday 9th October, 10.30am – 11.45am, the ResPublica Marquee, the ICC Birmingham (secure zone).