Simon Burall, who has died aged 54 of a brain tumour, did much to put the citizen at the heart of public policy. Regarding electoral democracy as inadequate for this purpose, he looked for remedies, including randomly selected citizens’ juries.
In 1999 he was appointed director of One World Trust, which had been researching global governance for half a century. Reflecting on unaccountable transnational bodies sparked thoughts about wider democratic deficits.
He took on trusteeships and advisory roles across civil society. As chair of trustees of Democratic Audit, an organisation monitoring issues of democracy and freedom in the UK, from 2009, he asked challenging questions about its focus on promoting institutional reforms to elites, suggesting that serious democratisation must instead start with grassroots deliberation.
That year, too, he became director of the public participation charity Involve. Founded in 2003, the year that Tony Blair’s “Big Conversation” created a brief buzz around civic engagement, Involve faced financial difficulty in the climate of austerity that followed the financial crisis of 2007-08.
Burall applied the exacting transparency that he always demanded of public authorities to his own management, even discussing uncertain cashflows in staff meetings. Eventually, in 2016-17, he got the sums to add up by sacrificing his own senior post and salary, persuading a more junior colleague to take up the directorship, while turning himself into a “senior associate”, which he remained.
The organisation landed big projects including NHS Citizen – an ambitious scheme involving a citizens’ jury setting health service priorities, before a larger citizens’ assembly held the NHS England board to account on progress. But as the big squeeze continued, the initiative was in effect killed off.
A pre-existing programme, Sciencewise – which runs deliberative consultation on society-meets-science challenges, such as online data collection and GM foods – provided a steadier stream of new work. The point was never simply scientists educating citizens, but a true two-way dialogue. A colleague recalls Burall persuading scientists that they could not avoid grappling with the public’s intuitive sense of the “natural”, however hazy it seemed to them, because it was crucial to the social psychology that shaped governance of their work.
Burall became increasingly convinced that the key lay in embedding the voices of ordinary citizens in institutions. Elections – as he set out in his paper Room for a View (2015) – were infrequent, ambiguous and retrospective verdicts, given after polarising campaigns. They were crucial for clearing out disliked governments, but did not expose citizens to the dilemmas of power, still less engage them in difficult choices. He yearned for decision-making that truly was “for the people” and, where practical, “by the people” too.
No conversation was deemed too awkward, and no issue too thorny to be opened up. Burall engineered many unlikely discussions – bringing securocrats and civil libertarians together to talk about biometrics, and creating a space where NHS leaders heard trans patients recall their long years of being disbelieved or dismissed.
Whatever the subject, colleagues recall certain constants in the Burall technique: ensuring everyone in the room knew exactly what they could hope to get out of the discussion; holding back his own view on the substance, while being forceful about good procedure; deploying “the power of awkward silence” until participants opened up; using breaks to establish the views of reticent participants so that every voice registered.
It took quiet diplomacy to win the citizen a seat at the table of power. He worked effectively with the pro-transparency Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude during the 2010-15 coalition government. And he understood that his forums would be commissioned and gain traction only if they were designed to work just as well for the officials present as for the other participants.
Born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, Simon was the son of Susie (nee Goodrich) and David Burall, who ran a family printing firm. From Oakham school, in Rutland, he went to Girton College, Cambridge to study natural sciences, graduating in 1992. He did 18 months of VSO, teaching in Zimbabwe.
After returning in 1995, he worked for VSO’s head office in Putney, and then another volunteering charity. In the late 90s, he met Pam Mason, an environmental economist; they married in 2000.
The ideas and ways of doing things that Burall promoted have contributed to what the OECD now describes as a worldwide “deliberative wave”, reflected in initiatives such as the Ostbelgien Model, the permanent citizens’ council in the regional parliament of German-speaking East Belgium.
After he stood down as the director of Involve, the most interesting available UK work was still around science and he was particularly involved with the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. He helped it instigate a citizens’ jury on assisted dying. With Keir Starmer promising a free vote on the issue, its recommendations will be keenly awaited.
Reports that the new Labour government is examining the work of Ireland’s celebrated Citizens’ Assembly – credited with unlocking abortion reform – have encouraged expectations of a move towards wider public deliberation.
In 2021, an expected diagnosis for Burall of long Covid turned out to be MS. Eighteen months later, presumed MS symptoms turned out to be a brain tumour. A second operation on that in 2024 precipitated a stroke that hospitalised him. He kept blogging throughout, publicly deliberating with himself about his treatments and prospects. He asked about “patient voice” groups he might join, and inquired about care homes that might have a desk where he could work.
His sister Katie predeceased him. He is survived by Pam, their three children, Elspeth, Alex and Ollie, and his parents.
• Simon Charles Burall, deliberative democracy practitioner, born 3 May 1970; died 4 July 2024
