A new jury to put the British public interest first

• Guardian.co.uk, Sunday 31 July 2011 
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• A campaign has been launched to hold to account Britain's 'feral' elite for the series of crises which have scarred the country

Something is unraveling before our eyes. From bankers to media-barons, private interests have bankrupted and corrupted the public realm. Power, for so long hidden in the pockets of a cosy elite, has been exposed. Those who wield it have been found wanting – in scruples, in morals and in decency.

Things are now in flux, but will not stay so for long.

Without decisive and sustained action, power will fall back into the hands of a small elite who have their own, and not the public's interest at heart.

They want to prevent public revulsion turning into public action. But, it's time for real change. Things cannot be allowed to turn back to business as usual.

Britain can no longer be just the plaything of a handful of powerful, remote interest groups treating the wider public with contempt.

The current press and political scandal is not an isolated event.

It's the third crisis in quick succession.

First, the bankers and their bonuses, then some politicians and their expenses and now there is the press, profiting from peoples' pain, grief and private lives.

These crises share common origins.

Left to their own devices politicians, bankers and media moguls could not regulate themselves.

They share a common culture in which greed is good, everyone takes their turn at the trough, and private interest takes precedence over the public good. They have protected each other and left the British people with a financial and political crisis.

They do what they can get away with, not seeming to care for the common life of our country. And, they are scared of only one thing. Us. The public. If public organisations and citizens are vigilant, that elite won't be able to get away with it again. With the right checks and balances we can put the public interest back into the heart of the system.

Only we, the public, can hold power truly to account by testing whether what happens is in the public interest.

To work out how to do it we call for a new Public Jury for the British public interest to propose reforms of banking, politics, media and the police.

The Jury would be made up of 1,000 citizens drawn as a random sample of the electorate. It will be a jury of our peers. We do not need yet another inquiry in which one elite asks another elite to tell them what cannot be done.

The Jury will be funded out of the public purse, with a paid secretariat with the resources to commission research and call witnesses.

It will have the power to require attendance where persons will be asked by the public to explain themselves.

Reporting within a year of its launch the convention will study and report on:

• Media ownership and the public interest

• The role of the financial sector in the crash

• MP selections and accountability

• Policing and public interest

• How to apply a 'public interest first' test more generally to British political and corporate life

Signed by:

Greg Dyke

Henry Porter

Lord Stewart Wood

Lord Smith of Clifton

Baroness Helena Kennedy QC

John Kampfner, Index on Censorship

Philip Pullman, author

Gordon Roddick

Caroline Lucas MP, leader of the Green Party

Professor Zygmunt Bauman, Leeds University

Professor Francesca Klug OBE

Professor David Marquand, Mansfield College, Oxford University

Professor Kate Pickett, University of York

Professor Richard Grayson, University of London

Ann Pettifor, Prime Economics

Peter Facey, Unlock Democracy

Deborah Doane, World Development Movement

John Christenson, Tax Justice Network

Richard Murphy, Tax Research LLP

Charlie McConnell, Schumacher College

Professor Tim Jackson, University of Surrey

Guy Shrubsole, Public Interest Research Centre

Richard Hawkins, Public Interest Research Centre

Alan Mac Dougall, PIRC

Neal Lawson, Compass

Martin McIvor, Renewal

Gavin Hayes, Compass

Andrew Simms, nef fellow

Will Straw, founder of Left Foot Forward

Clifford Singer, Other Taxpayers Alliance

Dave Prentis, General Secretary, Unison

Heather Wakefield, Unison

Polly Toynbee, The Guardian

Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian

Laurie Penny, journalist

Heather Savigny, UEA

Professor Judith Marquand, Wolfson College, Oxford University

Professor Alan Finlayson, University of Swansea

Professor Jonathan Rutherford, Middlesex University

Professor Danny Dorling, University of Sheffield

Professor George Irvin, University of London, SOAS

Professor Prem Sikka, University of Essex

Professor Richard Wilkinson, Emeritus Professor of Social Epidemiology

Professor Stefano Harney, QMUL

Professor Peter Case, Bristol Business School

Owen Jones, author of Chavs

Howard Reed, Landman Economics

Stewart Lansley, research fellow, University of Bristol

Professor John Weeks, SOAS

Jenny Jones AM, Green Party

Jeremy Leggett, founder and CEO, Solar Century

Tamasin Cave, Spinwatch

Professor Victoria Chick, UCL

Ruth Potts, The Great Transition, New Economics Foundation

Stewart Wallis, executive director, New Economics Foundation

Rajesh Makwana, director, Share The World's Resources

To support the call for a People's Jury for the British Public Interest go towww.compassonline.org.uk

Public jury campaign launched to take power away from UK's 'feral' elite

Expenses, bonuses and hacking crises share origins, says campaign group that includes Greg Dyke and Philip Pullman

Declaration: A new jury to put the British public interest first

Britain is being run by a "feral" elite whose members are responsible for a series of crises – from phone hacking to the row over bankers' bonuses – which have scarred the country, a new, non-party group headed by the author Philip Pullman claims.

A 1,000-strong "public jury" should be selected at random to draw up a "public interest first" test to ensure that power is taken away from "remote interest groups" which currently treat the public with contempt, according to the group's declaration. The call for a public jury, which has been signed by 56 academics, writers, trade unionists and politicians fromLabour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green party, is published in the Guardian.

Its signatories include Greg Dyke, former director general of the BBC,Caroline Lucas, the only Green MP who is also her party's leader, and the civil liberties campaigner and Labour peer Lady Kennedy. Guardian columnists Polly Toynbee and Madeleine Bunting have also signed the declaration.

Launched by Neal Lawson, a former adviser to Gordon Brown who chairs the left of centre Compass group, the group says that decisive action is needed to wrest power back from a small elite.

"Something is unravelling before our eyes," the group says. "From bankers to media barons, private interests have bankrupted and corrupted the public realm. Power, for so long hidden in the pockets of a cosy elite, has been exposed. Those who wield it have been found wanting - in scruples, in morals and in decency."

The group says that the three crises - MPs' expenses, bankers' bonuses and illegal phone hacking - share common origins. "Politicians, bankers and media moguls ... share a common culture in which greed is good, everyone takes their turn at the trough, and private interest takes precedence over the public good."

In a Guardian article, the authors of the declaration warn of a "feral" elite. Lawson and Andrew Simms, fellow at the New Economics Foundation, write: "With no pressure for higher ethical standards, the new all-powerful elites were like kids left free in the sweetshop, going feral as they lost all self-control and all touch with society."

The group says that 1,000 citizens should be selected at random to sit on a public jury that will propose reforms to banking, politics. The jury, to be funded from the public purse, would examine:

• Media ownership.

• The financial sector's role in the crash.

• MP selections and accountability.

• Policing and public interest.

• How to apply a "public interest first" test more generally to British political and corporate life.

The declaration's main critique of Britain - that power is concentrated in the hands of a small elite - echoes the thinking of Ed Miliband. The Labour leader, who has been praised for shaping the public response to the phone-hacking scandal, recently said that too much power in the media and other industries is concentrated in the hands of too few people.

"The powerful are very good at talking about the responsibilities of the powerless but they aren't very good at looking at their own responsibilities," Miliband told the Times on 23 July as he called for the "big six" energy companies to be broken up. "Labour is the party of the grafters, the people who work hard and do the decent thing but don't feel they get a very fair deal out of society."The declaration is also signed by Lord Wood, an Oxford don who is a senior adviser to Miliband.