Nuclear Bust-Up for MRS and Opinion Leader

In the UK, the Market Research Standards Board (MRSB) has found Opinion Leader in breach of the MRS Code of Conduct for the part it played in a Whitehall consultation on nuclear energy. Opinion Leader rejects the finding and says the MRS is 'not competent to assess' the new techniques involved.

Environmental campaigning charity Greenpeace first questioned the impartiality of the UK government's nuclear power consultation 'Talking Energy' in September 2007, and made a formal complaint about Opinion Leader's involvement to the MRSB in December.

As part of the process, the agency - run by Gordon Brown's adviser Deborah Mattinson - was responsible for the recruitment of around 950 respondents who attended nine 'citizen deliberative events' across the UK. As well as hosting the events, the firm also had overall responsibility for the design and drafting of the stimulus materials.

Greenpeace alleged that these materials were misleading, inaccurate and designed to achieve 'a desired outcome', and Director John Sauven described the process as a sham and an 'insult to the people who took part'.

The charity claims that positive messages about nuclear power were made as statements of fact ('Nuclear power stations could make an important contribution to reducing the UK's CO2 emissions'), while negative issues for nuclear power required answers with the term 'satisfied' included in the question ('How satisfied are you with the Government's proposal to manage new nuclear waste in the same way as existing waste?').

Having investigated the complaint, the MRSB has ruled that some materials contained information that was inaccurately or misleadingly presented, or was imbalanced, which gave rise to a risk of respondents being led towards a particular answer.

While MRSB acknowledges that deliberative research is a relatively new technique with no current MRS guidelines, it says that as Opinion Leader failed to take reasonable steps to ensure that respondents were not guided towards specific answers, the agency was in breach of rule B14 of the MRS Code of Conduct.

Opinion Leader CEO Viki Cooke does not accept the ruling, and commented: 'We do not believe that the MRS is competent to assess these new forms of deliberative engagement. We are completely satisfied that the project was sound and fair.'

Cooke also stated that Greenpeace had come to the project with a 'pre-determined point of view' and that the charity was now seeking to 'damage the project's reputation' to support that point of view.

According to the MRS Code, Opinion Leader is now required 'to take corrective action with regard to the process that resulted in the breach in this case' - a development which Greenpeace says leaves the government's energy policy in disarray.

However, following the exchange, the UK government has defended the consultation process. A statement from the Department of Energy and Climate Change says the events 'formed only one component of a wider massive consultation', whose outcome 'stands up' regardless of the MRS verdict. It also points out that 'Greenpeace made in total five complaints to the MRS, four of which have been rejected and only one upheld.'

Web sites: www.mrs.org.uk , www.opinionleader.co.uk , www.decc.gov.uk and www.greenpeace.org .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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