The Government has just published its Draft Legislative Programme for 2008/09, and there are some very interesting themes in the programme for us here at Involve.

One such theme is the Personalisation and Improvement of Public Services. In the next Parliamentary session the government is proposing changes to further put patients, parents, tenants and citizens in control of what services they receive with further reforms to health, education and police services.

Furthermore, another interesting theme is "handing power back to people". As Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman put it in the foreword to the green paper: "people want to work with and direct Government to do things for them, not just have their Government do things to them. We propose to give people and local communities more voice in how their services and neighbourhoods are run."

The draft programme proposes a Community Empowerment, Housing and Economic regeneration Bill and a Business Rates Supplements Bill for the 4th session and a housing reform green paper, scheduled for towards the end of the year.

At the heart of the agenda will be "plans to give local people a bigger voice to shape local services and neighbourhoods; and give greater powers to regions in order that they have the tools they need to respond to the challenges they face and drive economic regeneration."

This is all further evidence that participation, engagement and empowerment are being etched right across Government policy.

In the spirit of this, there is a chance to voice your own views on the programme here. As with all participation and engagement, it will be interesting to see what happens to the feedback from those that get involved in the consultation. We know from experience that if a consultation is designed and carried out poorly, it is often better that there was no consultation in the first place.