As of today and for the next political term (2025-2029), The Assembly will comprise of 38 Guernsey Deputies, elected using the Island Wide Voting mechanism and 2 States of Alderney representatives. A loss of 8 Deputies altogether however is what is proposed. Could that work and why would that be more effective than currently?
Ok, so there is quite a lot to unpack here and readers might want to know that a Requete which brought a proposal before the States to reduce the headcount by 10 in December 2024 failed – to be replaced with a commitment imposed upon the next States just to investigate. I was one of the required 7 ‘Requerants’ who brought that before the Assembly, You might also be interested to know that there were two other amendments proposed (and both failed), one seeking to increase the numbers to 45 and another that sought to reduce by only 5.
One of the reasons cited for reducing by 10 members was to do with the practicalities of working within a ‘Consensus’ system. Leaving the Alderney representation aside, if any proposition before the Assembly is to succeed (apart from some special cases), then there must be a vote of 20 Guernsey Deputies in favour of it. 19-19 is a tied position which favours the status quo (the proposition therefore fails). If every member chooses to speak on a motion, even for just 5 minutes (and many speak for far more than that), then you are looking at over 3 hours on one proposition only. Many items before the Assembly have numerous propositions (although not everybody will want to speak on each one). Once you start to add in voting and reporting the outcome of same, plus various procedural motions that can regularly occur such as when someone is seeking to curtail the debate (and so another vote gets taken to decide that), the business before the Assembly can take quite some time to conclude. Just logistically then, having only 30 voting members cuts that down considerably – and the Assembly can expect to process more business as a consequence.
So, that in itself would be a pragmatic reason to consider reducing voting members to 30. The argument against doing that however, is one of ‘Representation’ – or more specifically, a lack of it. But by comparison, The Isle of Man has a Parliament of only 24 members – for a population of some 80,000 – far bigger than we are. They do not seem to be concerned about insufficient ‘representation’. There are also two other, very pertinent considerations: firstly, the proposal is to also have 10 parish Deputies, who can participate in debates and add to the ‘representation’ or points of view (more on that in a separate post) and secondly, it is also proposed that the current Scrutiny Committee (consisting of 3 Deputies), becomes an external, non-political function (again, see the separate post).
The final point of opposition is around populating 6 Principal Committees and the Senior Committee (P&R). With 30 Deputies, supplemented (as is the case today) by at least 2 external Committee participants – I would suggest that we would be adequately covered. On top of which, as can be seen in this Machinery of Government post – I further propose a reshaping of the Committee system anyway.
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