We all moan about ‘The States’. But do we mean Government services or are we talking about the States of Deliberation – the Assembly? How much do Islanders really know about where (and how) the decisions that affect their daily lives are actually made and if we are not happy about those decisions, what options do we have for change?
To begin with, Islanders cannot actually make any change to the ‘Machinery of Government’ except by electing Deputies who they feel would pursue those changes once in Government. It is the Legislature (The States of Deliberation aka ‘The States’) who have that power. It is not a new phenomenon – there have been a number of changes over various Assemblies – the most recent being 2016. Until (or if) that is changed, then that is the model we will continue to have.
But is it working? That might depend on your point of view – or your experience of a Government service or an actual Deputy perhaps. But this is the critical point: The 38 local Deputies who make up the Assembly are as a body – your Government. The final say rests with them (although there is some debate over whether even they can override very strict Planning Laws). But their function (beyond being a Legislature), is to ensure that Government and its associated public services are maintained and of course, improved when possible or necessary. You might say ‘The Vehicle’ for doing that is the underlying Committee system, almost all of which have 5 Deputies and possibly 2 non-voting members on them (there are exceptions such as STSB and Scrutiny). Each of these Committees has a mandate – and the executive responsibility for delivering that.
But here’s the challenge: the Deputies are supposed to have specific responsibility for Policy-making on those Committees; Officers (the Civil servants) have the responsibility for operational delivery – and the line can be blurred, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes when Deputies stray into Operational matters because they believe they have the authority to do so. Being subscale, Guernsey is always running the gauntlet of having an elected Deputy with relevant experience being elected on to a Committee which might reflect the Deputy’s previous experience (for example, an ex or retired Teacher on ESC). That can be very helpful – or it can become problematic given this tension between Policy-making and Operational delivery.
Another challenge that we have is the way that different parts of delivery or responsibility are sometimes falling to more than one committee. A good example might be Guernsey Electricity (GEL): The Electricity Strategy is the province of E&I, but GEL itself comes under STSB. Housing is a classic – with at least E&I, ESS, P&R and the DPA all having a bit of the puzzle. However, that particular anomaly has recently been addressed with the intention to create (in the new term), a discrete Housing Committee. It should be apparent neverthelessless, that there is quite a lot of room in the current Committee system for tension nor is it always as efficient as it could be. This is the subject of more detailed posts, but probably best to start with increasing the number of members of P&R from 5 to 10.
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