The last Machinery of Government undertaking resulted in the system we currently have and which will endure until such time as it is changed by the Assembly of the day. We have been unsuccessful in the 2020-2025 term to agree on what changes should be considered by the next Assembly (or indeed any Assembly) that succeeds us. I would argue however, that we need to approach any changes from the point of view of what the Island can or will support as a necessary cost for the delivery of services – one of the three, fundamental responsibilities of your elected members acting as an Assembly.
we do not have the scale to support the entire panoply of Government Services
Finances have become so tight as to re-assess whether we need to consider what is proportionate for our size in terms of what is affordable to provide – within the context of what is largely a very local ‘Council’ in size but which has to perform as if it is a national Government all at the same time. This really is a matter of getting to grips with the fact that we are as a jurisdiction – totally subscale. If you have any doubt about the impact of scale, then compare the services available in Alderney or indeed Sark. What a new Deputy will very quickly discover is that management of Islanders’ expectations within this context is almost impossible – because most people do not recognise we cannot deliver at a comparable cost that which can be delivered in a larger location – and sometimes not at all (think about the range of Health services as an example). This is a really important concept to grasp.
So, accepting that we do not have the scale to support the entire panoply of Government Services in a larger jurisdiction and that those we do, have to be at an affordable cost for Islanders to access – any review of our ‘Machinery’ has to begin by trying to minimise as far as possible the cost of Government, since that translates directly into the level of taxation. Balancing this dichotomy will likely be the defining challenge for the 2025-2029 Assembly and any unpicking or loss of previously available services or certainly having the alternative of paying for something that was (and has been) free – is going to be very unpopular.
This then is where the proposal for Universal Entitlement (or Universal Offer) is so important. It means in practice what EVERYBODY can expect to receive and perhaps the right to access our road network without a ‘user pays’ tariff is a good example. But don’t confuse a fuel tax or car purchase tax with a ‘user Tariff’. These are mechanisms to raise Government revenues – they don’t get spent purely on the maintenance or provision of our roads. In other words, they are not hypothecated (raised and spent only on that purpose). As a point of context, fuel duty raises about £20-22 million annually.
Where this ‘Universal Offer’ becomes critical to define is in the area of Health – because it is the single biggest expense for Government and is also expected to rise substantially in future. But as opposed to the provision of a ‘free to access’ road network, Health provision will inevitably need to be tailored to the needs of individuals in combination with services that might be more general in nature and could be classed as ‘Universal’. Now, as already mentioned, if we accept that our subscale size means we cannot possibly expect to provide everything to do with (in this case) Health and that there will be demand for them nevertheless – what should Government do?
The foregoing (hopefully) illustrates the reason for re-considering the current range of Government Services as the fundamental way of approaching any restructuring of Committees. A secondary consideration is the relationship between the size or scale of Committee responsibility and the size of its political membership. Health is yet again a very good example. Currently, we ‘allocate’ 5 Deputies to all our Principal committees – regardless of the workload. It will be very obvious that being responsible for a budget of nearly a quarter of billion pounds (and providing an Island-wide range of services), is a step change in workload than one which only spends (say) £14 million.
