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Deputy Heidi Soulsby says a culture of "tribalism and inexperience" which forced her to resign as Vice President of the Policy & Resources Committee has not subdued her enthusiasm for local politics.
Since her election to the Assembly in 2012, this is Deputy Soulsby's first full week without either the presidency of a States' committee or a seat on the States' senior committee.
Speaking to Express in her first interview since resigning, Deputy Soulsby said she is eager to throw herself into her new and unfamiliar role outside the major committees, and set out her thoughts about the remaining two-and-a-half years of the States' term.
Pictured: Deputy Heidi Soulsby announced her resignation at the end of October and left the Committee when her successor was elected by the States last week.
Over the next few weeks, she hopes to work with like-minded deputies and others who share her dismay with her former Committee's latest tax plan, which includes a proposal for a 5% goods and services tax [GST], and which Deputy Soulsby described as "the final straw" behind her resignation.
"Clearly, the tax debate is going to take some thought over the coming weeks," she said. "I think there needs to be an alternative package put forward. I know there are others thinking the same, inside and outside the States, who want to see an alternative."
Deputy Soulsby said her concerns about the Committee's tax plan go back months. "To around late summer," she said. "The first time I saw the draft policy letter, I could see this wasn't what I wanted. I thought it was absolutely not what we should have been doing – the approach was completely wrong."
In the first of this three-part interview, published earlier this week and which can be read HERE, Deputy Soulsby told Express the Committee's plan overstates how much additional tax the States need to raise, ignores opportunities to make efficiency savings and shows no empathy with households facing the largest squeeze on living standards in decades.
Pictured (l to r): Deputies Lyndon Trott, Heidi Soulsby and Gavin St. Pier led the Partnership of Independents into the first island wide general election in October 2020, finishing ninth, second and first respectively. But their party no longer exists and none of them have a seat on any States' committee.
Deputy Soulsby's resignation, almost exactly two years into the States' term, confirms, if any further confirmation was required, the extent of the changing of the guard among the States' leadership since 2020.
She now finds herself in a trio of former 'big beasts' without seats on a single States' committee. The others being Deputies Gavin St. Pier and Lyndon Trott, President and Vice President respectively of the Policy & Resources Committee in the 2016-20 term. Both of them are also former Treasury Ministers. Another former Treasury Minister, Deputy Charles Parkinson, holds only a single seat on a non-policymaking committee. Like Deputy Soulsby, Deputy Parkinson has already declared his opposition to Policy & Resources' tax plan.
Beyond the great tax debate, which will probably be scheduled for the end of January, Deputy Soulsby said she hopes to put her new-found political freedom "to constructive use somewhere".
"This is the first time I have not had a committee role in the States for 10 years. It's going to be strange for me. I'm happy to volunteer myself if there's anywhere I can assist.
"My focus has been very much on Policy & Resources. Anyone who thinks I have some kind of masterplan is completely wrong. I wanted to make it work on Policy & Resources, but for the reasons I have already explained ["tribalism and inexperience"] it didn't work as I'd hoped.
"I feel I am constructive and a problem solver. That's what I like doing if I can. I am a resource if anyone wants me."
Pictured: Deputy Soulsby does not want to join the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture, which is looking for a new member.
However, Deputy Soulsby has ruled out standing for the seat on the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture left vacant by the resignation of its Vice President, Deputy Bob Murray, to take over from Deputy Soulsby on the Policy & Resources Committee.
Deputy Soulsby disagrees with the secondary and further education model the Committee is currently developing at a capital cost of up to £105million, which she said also comes with higher than necessary annual running costs. She cites the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture's budget - which has received injections of millions of pounds above inflation - as the best example of the "tribalism" which she said has characterised the States' term so far and helped force her off the Policy & Resources Committee.
"I challenged budget requests from Education, Sport & Culture. But there didn't seem to be the same challenge coming from others at the same time.
"Education is the classic example. We're told we haven't got any money and then Policy & Resources supports a very expensive secondary school model. One minute we're agreeing to spend tens of million to move a sixth form centre a few hundred yards down the road for no gain and the next minute we're told we've got to raise taxes because we haven't got any money.
"The public are being sold mixed messages. No wonder they're confused."
Deputy Soulsby, a former President of the Committee for Health & Social Care, also thinks some of her erstwhile colleagues on the Policy & Resources Committee have more or less given up on opportunities for efficiencies in health and care and other areas of the public sector, which she said "are really difficult to realise, but do exist if you rethink how you are providing services".
Pictured: Deputy Soulsby thinks her former colleagues on the Policy & Resources Committee have too easily passed up opportunities for efficiency savings in the way public services are delivered and that this has contributed to its need to propose tax increases totalling nearly £60m a year.
Deputy Soulsby thinks the States' political leadership team elected in 2020 has been "too negative about Guernsey and too negative about the past".
"I've been shocked by this narrative that nothing good happened before. Apparently no savings were made. Well, they certainly were. I know that at one stage the Committee for Health & Social Care made £8m of savings. We gave money back at one point and the budget actually went down.
"That's not at all a criticism of the current Committee for Health & Social Care, but the narrative that nothing good ever happened before 2020 is rubbish.
"It depresses me that the negative is always the main message at the moment. Leadership needs to be inspiring. We know finances are hard, but people want to know that we're thinking about where Guernsey could be. People need something to feel inspired by."
Deputy Soulsby thinks the performance of the States - good and bad - is "basically about the individuals" rather than the system. Having led an ongoing review of the machinery of government during her time as Vice President of the Policy & Resources Committee, she confesses that she is now more sympathetic than ever to the island's traditional 'consensus' system of government by committees.
Pictured: Deputy Soulsby has not yet decided whether to seek re-election in 2025 or to make this her final term in the States' Assembly.
Deputy Soulsby said it was too soon to think about her future beyond the end of the current States' term in June 2025. She said she does not know whether she will want to stand for election for a fourth term.
"If anyone thinks I've been plotting away about all that then they really don't know me. I've been getting on with what I took on at Policy & Resources. And two-and-a-half years is a long time away.
"What I will say is that I really want to see us get some good candidates at the next election. I want to do what I can to make good people want to stand.
"Part of that is having something to stand for. We need something for people to want to vote for rather than having constant negativity about how everything is wrong."
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