Scrutiny to expedite extra powers

Wednesday 12 December 2018

Guernsey's Scrutiny Management Committee is planning on expediting plans to allow itself extra powers when requesting documentation.

This is following a hearing it held into Home Affairs and the recent Inspectorate report from HMIC.

In releasing his thoughts about the hearing, Scrutiny President Deputy Chris Green said he was "unimpressed and disappointed by the level of disclosure of documents and information", so was now planning on having his committee fast track legislation to be debated next year.

This Policy Letter would see Scrutiny get more power to compel parties to produce paper work that was relevant to a hearing or another of the committee's functions.

In the case of the documentation Home Affairs produced, Deputy Green said: "I was unimpressed and disappointed by the level of disclosure of documents and information provided to the Panel to support this hearing, specifically the heavily redacted minutes of committee meetings and a lack of supporting material relating to the governance concerns.

"This clearly hampered the Panel’s work when trying to establish the facts. While we cannot comment on material that we have not seen, clearly, Scrutiny needs to be able to have access to any and all relevant documentation to do its job fully."

Pictured: Deputy Mary Lowe and Deputy Chris Green. 

When being questioned, Deputy Mary Lowe, President of Home, told the panel the redacted parts of the minutes were those unrelated to the HMIC inspection, but Deputy Green said he would have still liked to have seen them. 

Deputy Green concluded: "A policy letter seeking extra powers to compel parties to produce relevant papers for the scrutiny function will be expedited for debate next year. This case has shown how essential that power really is." 

The policy letter with these powers enclosed should be debated by the States sometime next year. 

Pictured: the States of Guernsey.