Sexual Offences Law set to be modernised today

Wednesday 26 February 2020

Education may be the dominant issue on the States agenda this week, but debate on it may not actually start until Thursday, with Sexual Offences legislation, changes to the Capacity Law and Jurat elections among the many items which are set to take place first.

In what must be one of the busiest States meetings in recent history, the future of education is just one of the important decisions that States members will have before them this week.

A protest will be staged outside the Royal Court as States members arrive, but if protesters go straight from there to the public gallery they will be waiting a long time for debate to turn to the "pause and review" requete against Education's one-school plans. 

Jurats, douzaine representatives and parish rectors will be joining States members in the chamber to vote on a Jurat Election, in which three candidates are vying to replace Jurat Niall McCathie.

Following this process, which usually takes longer than an hour, the Presidents of Environment & Infrastructure and the States' Trading Supervisory Board will give general updates on their committees' work. 

Next up will be question time, with Deputies John Gollop and David De Lisle looking for answers about the States' accounting standards and Agilysys' recent outage during Storm Ciara respectively. 

Pictured: Thousands turned up for a weekend protest march against Education's plans earlier this year.

Appointments will follow, with the States due to vote in a new member of the STSB, after the late Deputy Jan Kuttelwascher died last month. 

A dozen pieces of legislation, which should be dealt with in quick succession, will then be laid for the States to approve, including new Income Tax agreements with the Isle of Man and New Zealand. 

Debate will then move onto the first of the policy letters, which sees Health & Social Care attempt to make changes to the Capacity Law, which aim to protect but also be "respectful of the human rights of those who lack capacity".

Long overdue modernisation of Sexual Offences Legislation will follow, with acts such as grooming, revenge porn and upskirting finally set to be written into law as sexual offences. 

An amendment to that legislation wants Home Affairs to consider introducing pre-charge bail conditions in what would constitute a significant change to the criminal justice system. 

Pictured: Decisions made on Sexual Offences Legislation today will have a bearing on the sentencing options available to the Courts in the future. 

After this, the States' Trading Supervisory Board, which is comprised of States Deputies and non-elected voting members, will lay out its succession planning for the next political term.

Employment & Social Security will also recommend increasing contribution rates for social insurance contributions by 0.5%, with 0.3% being paid by the employer and 0.2% being paid by the employee, with effect from 1 January 2021. 

Then the focus will turn to the future of local education - but whether that will happen today or tomorrow is yet to be seen.