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Why did the States spend a day debating whether they should have a ‘parliamentary estate?’
Why did I lead that debate?
Why did two-thirds of the States support the propositions? When the island has an ongoing housing shortage and many households are struggling with rising prices, have we really not got more important issues to discuss? Selfevidently, the answer to that last question should be ‘yes’, but this particular Assembly’s term is marked-out by the lack of substantive policy coming forward from many of the committees for debate. Even with a States of Election, a very long question time and this debate, we were still finished by lunchtime on Friday, in a meeting which was the last opportunity for committees to have important issues debated, if they wished, before September.
Whilst, on the face of it, the debate was about whether parliamentarians need dedicated space, the real question was, ‘who’s in charge?’ Despite having been in the States of Deliberation since 2012, it’s only since ceasing to be a senior decision maker in 2020 that I’ve come to realise that the most honest answer to that question is, ‘probably no-one’ – but it’s certainly not, ‘the elected members.’ Many outside the States have, for years, said that it’s the civil service running the show. That’s an over-statement, but it’s certainly true that because public servants are needed to implement any and every decision, the system only works as fast as those public servants choose to or can work in actioning a decision. That may partially explain why the resolutions in the early 2000’s in relation to the shared use of the refurbished Royal Court, were never implemented and why the resolutions passed at the last States’ meeting will not be actioned with great haste.
In truth, no-one in our system has much ‘power’ and ‘authority’ is very ‘diffused’ (if you are being polite) or ‘dysfunctional’ if you are being honest. With 38 Deputies and two Alderney Representatives, there are up to 40 different points of view on any given topic. The Law Officers are accountable to the Crown, not the government of the day – but given there is no government of the day to speak of the Crown is as good a boss as any. (In this context, the Crown really means the Ministry of Justice, except in practice they’ve got too much else going on to be providing anything close to line management.)
Led by a broad coalition from across the Assembly, the Requete on the role of the parliamentary assembly was less about the separation of the three branches of government (executive, legislative and judicial) and more about taking the smallest, baby steps to giving our community’s elected representatives some tools and structure to actually do their job properly. The debate perhaps inevitably majored on space requirements. This recognised there is some legitimate requirement for elected members to have just a little space to be able to meet not only each other, but also those they represent, rather than being forced to hold every confidential conversation in the coffee houses of Town. But more importantly, it was establishing the principle that the Assembly should have its own resources. That was first acknowledged a few years ago with the creation of the post of ‘States Greffier,’ the parliamentary clerk. However, he and his team serve effectively under the warrant the HM Greffier, the judicial clerk, whilst being employed on civil servants’ terms and conditions. Whoever the States Greffier’s team is answerable to, it’s currently not the Assembly or its the elected members.
If our politics is to become less dysfunctional and better able to meet the community’s needs in the 21st century, part of that transformation journey will be its professionalisation (which is not the same as having ‘professional’ politicians.) Taking steps to make our government more fit for purpose is not esoteric, it’s essential – and our debate was one such step.
