Select a region
Express invited all deputies to contribute their thoughts via our Opinion page, and Deputy Gavin St Pier is first off the mark, with his views on last week's States meeting. Aside from the anti-discrimination legislation there was lots to unpick.
In his own words, Deputy Gavin St Pier shares his opinion here:
"We are now approaching the two year mark in the life of this Assembly.
In that time, other than reversing a number of previous decisions, there have been few genuinely new policies debated. As a result, there seems to be increasing desperation in the leadership of the States and this was reflected in Deputy Ferbrache’s statement on public service reform.
As Deputy Parkinson observed in his supplementary question, the statement appeared to serve no purpose. If there was one, it seemed to be to provide a platform for a rather tired tirade against everything that has gone before in previous States, including of course those in which Deputy Ferbrache has served.
As regularly as the sun rises, Deputy Ferbrache can be relied upon to tell us four things: he grew up with an outside toilet; he keeps looking for, but can’t find, a magic money tree; he has no executive authority, being only one voice in 40; and everything the States every did before Year 0 – the beginning of this term – was simply terrible. And so, with a hyperbole that Donald Trump would be proud of, the President of Policy & Resources told members that the last plan to deliver efficiencies was quite simply the most terrible and the worstest he had ever seen in his long life and successful career - and something simply had to be done about it.
Although he’d told us this in December 2020, he’s still not going to tell us what that something is for another five months, by which time 29 months of the 56 months of this term will have elapsed, long after next year’s budget has been signed, sealed and delivered, presumably, therefore, kicking off any meaningful actions at least into 2024.
Pictured: Deputy Andrea Dudley Owen and Gavin St Pier.
Up next was Deputy Dudley-Owen with her six-monthly statement on behalf of Education, Sport & Culture.
Her statements have a lot of words in the right order, but it remains a real challenge for those listening to extract meaningful content from them. It felt like the clock was being run down on the fixed time limit for such statements with a long introduction about Her Majesty’s funeral.
There were some words of reassurance in relation to post-pandemic education recovery including, of course, that public exam results’ performance (especially GCSEs and A Levels) have mirrored national movements as the exam regulators have tweaked the goalposts in response to the pandemic.
As is often the case, the most interesting information came out in response to supplementary questions. In particular, confirmation that the performance in literacy and numeracy “has not been good enough” not least because “we’re not convinced as a committee that the way we’ve been measuring our numeracy and literacy levels has actually not been as accurate as it can be.”
If this is a prelude to a solution that simply involves moving the goal posts by changing the measuring methodology, then it’s one to watch and will need more scrutiny. Finally, there was also confirmation that despite millions of pounds in additional spending each year, the ‘tipping point’ (class sizes) are getting bigger not smaller – and if savings need to be found, may need to get bigger again.
The main event for the meeting was the prevention of discrimination legislation. Cutting to the end, the right result was achieved, namely the legislation being approved without being holed below the waterline with damaging amendments.
Arguably, already decades overdue, a few extra days’ delay really doesn’t make much difference but that rather ignores the enormous stress and anxiety the amendments very existence caused to many in the community, quite apart from the reputational damage down outside the jurisdiction. With one or two exceptions, the debate was pretty poor quality, often overly drawing on personal anecdotes.
Précis: ‘everything before was truly terrible - which, to be fair, I do tell you every time I speak, along with the absence of a magic money tree - but I won’t tell you what I’m going to do about it for another 5 months (29 months after I took job.)’ https://t.co/9G4WeEMI9K
— Gavin St Pier (@gavinstpier) September 28, 2022
The standout contribution – albeit for the wrong reasons – came from Deputy Ferbrache. Having misattributed a comment about privileged white men to the campaign group, Equality Guernsey, in an extraordinary and petulant outburst he said he did not trust the Committee for Employment & Social Security.
Whilst he may not trust them on this issue or more generally, it’s just inappropriate in a consensus system of government, that the island’s most senior politician should say that out loud. Deputy Ferbrache was one of nine white men, privileged or otherwise, to vote for amendment 8."
