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Having spent the Christmas break reflecting on recent political events, Deputy Gavin St Pier has put together his thoughts on the most recent States meeting, which included further votes in favour of the "ruling coalition".
"Expectation management is an important tool for survival in politics. In this Assembly, with the Coalition’s in-built majority, I’ve learned not to expect to be on the winning side of any vote. So on the few occasions I am, it always comes as an unexpected but pleasant surprise.
The meeting began, as they all now do, with a routine update statement from a committee. This time around, it was the turn of the Committee for Home Affairs. The Committee’s President, Deputy Rob Prow, used the permitted 10 minutes for these statements to reprise the work of the Committee across its broad mandate. It was great to hear that progress is being made on establishing a Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC), which is looking like it will be one of the few actions, with its roots in the last term, that will be completed in this one. There was much talk too about economic crime and preparations for the impending inspection by international regulators, Moneyval. The reassuring message is intended to be that everything that can be done to prepare, is being done, albeit it became clear in response to questions that ‘everything’ doesn’t include following the Isle of Man and others with a ‘mock’ evaluation. Only time and the results of the real evaluation will determine whether this decision is a false economy or a wise judgement call.
Pictured: Deputy Bob Murray was elected to P&R, with Deputy St Pier missing out.
Two elections followed, for vacancies created by the elevation of Deputy Bob Murray to the Policy & Resources Committee (P&R). Unlike its predecessors, this Assembly is not inclined to put grit in the system by electing candidates most likely to challenge the established lines of a committee. Although Deputy Aidan Mathews ran the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture’s (ESC) chosen one, Alderney Representative Steve Roberts, close in a 20-19 vote following a contested election. And Deputy Yvonne Burford gave the Development & Planning Authority’s candidate, Deputy Chris Blin, a run for his money too. Even if the outcome of contested elections is foregone, it is encouraging that we’ve not yet reached the point of simply accepting a Chinese Communist Party-style coronation of committees’ selected candidates.
Question time was particularly lengthy with questions on a variety of topics to a number of committees – bus services to Environment & Infrastructure, the IT failure to P&R, carers and the takeover of the St. John’s residential home to Health & Social Care (HSC) and trying to pin down the savings ESC expects to obtain from its new secondary and post-16 model of education. The most bizarre response of the day came from HSC doggedly refusing to publish a report on safeguarding that everyone else involved says should be published, which begs the obvious question – ‘what are you trying to hide?’ The Presiding Officer refused to allow a number of ‘urgent’ questions arising from ESC’s cancellation of its contract with RG Falla to build at Les Ozouets, ostensibly because they weren’t ‘urgent enough,’ but probably in truth because he knew the rest of the meeting would be taken up with debate on the Alderney runway, which proved to be the case.
The decision of this States to back the costliest upfront option (£24m) for ‘C+’ to lengthen the runway was never in doubt. Any close observer of politics in Guernsey, would note that no previous Assembly would have come close to making this decision. The policy letter from the States’ Trading Supervisory Board (STSB) and P&R was based on an argument that C+ was the least costly option over the next 15 years. Fine, in theory, except for the case being tissue thin, resting not on a robust business case but instead on a ‘rough order of magnitude’ estimate that could be underbudgeted by as much as 75%. Meanwhile, Alderney, through its States and Representatives, had a case built on an entirely different argument, not laid out in the policy letter, that a longer runway was absolutely essential for Alderney’s economy. This argument was emotionally-led and passionately argued, but without any attempt to present a shred of data or evidence to support this argument. Given Deputy Ferbrache gave an undertaking (albeit non-binding) to bring the matter back to the Assembly if the project comes in at more than £26.5m (in other words, 10% more than the number in the policy letter,) it’s odds-on that the last word has not been said on the matter.
Pictured: Runways dominated the latter stages of the December States meeting.
There were multiple amendments, the outcome from most of which were unsurprising, but which consumed so much time, that as 530pm on Friday loomed, the majority were sufficiently bored to guillotine debate and force the vote for which they didn’t want to stay late.
I did find myself on the winning side of one vote. I had laid an amendment with Deputy Heidi Soulsby which called for P&R to report back to the States by March 2024 on its joint work with the States of Alderney reviewing the ‘temporary’ 1948 Agreement, to ensure that it’s fit for the 21st century. Given P&R opposed the amendment, without really explaining why, it came as the most unexpected of pleasant surprises to win it by 25 votes to 8. It was a nice Christmas present, but not one that changes my expectations for politics in 2023. Happy New Year!"
