High stakes game of pin the donkey
IF THERE is one meeting where States members require the wisdom of Solomon and a bit of blind faith it is the capital prioritisation debate.
IF THERE is one meeting where States members require the wisdom of Solomon and a bit of blind faith it is the capital prioritisation debate.
Scores of projects have been whittled down and parcelled into four categories by Treasury and Resources, who expect deputies to make the correct decision based on scant information.
The stakes are huge – the 10 projects in Category A, the top priority, total up to £55m. but that is dwarfed by the nine in Category B at up to £165m.
Bizarrely, those totals are the only sums deputies get to see. A tight timescale and unwillingness to prejudice future tenders means that individual projects are not costed.
Scores out of 100 were given for each of the projects by senior civil servants based on a complicated set of criteria such as 'Overall impact of not proceeding' and 'Breadth and Depth of beneficiaries' but these, too, are not given to deputies.
Information is therefore limited to pithy summaries of what the project is all about. In the case of the bid to replace the Leopardess that's a terse two paragraphs, less than 100 words.
Quite how deputies are supposed to reasonably judge the worth of a new fisheries protection vessel against, say, one of the projects not recommended for immediate action such as the refurbishment of the Grammar School or the reprofiling of PEH wards is hard to know.
Of course, the option is there simply to trust the civil servants and rubberstamp the whole process. T&R officers know the figures, they worked out the scores, let them get on with it.
But it does rather beg the question: if this is a game of pin the tail on the donkey, who is the donkey?
And is that trust justified? How hard, for example, were Commerce and Employment pushed to justify replacing the Leopardess? It is nearing the end of its 20-year life during which legislation controlling the fishing industry has changed out of all recognition.
Are there still likely to be French blockades of the harbour and does the fisheries protection vessel need to be a £1m. statement of intent or could a smaller, cheaper vessel patrol the seas for 60-odd days a year?
