Clamping down on all

WRITING here on Saturday we highlighted some of the questionable thinking demonstrated by the States Assembly and Constitution Committee over its unjustified and self-serving recommendation that ministers should suddenly become called presidents.

It is not, however, the only questionable proposal coming from a committee that appears to have little to do other than fill the time available to it.

Trying to enforce the confidentiality of notes and minutes, making penalties harsher for deputies who offend the increasingly discredited code of conduct and stopping members from collecting their emails and other electronic correspondence while in the Assembly are just some of the bah! humbug! outpourings from a committee that is supposed to promote timely and efficient management of public business in the States.

So it could be concerned with whether individual ministers should be - as in the case of kerbside recycling and waste management - moving alternatives in opposition to Policy Council policy and whether the rules on collective responsibility or even lip-service to acting corporately should be improved.

But it does not. Instead, it wants to make life harder for individual deputies who rock the boat. And in recommending that everything that gets sent to department members should be classed as 'confidential information', it makes two things crystal clear.

Firstly, it has no interest in any move towards greater openness and transparency or the freedom of information principle that only truly confidential material, capable of justifying that tag, should be secret.

Secondly, it demonstrates that its members collectively are acting short-sightedly. It makes a great deal of sense for members to be able to raise, in confidence, possible initiatives with knowledgeable third parties, if only to help prevent departments from going off down blind alleys.

The reason why the constitution committee wants to enforce a clamp is because the establishment which it represents was horrified by Deputy Mike Hadley's devastating use of information he gleaned while a member of the Health Department.

So this isn't about making the States run more smoothly, it's about settling scores and stopping islanders from learning what really goes on behind the scenes.