Debate does nothing to bring back confidence in States
JOURNALISTS are often accused of hyperbole. It comes with the territory. So to say that this States seems intent to rip itself apart from the inside could leave me open to attack.
JOURNALISTS are often accused of hyperbole. It comes with the territory. So to say that this States seems intent to rip itself apart from the inside could leave me open to attack.
But that is exactly where it is at the moment. Looking inwardly and beating itself up.
This was illustrated by last week's no confidence debate in the Public Accounts Committee.
It shone the light on a divided States with some members who are deeply suspicious of each others' motives.
Has any States aired its dirty laundry more often than this one?
Ahead of the debate, Deputy Matt Fallaize argued the no confidence motion was not about personalities because if any other members had handled the situation like this one, they too would have faced the vote.
The trouble is, it was a motion based on much narrower grounds than that.
It hid its real motivations, whether it was a perception that the committee was being badly run and had brought in an agency in the Wales Audit Office that it should not have worked with, or that in examining corporate governance it had gone too far. That signatories strayed into this territory during debate just proves this assessment.
PAC was at face value to be ousted because it failed to speak in a debate on whether its corporate governance report should go outside the consensus model.
To make matters worse, the signatories argued in the grounds, the chairman then spoke to the media.
He and the committee were accused of not being open and transparent with no hint of irony.
That he told reporters no more than he told the States in an opening statement, it seemed, did not matter.
Is it any surprise that PAC chairman Leon Gallienne saw darker motives at play?
Different deputies certainly did have different justifications for backing the motion.
Were there past scores being settled here?
Some were suspicious that those still smarting from the PAC and WAO's work on Fallagate jumped at the chance to hit back.
Others felt that those who did not like the WAO's message saw this as a way of silencing the committee and with it that work.
PAC has trod a fine line throughout with its corporate governance work.
It deliberately went slowly to try and bring sceptical members along with it.
When the WAO's damning verdict was delivered, that the States failed to fully meet any of the criteria of good governance, it faced a battle to ensure the message was not lost in politicking.
Sadly it has been. Members got hung up on the consensus versus executive government debate.
But PAC also made clear mistakes along the way.
It failed adequately to counter those growing voices. It's decision not to talk in the January debate was a misjudgement and left it wide open to criticism. At the public meeting, the non-political board members led the elected representatives.
It should have got recommendations made on the original report.
It should not have tried to pass responsibility to the Policy Council once the first report was released.
This has all left it exposed, but no more than, say, Education should have been in its handling of school closures or Environment on its handling of paid parking.
It perhaps found itself at the centre of a imperfect storm, where deputies' disparate personal gripes with the committee all found a chance to coalesce around one narrow point.
Maybe a different chairman could have won over the critics. Maybe. But the messages in the good governance report were a hard pill to swallow and face up to.
So what does moving and losing a motion of no confidence all mean for the governance of Guernsey?
We now have the two committees that are meant to be scrutinising the States' work poles apart, with both the chairman and deputy chairman of Scrutiny voting for the motion of no confidence.
They are mandated to work together and both, with good reason, already complain of being under-resourced.
The WAO itself questioned the effectiveness of the scrutiny process in Guernsey. It has hardly got better as a result of this.
It also makes something of a mockery of claims of independence.
Well into its second year, the States can draw some large positives – take Treasury's fundamental spending review or the States Strategic Plan.
But the fact that someone like Deputy Martin Storey, a first-termer with robust credentials from the business world, is left questioning his colleagues' actions like Stuart Falla before him is enough to sound warning bells to the public that not all is as it should be.
