Home Affairs says that it did not ambush police chief

Deputy Peter Roffey has submitted 25 questions to the committee asking about issues raised in the report, and has received a preliminary response from president Mary Lowe.

But committee members have also commented on the response to the report.

‘It’s been massively misrepresented,’ said one member, Victoria Oliver.

She clarified some of the issues that the report had raised, which included criticism of members discussing minor issues such as flashing bike lights in a meeting.

She said the bike light matter came up in any other business and was due to the concern raised by an islander who had suffered an epileptic fit due to one.

‘We talked about it for one or two minutes,’ said Deputy Oliver, adding that one of the committee’s chief secretaries had pointed out that flashing bicycle lights are illegal in the island.

She said that the issue was concluded with the committee stating that if people see bikes with flashing lights, they should contact the police.

Matters like this could be dealt with by the police directly in future, she said, since Home would like to see the force holding regular ‘surgeries’ where islanders can air such problems.

Another matter that was the subject of some criticism after the report appeared was the apparent ‘ambush’ of head of law enforcement Patrick Rice by having a member of the public invited into a meeting to confront him.

This was not what happened, said Deputy Oliver. It followed an islander being invited to attend a meeting to speak about a customs matter, she said. The fact that Mr Rice was present at the same meeting was a coincidence.

‘Members of the public can come into any States committee meeting if they want to talk about something,’ she said. ‘As deputies, we are quite open.’

The committee was not surprised at the critical tone of some of the report.

‘The real reason we got the report was for it to be critical so we could then see a direction forward,’ she said. ‘But I think the report lacks Guernsey context.’

The report has been out for only a week so she could not see how the committee could be accused of not acting quickly enough.

Another area of criticism was the lack of a medium-term financial plan, but Deputy Oliver said that a committee to work on this had been set up already.

‘The report was a snapshot in time,’ she said. ‘As the head of law enforcement has said, if they had come four months later it would have been a very different report.’

Another member, Deputy Marc Leadbeater, echoed Deputy Oliver’s comments, but added: ‘I do not agree with all of the contents of the report, and I believe that some of the incidents it refers to have been exaggerated.

‘The committee hasn’t once, to my knowledge, directed Law Enforcement to take enforcement action against anybody – nobody should or would do that.’

He was surprised to see the reference to the flashing bike lights matter in the report since it was from 2016 and ‘a small item of AOB’.

‘Some of the language used within the report does not reflect what actually happened,’ he said.

‘The head of law enforcement was invited to speak with a member of the public who had approached the committee. He declined and that was it. There was never going to be any confrontation as far as I was aware.

‘As for action being agreed on operational law enforcement matters without a member of Law Enforcement present, again, I’m in the dark as to what this refers to.’

Richard Digard column Page 19