Deputy Roffey up for challenge of two leading roles

Last week the General Election poll-topper was ousted from the president of Policy & Resources, and yesterday he was comprehensively beaten in his bid to become the president of the States’ Trading & Supervisory Board.

That committee is responsible for a number of States-owned assets, including Aurigny, Guernsey Electricity, Guernsey Post, Guernsey Water, the Dairy, and Jamesco, which owns the tanker ships.

In his pitch Deputy St Pier had pledged to put the assets on a more commercial footing, and he suggested ‘looking at’ floating a minority stake of between 15 and 25% in Guernsey Electricity on the International Stock Exchange.

Deputy St Pier also nailed his colours to the mast on who he had wanted in his team.

‘If you are going to support me let me also put you on notice that it is conditional on your support for my nominees for the vacant seats on the committee.

‘I will certainly nominate Deputy Trott, the nominee for the third seat will come from one of Deputies Moakes, Oliver and Cameron.

‘I wish to be unambiguous and transparent, if you decide you want to appoint me but not my nominees I will resign. My tenure will be very brief.’

However, Deputy St Pier lost out to Deputy Peter Roffey by 12 votes to 24.

Deputy Roffey stood for the post on a platform of keeping the cost of basic public services low, and cutting the costs of production.

‘I think those benefits should all be passed on to the customer and not to the exchequer, I don’t believe in hidden taxation which has no relation to a person’s ability to pay, if we ever use high dividends from our utilities as a significant revenue source then we will indeed have introduced quasi-taxation which is likely to hit the poorest hardest.

‘Even worse, in my view, is that we would be shamelessly abusing what are near monopoly situations.’

The appointment means that Deputy Roffey becomes one of the busiest States members because he was also appointed president of Employment & Social Security.

But on the question of whether he would have enough time to devote to both committees, the answer was an emphatic yes.

‘Until recently, it was really quite normal to head up more than one committee and I did it myself with the Board of Health and Agriculture & Countryside, indeed I will be strongly recommending to all members that they consider standing for more than one committee themselves so they don’t fall into the trap of viewing government through one restrictive lens, otherwise you’ll go native.’