‘Work plan belongs to States, not just P&R’
THE Government Work Plan is something for the whole Assembly and not just Policy & Resources, according to the committee’s vice-president.
Deputy Heidi Soulsby was speaking at the Guernsey branch of the Institute of Directors’ March breakfast webinar.
The States is due to debate the policy letter for the plan, which sets the direction the States will take for the rest of this term, later this month.
Deputy Soulsby said the States had tried to come up with a plan over decades with varying degrees of success and none of the previous ones had brought the work of government together.
P&R was in the process of setting up a sub-committee of members of the States – not presidents of committees – which could act as a sounding board of what the committee was doing.
‘We really don’t want this to be seen as Policy & Resources deciding everything and it really has to be the Assembly’s plan,’ said Deputy Soulsby.
‘It has to be owned and understood to be owned by the States,’
There were currently 535 outstanding States resolutions which had not been completed.
The proposal included rescinding 135 of them.
The oldest of these dated back to 1996.
Most were outdated or had been overtaken by events and government needed to focus now on what mattered. Some were facing proposed amendments.
Deputy Soulsby said there were discrepancies in the way some committees worked and the GWP was intended to generate more partnership working, streamlining and greater transparency.
‘People need to know where they need to go and how they are doing,’ she said.
This would help both external parties and committees from getting bogged down in processes that they did not need to.
John Ogier said the GWP had very few figures and economic information. He wanted to know how we knew it was affordable and a move in the right direction for the island’s economy?
Deputy Soulsby said that was what was happening right now.
‘A lot of people are beavering away and doing all the work required for stage two which includes the investment and funding plan. That is going to be the crunch, when we are saying this is what we can do and this is what we can’t do because of resources.
‘We have to think and we haven’t agreed yet on how we put that to the Assembly. Do we say for all these actions we need this amount of money, if you want more we need this amount of money, or how much do we think we would need to borrow to do this?
‘It’s about trying to making sure that P&R is not making these decisions first.’
