P&R top two want States to 'right-size' public sector

It would include trimming down the civil service and consideration given to moving pieces of the departmental jigsaw puzzle, otherwise known as the machinery of government.

Deputies Heidi Soulsby and Peter Ferbrache, the vice-president and president of Policy & Resources, have put forward an amendment to the committee’s own Government Work Plan to increase the number of top priorities for this States term from three to four.

As the plan currently stands, the main priorities are responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, managing the effects of Brexit, and delivering the recovery actions.

The first two are regarded as demand driven and the third is described as a catch-all which will require work to be evaluated and prioritised.

The amendment is a response to an earlier one from Gavin St Pier, which asks for public service reform to be elevated to the top four.

In the explanatory note to her amendment, Deputy Soulsby sets out that they want to go further than just public service reform.

‘This amendment seeks to broaden the focus of the proposed fourth priority to enable it to incorporate related work that supports “a reset and right-sizing” of government, and not be limited in focus to public service reform alone, which in isolation will not provide a rounded programme of work to deliver the intended outcome.

‘Public service reform will need to be supported by other enabling work such as establishing a commissioning function, identifying and progressing commissioning opportunities, and consideration of the machinery of government.

‘This amendment ensures that those actions to drive the outcome will be integrated into a managed programme, with resourcing identified for phased recovery, and returned to the Assembly for its consideration in the stage two policy letter proposed to be scheduled for 21 July 2021.’

Policy & Resources will be resisting another amendment from Deputy St Pier, which asks for investment in the island’s infrastructure to become a fifth priority.

The senior committee believes this is already covered in the existing priorities.‘It determined that the multiple programmes and portfolios of projects needed to be brought together to provide visibility to the community and afford better management and governance by the Assembly in holding itself and committees to account.

‘This is a challenging piece of work in the timeframe, especially working in the island’s machinery of government.

‘It is for this reason that the committee recommended three priorities.’