OPINION: Why we should listen to the experts

IT IS a trite – to the point of blindingly obvious – thing to say, but no one can be an expert in everything. In fact, most people aren’t an expert in anything.

Fortunately, the large majority of us don’t need to tap into expertise on a day-to-day basis – life is generally not that intellectually demanding. However, if you are a politician trying to run a small island which has almost the same needs as a country that is 1,000 times the size, you will be heavily dependent on experts. It is just the nature of the beast.

Guernsey’s politicians rely heavily on a combination of civil servants and external consultants in order to support every facet of Bailiwick life and anyone who denies this needs to start having a look at the detail.

However, experts and, to a lesser extent, the civil servants are expensive and politicians are often obliged to carry the figurative can for their mistakes (e.g. the infamous Salerie Corner debacle which is time and again blamed on the committee responsible but, with a little digging, was shown not to be their fault). Therefore, politicians need to decide whether or not to listen to the expert advice they are provided with.

It is acknowledged that deciding whether or not to listen to an ‘expert’ is not just a matter of objective assessment but is also political judgement, meaning that experts sometimes get overruled as a matter of political expediency rather than their advice being incorrect.

There is also the small matter of money.

This, therefore, is the job of the States of Guernsey in a nutshell: When should they accept ‘expert’ advice as definitive and when should they apply an inquiring and sceptical mind to look elsewhere?

The thesis of this article is that Guernsey’s politicians should listen to experts more, that it is a myth that there is something about Guernsey that somehow undermines the views of experts and that we, the people, indulge this myth when casting our vote and giving our views.

The Covid Plan – Dr Brink, the qualified virologist

It is now a cliche to observe it but there is no doubt that the Bailiwick’s approach to Covid-19 was a triumph, from the management of the lockdowns through to the vaccination strategy – many sage, far-sighted decisions were made to great effect.

This success in turn led to a number of people idly questioning why the States wasn’t normally ‘this good’ and speculating that this was because of the relatively small number in the CCA leadership team. That may well be true but I think a critical part of this impressive display was that, from early on, Deputy St Pier and the others on the political side stuck with Dr Brink, a person of impeccable credentials, and saw their job as delivering her message (which of course she did ably as well). Deputy Ferbrache duly stuck with the same plan. Fundamentally, sound analysis by an expert was followed to great acclaim. And no one cared she was from South Africa. Broadly the population agreed and it seems now, on balance, self-evident that they did the ‘right thing’.

Compare this with the L’Ancresse tank wall and the clamour for its repair. Oceanographers – experts in the very field that we need in this instance – will tell you that the wall is irrelevant in holding back the tide, that the dunes did perfectly well for hundreds (presumably thousands) of years and will do so again. The dunes do a great job on many very similar beaches around the British Isles and, further, this wall was never intended to hold back water – it was designed to hold back tanks. And yet, in this instance, the States seems minded (in contrast with the Covid crisis) to throw all of this expert advice analysis out of the window, choosing instead to follow ‘instinct’ (for want of a better word) and continue to fund repairs for the wall for no real obvious purpose when it needs to be pulled down.

The ‘right thing’ must be to trust the experts and remove the wall, notwithstanding a noisy minority who seem keen to hold on to this dilapidated Nazi relic, but certain deputies seem oblivious to this.

Moreover, the ignoring of expertise seems to be far more prevalent among deputies than the following of expertise. A brief analysis of various recent events would seem to support this – the abandoning of any recognition of both teachers and educationalists in favour of ‘a get SOMETHING done’ approach with the schools and the failure of the States to approve the revamp of the harbour on the basis of a report which had been years in the making being two stand-out examples where the States actively went against what their expert advisers were telling them.

For anyone who favours rational thought and science above instinct and intuition, these two decisions would seem to demonstrate a worrying trend.

In a word, politics

So why does the States work in this way?

Well, in a sense, they are just a reflection of us – this reflection is present in all countries but is particularly acute where the population is small and direct access of the populace to its politicians is widespread. Therefore, it is as incumbent on us to evaluate what is the ‘right thing’ as it is on them and to trust, sometimes, that they must evaluate and act on advice that we don’t see or perhaps even understand.

Critical to this is that, while few would disagree that Guernsey is a delightful, charming and beautiful place to live, we must recognise that it is not special nor materially unique. It can be reduced to the sum of its parts and analysed by those with the ability to assess the information.

With Covid, Dr Brink was faced with a broadly identical data set to that of her counterparts in many island communities around the world – she would have succeeded wherever she was based. In the same way, when considering the future of the harbour, the schools and the tank wall, a consultant who has had success in other places is more than able to have success here if the politicians will let them. For another practical example of experts in action, see the Island Development Plan, a magnificently sophisticated and exhaustive statement of intent which tries to consolidate the myriad of planning issues which affect Guernsey into a cogent and comprehensible framework.

All this leads to the conclusion that we as a population need to start to accept that being heavily informed by experts to make the biggest decisions is no bad thing – in fact, that we have the budget to afford this expertise is a huge advantage.

To defend ‘Guernsey’ as an idea is to recognise that improving Guernsey is going to need help from the outside as well as the community within. The deputies need to recognise this and we need to support them as best we can.

• Henry Smith has lived in Guernsey for nine years. He is a lawyer by background, now working in the fiduciary industry.