OPINION: So, how did we do?

AS 2021 comes to an end, it’s a good time to take stock of the state of the States. What has it done so far? What is it likely to achieve in 2022 and beyond? What state are the public finances in? Or the wider economy? What about the island’s infrastructure? And will meaningful progress be made in tackling the housing crisis?

I’ll start to answer some of those questions in this feature, but I suspect I will run out of space well before I’ve addressed most of them. In fact, it may take a trilogy of columns to cover them all – but hopefully a bit shorter than the Lord of the Rings.

The first thing to say is that it’s high time for this Assembly to stop regarding itself as ‘the new States’. It has now been in office for 14 months and is very much just ‘the States’.

I know it is always a good get-out-of-jail-free card for any Assembly to blame the previous government for its shortcomings. That works well during their honeymoon period because the outgoing administration has always been far from perfect. But there comes a time when democratic accountability demands the government of the day takes responsibility for the state of the nation. Both the good and the not so good. That time has come.

Achievements so far? They’re limited, and maybe that’s to be expected at this point in the life of an assembly, but we need to get our skates on because that excuse will definitely be gone by this time next year.

I suppose the biggest piece of policy work so far has been the Government Work Plan, or GWP. This is an attempt to define an approved workload for the States over the rest of the term which is both coordinated and costed, with a clear strategy for providing the resources required.

How well did we succeed?

I would give us 4/10, but to be fair that is streets ahead of any previous such attempt. We have set out our priorities and I hope we now broadly stick to them. Of course the plan needs to be flexible to a point because stuff will come out of left field. And because we certainly didn’t get 100% right first time. But if the States now U-turn on approved policies, then what was the point in all of the time and effort we put into the GWP’s creation?

Why not a higher score? Well, all the priorities under the plan are worthy but I doubt an outsider reviewing the GWP would see a clear and cohesive pattern to all of those approved work streams. They are good in their own right but are not a focused policy programme as would be put forward by a party seeking government. I think that’s an inevitable drawback of our unique system of government. That committee system has far more pluses than minuses, so if we can never get the GWP to score more than 7/10 I’m sanguine.

Another problem for the GWP is ‘events dear boy, events’. No plan ever survives first contact with reality. For example, under the GWP the States approved, in principle, nearly half a billion pounds’ worth of capital spending, from a huge project to redevelop the PEH through to the much debated infrastructure for secondary and further education. What’s more, we identified the proposed funding mechanisms.

Alas, all of that planning was carried out on the basis of assumed costings at the time, but as we all know there has been a real inflationary spike in the cost of building materials, such as steel, since the plan was approved. So the cost envelope of the approved capital programme will almost certainly be far bigger now. Goodness knows what the new, realistic, estimates are for reconfiguring our hospital or building that experimental new midget sixth form college.

So should we do less infrastructure work or just find more money? The plan is silent on that. Indeed, one of the weirdest decisions on the GWP debate was the States more or less washing its hands of the whole massive capital programme and handing it over lock, stock and barrel to the Policy & Resources Committee.

Talk about centralisation by the back door. Talk about parliamentarians voting enthusiastically to emasculate themselves and reduce their input to government. Basically any capital project which was in the approved programme, no matter how large, can now be proceeded with on the basis of the say so of P&R. No need for the States to even consider it.

Let’s take the redevelopment of the PEH as an example. A massive project which has never been before this States, even in outline form. The last, much maligned, Assembly did consider phase one, at the outline business plan stage, but the current States’ involvement to date has been nodding through a combined capital programme which included this project among lots of others.

No proper examination at all. It will be one of the biggest capital projects ever undertaken, but States members effectively said, ‘we really don’t want to consider it – we’ll let P&R do that for us’. And of course that means such consideration will not be in the public domain. P&R and HSC can choose to bring it before the States if they wish, but they no longer have to.

What an abrogation of responsibility. As it happens, I am an enthusiastic supporter of the PEH project. I just think it ought to require States approval. I went home scratching my head and muttering, ‘if these people don’t want to be in government why did they stand for election?’.

Nearly out of space, but I can’t leave the capital programme without mentioning the harbours. The States debated plans to upgrade the existing ports and create new deep-water facilities for large commercial craft. As a bonus, that would have completely transformed the area around St Sampson’s Harbour for the better.

The result? About a third wanted the new facilities outside of the existing St Peter Port Harbour. Another third wanted them further north. The remaining third couldn’t see the point in doing it at all.

Only two things were decided. The States voted (twice over) to create a new marina which was already planned. And they voted to set up a non-States ‘development board’ comprised of the great and the good from the commercial world to progress the master plan they couldn’t agree on anyway. Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.

To be continued...