MBE award ‘day to remember’

Deputy Soulsby was named in the 2021 New Year Honours list for services to the community during the coronavirus pandemic.

She said it was an amazing day.

‘It was so well done, everyone was so well looked after going through Windsor Castle, I got quite emotional at the end of it as we waited to see Prince Charles, who pinned it on my jacket.

‘He talked about vaccinations and was questioning why people didn’t want the vaccine. I told him about how brilliant Guernsey people have been and how we had one of the highest vaccination levels in the world, and he was interested to hear about how we’d done. He was very generous with his time with everybody. It was great, definitely a day to remember.’

Deputy Soulsby was the president of Health & Social Care when the pandemic began.

By virtue of that presidency, she also became a member of the Civil Contingencies Authority, and had to try to balance the risks to public health against individual liberties and the economy.

More accustomed to casual clothes, she said it made a change to dress up smartly for the day.

‘I had to learn to curtsey, well I had to try to curtsey,’ she said. ‘I don’t normally go for the dress and hat look, that’s not my usual attire, but it was the right thing to wear for the occasion.

‘It was my first time off the island since February 2020 and so that was strange.

‘We also picked up my youngest son from university to bring him home for Christmas, which was really nice, having not seen him much over the last 21 months.’