Scrutiny wants separate body to oversee public finances

She told the States that her Scrutiny Management Committee was making the recommendation to an ongoing review of government now being led by Deputies Jonathan Le Tocq and Carl Meerveld.

‘We do feel that there would be merit in moving back to a separate Public Accounts Committee,’ said Deputy Burford.

‘Still under the same resources that we have, so it’s not expanding them, but it would have a separate political committee, who could be chosen for their specific interest in those areas and have non-States members.’

The Public Accounts Committee was merged with the Scrutiny Committee in 2016.

Deputy John Gollop asked whether Scrutiny would examine value for money of civil service terms and conditions and how the States procure services and projects.

Following her annual update to the Assembly, Deputy Burford was also questioned by Deputy Neil Inder and others on her committee’s intention to scrutinise the States’ multimillion-pound IT contract with Agilisys.

‘We have commenced the review. We are certainly well into the review with some experienced people and we’ll be publishing towards the end of the year,’ said Deputy Burford.

But Deputy Inder was unimpressed with what he saw as a lack of urgency.

‘This is about the speed that Scrutiny runs in a modern world. The Agilisys review was trailed some time in the middle of last year. Since then, we’ve had two server room meltdowns, our parliament has not been working, printers are not working and the schools have got no access to wifi. Yet Deputy Burford tells us that we’re not going to get a result of the review until the end of the year.

'With genuine respect, is Scrutiny the right process, running at analogue speed when we need digital movement today?’

Deputy Burford said that Deputy Inder was confusing two separate reviews of IT. She said that Policy & Resources’ dedicated, short-term review to the server room outage was the correct approach, while a Scrutiny review required engagement with the public and stakeholders and public hearings.

‘I think you are looking at two different processes.

'I commend P&R for looking to focus on that outage with a short, sharp review, and look forward to having that information to include as part of our larger review.’