Roffey to leave politics at next year’s general election

The Employment & Social Security president has joined Policy & Resources president Lyndon Trott and Health & Social Care president Al Brouard in declaring early that he will not sit in the next States.

Deputy Roffey, who returned to the Assembly in 2016 for a third spell as a deputy, assured the public that he would remain committed to politics and work flat out during the remaining year of the States term.

‘I have lost none of my innate interest in public affairs, nor my passion for the island and the community I care so much about,’ he said.

‘My decision is driven by the fact that I’ve been doing politics at absolute full tilt, eyeballs out, for the last eight years.

‘It’s the only way I know how to approach politics.

‘After that, I feel I will have well and truly done my current tour of duty as a deputy.’

Deputy Roffey’s wife, former States member Jean Pritchard, died in 2019, at a time when he was a member of two active committees.

The following year, he was elected as president of ESS and the States’ Trading Supervisory Board.

‘Jean was the person who defined my life,’ said Deputy Roffey.

‘In retrospect, taking on a massive workload straight after that loss, although superficially helpful, meant I never really gave myself the time or space to adjust fully to new realities. I now intend to give myself that space.’

Deputy Roffey was first elected to the States as a Vale deputy in 1982, when he was just 23.

He stood down at the 1991 election.

He returned to the States, again as a Vale deputy, in 2000 and remained in the Assembly until 2008, during which time he was president of the Board of Health and was also badly injured in the Boxing Day Tsunami.

Deputy Roffey admitted that his third spell in the States might not be his last.

‘If being a deputy was the sort of job where you could take a year’s sabbatical that would be my ideal choice,’ he said.

‘But it’s not, so with more than a tinge of sadness I have decided simply to step down from the States instead. But I certainly don’t rule out standing for public office again in the future.’

Deputy Roffey has previously criticised this latest Assembly as indecisive and unable to make difficult decisions.

Most recently he warned that moves to back out of a key debate on funding care for the elderly would be a ‘political failure of epic proportions’.

He said he would follow the next Assembly with great interest.

‘To act in the island’s genuine best interests they will certainly need the courage to take many decisions which will be far from universally popular, something the States seems to have found increasingly difficult to do over recent years,’ he said.

The other presidents of the States’ principal committees – Deputies Lindsay de Sausmarez, Andrea Dudley-Owen, Neil Inder and Rob Prow – have provided no indication publicly about whether they intend to seek re-election in June 2025.