She said she was ‘actively considering’ her position because of concerns about how the committee operates and is run by its president, Sasha Kazantseva-Miller, and how differences of opinion are handled.
A series of policy disagreements since the autumn were known to have strained relations and in recent days sources close to the committee have said they expected them to come to a head soon.
Deputy Camp was approached for comment over the weekend and provided the Guernsey Press with a carefully-worded statement which avoided personalities but included withering criticism of the leadership and culture at Economic Development.
‘Our constitutional model is very clear – committees are intended to consist of equal members exercising independent judgment. In reality, I have witnessed that working dynamics can drift away from that principle and begin to resemble something more hierarchical and, at times, autocratic,’ she said.
‘I take my responsibilities as a member of the committee very seriously and I am actively considering what the most responsible course of action is in light of those concerns.’
Deputy Camp said she had been on the receiving end of ‘a pattern of behaviour’ on issues where her views differed from the majority opinion on Economic Development.
She listed issues such as paying external consultants £350,000 for advice on developing the finance industry and handing British Airways hundreds of thousands of pounds a year to fly between Guernsey and Heathrow, both of which she opposed, and her recent unsuccessful amendment to rule out territorial tax on which Deputy Kazantseva-Miller abstained.
Deputy Camp was also known to be unhappy when Economic Development requested an additional £1.7m. in its 2026 budget, an increase four times greater than the rate of inflation, at a time when major tax rises are on the horizon.
Although her statement opened with concerns about the States’ committee system, it later excluded from criticism both of the other committees on which she sits, including Scrutiny, and pointedly described her experiences on Economic Development as ‘stark’.
Deputy Kazantseva-Miller did not reply to questions put to her over the weekend, including on whether she had considered submitting a proposition asking the States to remove Deputy Camp from her committee.
Deputy Camp’s statement indicated that the president expected her committee members to toe the line more than is normal in Guernsey politics.
‘Deputies are not members of a cabinet bound to a single position, but independent decision-makers elected to exercise their own judgment on behalf of the public,’ she said.
‘Where committee cultures begin to expect that kind of collective discipline, it creates a tension with the constitutional model that deserves honest discussion.
‘These are governance concerns rather than personal criticisms of colleagues, but they are serious ones.
‘Deputies are elected to exercise independent judgment, and the structures we work within must support that rather than inadvertently allowing cultures to develop that undermine it.’
A member of a committee wishing to resign must write to Bailiff Sir Richard McMahon. The resignation takes effect when a proposition is laid before the States to elect a replacement member.
Deputy Camp said that she was currently in ‘a process of reflection’ and would use ‘the appropriate channels’ if she decided to call time on her membership of Economic Development, which she joined at the start of the political term in July.