While Policy & Resources might have thought it was a good, strong look to all be lined up at the front of the Castel Douzaine Room, the frequency with which sometimes up to four politicians – from either side – were talking over each other rather weakened the look. There were several 'if you'll let me finish' moments.
As a parliamentary proceeding, it was more PMQs than Ps and Qs.
P&R president Lindsay de Sausmarez has had to get used to the rough and tumble of politics in recent years and wasn’t for giving way as Scrutiny president Andy Sloan pursued some pretty aggressive lines of questioning.
Aggressive, but it felt rather niche. Having opened with a salvo of queries about the state of historic revenue surpluses from 15 years and more ago, in a bid to prove a point as to how the whole tax reform package had simply been engineered to get a GST on the books, he then pursued, in some depth, issues of assumptions and demographics.
At his side Haley Camp was in character – probing the finances and also alleging that the package could have been cooked up in a different way – as fellow Scrutiny member Liam McKenna, on his home patch of greatest GST hits, let rip with a couple of well-worn tropes and then turned on his one-time running mate, Charles Parkinson.
As Deputy McKenna whimsically recalled, the two of them ‘went viral’ with a Facebook video. Now they find themselves on opposite sides of the debate. How could he have turned on the public of Guernsey? asked Deputy McKenna.
Deputy Parkinson gave a convincing enough response about corporate taxes while continuing to maintain that he couldn’t help it if everyone was out of step except him.
Deputy McKenna retorted with a show-stopper of anti-GST rhetoric, but never got an answer because it was time for the 10-minute coffee break. And we never heard from him again.
We only heard once, too, from P&R’s Deputy Steve Falla, who at least had the dignity to ask to speak and was then uninterrupted for a few seconds while he attempted to explain why four ardent anti-GSTers were unlikely to have deliberately rustled up a plan to get their colleagues to support it.
P&R new boy Deputy Andy Niles wasn’t cowed, as he stepped in more than once to smooth the waters and give a convincing impression of a potential senior politician of the future. Watch this one.
There were more assumptions about pay and spending habits, some more interesting ones about savings, before proceedings reached a nadir when Deputy Sloan’s question about how the package appeared to hit families harder than individuals descended into him and Deputy de Sausmarez almost embarking on an unedifying row about who knew more about how tough it is to bring up kids on a tight budget.
All in all, a Scrutiny session which appeared to deliver more heat than light.