Just five out of 38 deputies have attended 100% of full meetings of their committees in the last 12 months.
Those politicians were Yvonne Burford on Policy & Resources, Tom Rylatt on Employment & Social Security, Paul Montague as president of Education, Sport & Culture, David Dorrity on Housing and Aidan Matthews on Health & Social Care.
Deputy Montague was the only committee president to attend all of his committee’s meetings for the full duration.
When the Guernsey Press revealed the attendance records for the principal States committees in February for the first six months of the States’ term, attention was drawn to Munazza Malik who only attended half of her scheduled meetings, attending 35% on HSC and 68% on Home Affairs.
This time she attended 79% of HSC meetings and 100% of Home Affairs meetings.
She did not respond to an invitation to comment.
Since the beginning of the year, Deputy Matthews attended 100% of all HSC meetings, however his attendance recorded for full meetings on ESC was just eight out of 21 – 38%.
He was marked as attending part of eight meetings, was absent from two meetings due to other States business, and missed three meetings for other reasons.
Deputy Matthews calculated that being on two principal committees, he had the busiest committee portfolio of any deputy at 157.7 hours since the beginning of the year.
‘I can see how at first sight, the format the meeting attendance data is presented in might appear as if I’d missed a lot of ESC meetings, which isn’t the case,’ he said.
‘It could almost look as if there’s only 8 out of 21 I’d been able to make, or a very low rate, but in fact the opposite is true.’
He said that he had regularly missed small parts of meetings, perhaps as little as 10 minutes, typically for reasons such as dropping off or picking up his young son from school.
He provided minuted evidence that he had turned up 10 minutes late for one ESC meeting recorded as part-attendance, and also calculated that on the occasions where his attendance was recorded as being for part of the meeting, the absences equated to less than 7% of the total length of the eight meetings.
Deputy Matthews said that for one meeting only he was absent for a significant period – and that was due to a clash with a HSC meeting.
ESC committee meetings can last more than four hours.
Deputy Matthews said of the three ESC meetings he missed, two coincided with annual leave and one was due to sickness.
‘The eight meetings listed as “part attendance” is the equivalent of about one quarter of a meeting missed,’ he said.
‘I think this could reasonably support a claim that I’m one of the hardest-working deputies, especially since meeting hours are often just the tip of an iceberg. Each meeting requires quite a bit of preparation before, and activity afterwards too.’
In the last six months, Rhona Humphreys missed eight full meetings, four each of the Housing and Economic Development committees.
She attended part of two meetings on Housing and part of one on Economic Development.
She said that the meetings she missed were part of a holiday planned prior to the election.
‘I received and reviewed the full pack for each meeting, fed in any comments I had via the president, and reviewed the minutes,’ said Deputy Humphreys.
‘It is sad that these linear statistics around committee meeting attendance are used to measure our performance, as they are somewhat misleading.
‘Committee members are involved in a number of work streams, usually as lead on one or two at least, between committee meetings.
‘This involves attendance at meetings, consultation with various parties, liaison with civil servants and preparing follow up papers for consideration by the broader committee.’
She said that with regard to Economic Development, there was also time spent travelling off-island as a deputy.
Deputy Rob Curgenven, also a member of Education, Sport & Culture, was recorded as having attended just 12 of 21 meetings in full, six in part, and missed three for non-States reasons.
He was invited to comment on his attendance record but did not respond.
Number of meetings full or part-attended by politicians since 1 January
Policy & Resources, 32 meetings
Lindsay de Sausmarez (president) 100%; Gavin St Pier (up to 19 May) 83%; Yvonne Burford 100%; Steve Falla 97%; Charles Parkinson 91%; Andrew Niles (from 21 May) 100%.
Employment & Social Security, 22 meetings
Tina Bury (president) 82%; Jayne Ozanne 86%; Tom Rylatt 100%; Garry Collins (up to 15 July) 100%; David Dorrity (up to 20 May) 100%; Ross Le Brun (from 20 May) 88%; Gavin St Pier (from 15 July so out of scope for data request).
Education, Sport & Culture, 21 meetings
Paul Montague (president) 100%; Andy Cameron 90%; Sarah Hansmann Rouxel 100%; Aidan Matthews 76%; Rob Curgenven 86%.
Housing, 15 meetings
Steve Williams (president) 80%; Sasha Kazantseva-Miller 93%; Garry Collins 100%; David Dorrity 100%; Rhona Humphreys 73%.
Economic Development, 26 meetings
Sasha Kazantseva-Miller (president) 96%; Andrew Niles (up to 20 May) 95%; Marc Laine (from 24 June) 100%; Haley Camp 96%; Rhona Humphreys 85%; Lee Van Katwyk 88%.
Health & Social Care, 14 meetings
George Oswald (president) 93%; Aidan Matthews 100%; Munazza Malik 79%; Sally Rochester 100%; Jennifer Strachan 93%
Environment & Infrastructure, 17 meetings
Adrian Gabriel (president) 94%; Sally Rochester 88%; Andy Cameron 82%; Bruno Kay-Mouat 82%; Alex Snowdon 88%
Home Affairs, 15 meetings
Marc Leadbeater (president) 80%; John Gollop 93%; Simon Vermeulen 93%; Alex Snowdon 80%; Munazza Malik 100%.