Deputy Kirsten Morel was Jersey’s minister for Sustainable Economic Development in the island’s last parliament. In that role he worked with Guernsey’s Economic Development president, Deputy Neil Inder, on the joint tender. The exercise fell apart, and the two islands went on to appoint different ferry operators.
In a wide-ranging interview with BBC Jersey, Deputy Morel defended his handling of the procurement and said some people had played dirty.
‘There were vested interests in Guernsey, and elsewhere, who were effectively running a campaign to dirty my name, to sully my name,’ he said.
He also revealed that at least two of Condor’s vessels had been at risk of being seized by creditors. He said the company ‘came within a whisker of having their boats impounded’.
Deputy Morel said that at the time he could not be sure Brittany Ferries would stay solvent for the full 20-year contract.
He suggested a recent change to its route network showed he had made the right call.
‘If you want to go from Guernsey to Portsmouth now you have to go via Cherbourg, which is absurd,’ he said.
‘If something like that happened in Jersey there would be a huge outcry but in Guernsey nothing.’
He was asked whether Guernsey had entered the tender having already decided the outcome. He said he would leave that for others to decide.
Deputy Morel now holds a more junior role in Jersey’s new government. He said he still believed in inter-island cooperation, but people had to understand that the interests of Jersey and Guernsey were sometimes different.
You need to be logged in to comment.