Every government rises or falls on the quality of its senior executive, and nowhere is that more true than in Guernsey.
Deputies set direction, but it is the senior leadership team beneath them which day-to-day runs the departments and offices serving committees and which turns policy into practice. Just as importantly, it supplies the advice deputies rely on to make their decisions in the first place. If that advice is weak, even a well-run committee will deliver the wrong thing.
Before and after the GST debate, islanders told us to stop wasting their money. They are right, and they don’t need the list of failed projects repeated.
Many of us in this Assembly inherited those failures in 2025, along with their consequences, including massive outstanding tax assessments and thousands of people waiting for permits from Home Affairs. We are told that the backlog at tax is being cleared. I fear the Home Affairs issue will be longer lasting, which is related to the subject of this article.
The tough question is how we stop the next failure, whether in a major project or in the daily running of a committee or service.
Deputies cannot do it alone. We can ask questions and we can cut budgets, but neither prevents a failure before it starts. Cutting the budget of a struggling committee or service doesn’t fix it. Deprived of money, it fails faster.
The reason is simple. Deputies are lay people, which is the nature of democracy. But lay politicians can govern well only if the layer beneath them is made up of genuine experts – people who give committees sound and candid advice before they decide, and who then run their departments and services well enough to deliver what was decided.
This is not about blaming the people in post. It is about recognising that the senior leadership team, and the structure it works within, is the factor that decides whether we succeed. It is the only effective lever we have.
That is why reform of the senior civil service leadership matters more than any other change this Assembly can make.
In January, the States unanimously agreed, by 37 votes to none, an amendment I brought with Deputy Mark Helyar making civil service reform a priority for this term. It mandated the chief executive to lead the reform and required the Policy & Resources Committee to approve terms of reference and report back regularly.
The chief executive has made real changes since, and his diagnosis of the problem is sound.
But nine months on, deputies have seen neither terms of reference nor a timetable.
Meanwhile, senior leaders who held key roles for decades have left, and their replacements have not yet been appointed. That may well be the right call for the long term, but it leaves the organisation carrying gaps at the very level that decides whether it succeeds, at a time when it is being asked to deliver more than ever.
Changes are being made, but deputies cannot see where they lead. For deputies this is an issue, because it is deputies, not officials, who answer to the public for how the States performs.
At the moment, we are accountable for an organisation whose destination we have not been shown. On the one reform that decides the success of everything else, we are flying blind.
I have raised this with the chief executive directly. He has accepted that the missing terms of reference are a fair criticism, taken responsibility for it, and said he will address it. I welcome that. He is wary of publishing an organisation chart too early, and I understand why.
But terms of reference are not an organisation chart.
They set out what the reform must achieve and by when, without naming a single post. And while who fills each role is his decision, the shape of the senior structure is a matter for the States.
So before the Budget debate in November I am asking for two things – the terms of reference, or at least a firm date for them, and as clear a picture of the senior roles in the new model as employment constraints allow.
He has accepted the principle. Islanders now need a date. If one is not forthcoming, I will ask the Assembly to set one, though I would rather not have to. A unanimous resolution of the States deserves an answer, and islanders who have just been asked to pay a new tax deserve to see that the organisation spending it is being fixed.
Deputies can make good decisions. Whether those decisions become results depends on the quality and structure of the new senior leadership team.
Until we can endorse or reject the target operating model the chief executive is putting in place, we are flying blind and working without a compass. At the moment we face a fait accompli.