Committees will have the final say over every replacement or regrading of a senior role and the creation of new ones after the Assembly backed a bold budget amendment led by Policy & Resources.
Father of the House John Gollop, who has seen deputies gradually distanced from how their committees operate during nearly 30 years in the States, described the move as a ‘game changer’ in the relationship between politicians and civil servants.
The new powers for committees, to be introduced immediately, will apply to every role at every pay grade upwards from senior officer one, the salaries of which start at about £70,000, of which there are hundreds in the public sector. There will also be reporting requirements on committees to publicise how they use their new controls over senior staff roles.
‘The public expect us to be accountable for what goes on in our committees,’ said P&R president Deputy Lindsay de Sausmarez.
‘The rule of thumb I very quickly learned on joining the States more than 10 years ago was that everything is operational until it goes wrong, and then it’s absolutely political because at the end of the day it is our heads on those blocks.
‘We have to be accountable and we should be accountable and this is what this amendment is moving us more towards. This a step in the right direction for greater visibility, greater transparency, and ultimately greater accountability.’
Several deputies, including some committee presidents, spoke of their exasperation at having to answer for staffing decisions made in the name of their committees which they did not even know about.
‘So far this term I have been all over the newspaper and social media for operational problems and employment problems which I knew nothing of whatsoever,’ said Home Affairs president Deputy Marc Leadbeater.
‘If I’m going to get a camera stuck in my face or a microphone put in front of me and take responsibility and take the flak, I want to have some involvement and knowledge and say-so. We need to do something because we cannot continue like this.’
Health & Social Care president George Oswald reminded the States that the change would affect many public sector roles beyond the civil service. HSC itself had nearly 450 frontline roles staff at SO1 grade or above.
He explained how HSC had recently introduced additional scrutiny before vacancies could be filled and hoped that could be a model for other committees.
Deputy Neil Inder believed the most important aspect of the move was giving principal committees more control over their pay budgets.
Some members, including Deputies Jayne Ozanne and Aidan Matthews, would have liked the amendment to go further but felt it was worth backing anyway.
The most prominent opponents of P&R’s move were members of Forward Guernsey and members of the Scrutiny Management Committee. Between them they provided seven of the nine votes against the amendment.
Scrutiny president Deputy Andy Sloan was concerned it would encourage politicians to get ‘in the weeds’ of operational issues. He also criticised the timing of the amendment, which had been circulated to members last Friday, although there had been consultation with committee presidents and others before then.
Forward Guernsey leader Gavin St Pier claimed the amendment was ‘badly drafted’ and disputed that it would achieve anything close to what was hoped by those members who had described it as a step in the right direction.
‘I wanted to believe so, when I first heard about this amendment, but it feels like it’s perhaps a bit more of a sop,’ said Deputy St Pier.
He was concerned that P&R had reacted imperfectly to not dissimilar moves which had been discussed by other deputies in recent weeks, and he warned that it would give committees only ‘a very narrow part of accountability around recruitment’.
Deputy Sarah Hansmann Rouxel said it was currently too difficult for politicians to make sure that services were operating in accordance with policy intentions. She believed that P&R’s amendment would strengthen the oversight role of committees.