Resignations and runway rows

Committee for Economic Development

May 2016 deputies: Ferbrache, Kuttelwascher, Mooney, Merrett and Dudley-Owen.

Early 2018 onwards deputies: Parkinson, Dudley-Owen, Mooney, De Lisle, and Tindall replaced in 2019 by Inder.

THE fortunes of this committee turned on one event in late 2017 when it was revealed that the Public Trustee, over whom the committee exercised political oversight, had paid fees amounting to £300,000 to a law firm for which the committee’s president, Peter Ferbrache, was a consultant.

Now there is nothing like the scent of a conflict of interest to draw political vultures to the scene of a potential kill. In 2007 and 2014 respectively, the admirable Stuart Falla and Peter Harwood had both trudged undeservedly from the battlefield of high political office muttering ‘Blow this for a game of soldiers’ as former back-slappers turned back-stabbers. In November 2017, once P&R issued a statement declaring that Deputy Ferbrache faced a clear conflict of interest, the writing was on the wall and Peter Ferbrache duly walked, later to be exonerated by an internal audit of the matter.

Enter Deputy Charles Parkinson as the new committee president, who knows a thing or two about the economy, most of them the very opposite of the things that Deputy Lyndon Trott, effectively our ‘Treasury Minister’, knows about the economy. Not so much chalk and cheese as zero-10 and zero-20. Take, for example, the important issue of whether or not we should extend the length of our runway. The PwC Report commissioned by P&R on our air and sea connectivity (a snip at £230,000) recommended further investigation into the feasibility of a runway extension. Deputy Trott said he knew that would be a waste of £700k and instead suggested that we would be better off wasting only £400k finding out if there was any way that a £50m. passenger ferry could make it across the Channel on those days when the sea is not flat calm – you know, just like the Asterix did in AD 280 with a few blokes with paddles. Deputy Parkinson knew the exact opposite of what Deputy Trott knew. He said he could get a runway investigation done for £360k and, blow me down, within a few weeks there he was in the States, with a grin as wide as the runway itself, announcing that he had got Frontier Economics to do it for £180k. So job done. Well, not exactly. Apparently we have to wait to see what the post-Covid-19 aviation industry will look like before any investment can be justified, so this issue is set to run and run, if not runaway (sorry, I couldn’t resist it).

Within two months of the Ferbrache resignation the committee vice-president, the late Jan Kuttelwascher, and committee member Jennifer Merrett both got the hump and exited stage right. Auditions for the role were duly held, and Deputies David de Lisle and Dawn Tindall joined the ED cast as the two outstanding candidates from a field of two. Deputy Tindall resigned within 16 months, to be replaced by Deputy Neil Inder who, after his success in the Vale by-election, had already begun to provide the subtlety, urbanity and measured diplomacy previously offered by the man he replaced, the late Dave Jones.

So this key committee has not enjoyed the stability of a stellar membership, and it didn’t help that Deputy Parkinson’s election to its presidency was not supported by any of the membership he inherited, all four of them apparently voting for the then vice-president. The committee has been further handicapped by the make-up of the outgoing States, whose predominant enthusiasm has been for social reform rather than for economic development. Deputy Parkinson has been one of the best speakers in the 2016-20 States, yet when in 2018 he stood to deliver his new committee’s plans for the economy, nearly half of those present walked out for a leisurely smoke or comfort break, leaving the meeting quorate by a margin of only one member.

Leaving aside the impact of Covid-19 on plans and assumptions, the committee would doubtless claim progress has been made over the past four years. Prior to the pandemic, the economy grew each year at a healthy rate. The 20 action points at the heart of its Economic Development Strategy published in May 2018 are clear in their intent and remain relevant to what we understand is intended by the high level Revive and Thrive approach supported by the current assembly.

The pandemic has, of course, caused Guernsey’s (if not Alderney’s and Sark’s) tourism business to collapse and has undermined our air and sea connectivity, but the economy has otherwise proved resilient and stood up well. The introduction of quasi open skies was a bold and controversial step, but in the court of political and public opinion the jury is still out judging its success or otherwise. Open skies, the fate of Aurigny and lengthening the runway are intertwined issues, and the committee wasn’t helped by being split on the latter. It is noteworthy that whereas the 39 States members were split 50/50 on whether or not to investigate the merits or otherwise of a runway extension, all five deputies elected in the West electoral district – two of whom were members of the Parkinson committee – were convinced there was no point. Entirely coincidental of course, but it is interesting to speculate whether a States membership elected by island-wide voting will make any difference on such issues.

Of course, Alderney residents tend to have their own views on open sky policies; they reckon their sky is always open and totally untroubled by the intrusion of any aircraft. The committee is no doubt as frustrated as anybody that it has been unable to secure a Public Service Obligation for the provision of the northern isle’s air links, and similarly that the protracted sale of Condor Ferries has effectively prevented improvements to our sea links.

Connectivity to the world outside is not all about sea and air links and it should be with an act of collective shame that we acknowledge our abysmal world ranking for internet download speeds, way behind Jersey, the Isle of Man and the UK. Now it doesn’t disturb my sleep to know that it takes four minutes to download my Popeye the Sailor Man movies in Guernsey and only one minute in Jersey at a fraction of the cost, but it sure as heck matters to our business community that we remain in the punitively-expensive semaphore age as far as internet connectivity is concerned. Next Economic Development Committee please note.

There is considerable States-wide scepticism about the committee’s ambition to establish an international, niche university in Guernsey, but its president remains bullish about the business case for it. There are welcome signs that the committee has managed to re-energise Locate Guernsey, which now seems to be working more coherently with other key agencies such as Guernsey Finance and the Digital Greenhouse. The committee also launched, in late 2019, a new collaboration between the States, Agilisys, Barclays Eagle Lab and the Chamber of Commerce designed to increase support available to start-up and scale-up businesses. It is far too early to assess whether this will be more effective than the previous policy, which was to provide an annual grant to Start Up Guernsey. In its early days the committee attracted both public and political criticism with its plans to cut the funding of sport and arts tourism. The successful release of The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society film – though not shot here – went some way to diverting the flak, but the committee will be disappointed at its failure to make progress on establishing a Victor Hugo Centre to increase the attraction for our French cousins to visit us.

Perhaps above all, president Parkinson and his team will regret the lack of any progress on the Seafront Enhancement Area. This workstream is of course the responsibility of a P&R sub-committee, but the fact remains that it is fundamental to the prospects of Guernsey’s economic recovery and is at the heart of the 2018 Economic Development Strategy. It remains to be seen if the last-minute resolution of the States to establish a suitably mandated and funded Seafront Enhancement Area Committee will be up to the task of bringing a policy letter to the States by December 2021 setting out the long-term development strategy for the east coast. P&R clearly doesn’t think so, and its president made his committee’s displeasure and exasperation known in a sour speech which verged on the petulant and which, perhaps symbolically, ensured that the 2016-20 States of Deliberation ended on a less-than harmonious note.

All in all, Economic Development has done moderately well in the face of the unhelpful comings and goings of its political membership and a States-wide cast which reserved its strongest energy for social reform rather than for the economic growth necessary to pay for it.

The committee played its due part in keeping the health of our economy on an upward path during the pre-Covid-19 years of the outgoing political term and – just as importantly – in laying some foundations for a more diverse deployment of the island’s entrepreneurial talent and energy in the near future.

Rating over four years: 6/10