Much to be proud of

Committee for Employment and Social Security

May 2016 deputies: Le Clerc, Langlois, Fallaize (succeeded in 2018 by Roffey), McSwiggan and Gollop

ALL the rooms in the five floors of Edward T. Wheadon House together have scarcely been sufficient to contain the brimful social consciences of the impressive cast that Deputy Michelle Le Clerc gathered round her to form the dramatis personae of the 2016 Committee for Employment and Social Security. The eclectic membership of this high-spending committee (£89.6m. budget) offered levels of compassion that would have left Mother Teresa feeling inadequate, but it also came armed with the impressive brain-power and political nous that enabled their expensive social policy initiatives to be so persuasively articulated that they sailed serenely through the gate of States’ approval with scarcely a handful of disapproving tut-tuts from the well-known grumpy serial objectors.

The committee’s membership happily ensured that a Gollopian compulsion to spend, spend, spend was neatly balanced by ESS’s own Mr Micawber in the person of its vice-president, Shane Langlois, who in committee and in the wider States arena persisted in asking such inconvenient and irritating questions as ‘so where’s the money going to come from?’

For those who, like me, are less impressed by the peddling of highfalutin visions and strategies than by the setting out of clear objectives, by the construction of coherent plans through which to achieve those objectives and by a collective determination to simply get on with it, the 2016-20 ESS team has been successful.

The committee’s strategic achievements were impressive.

High on the list was the committee’s success in persuading the States to confront the awkward reality that around 60% of the working age population – currently around 25,000 people – make no provision for a personal pension at a time when the demographic headwind into which we are sailing makes it all but inevitable that for many of them the States old age pension and tax-funded welfare benefits will do little more than keep poverty at bay at an unaffordable cost to the taxpayer. The ESS solution, a secondary pension scheme, was approved by the States in February this year by a whacking 32-7 majority vote, but the scheme’s requirement for high start-up costs and short-term pain in the interests of long-term gain makes it vulnerable to the next States Assembly when it comes to address priorities within ‘Revive and Thrive’ and the approaching fiscal policy review.

The committee finally gave birth to the Social Welfare Benefits Investigation Committee baby with the arrival of its long-awaited consolidation of social security benefits into the new Income Support. The delivery was achieved without the turmoil associated with the UK’s like-minded transition to its controversial Universal Credit, albeit the annual additional cost to the Guernsey taxpayer is an eye-watering £4m. The committee has also excelled at working productively with other principal committees. In a joint initiative with Health & Social Care, ESS has secured the construction by the Guernsey Housing Association of eight specialised bungalows which will allow those whose severe autism previously required them to be supported in the UK to return home and live closer to their families. A further 20 extra care units and a sensory gym at the same Le Vieux Jardin site caters for other persons who need specialised support 24 hours a day. Here was a classic example of a clear objective, coherent plan, pan-committee working, no paralysis by process, all leading to a brilliant result – just what government is all about, or should be.

ESS can also point to its co-operation with HSC over the introduction (mildly controversial) of free contraception for those under 21, an initiative that is claimed to have dramatically reduced the number of teenage pregnancies. Successful joint working with HSC and Education, Sport & Culture was also evident when at the last gasp ESS managed to overcome the opposition of the Policy & Resources Committee and secure the backing of the States to the implementation of a long-standing resolution to re-allocate a proportion of the Family Allowance Benefit to fund initiatives of direct value to the lives of children and young people. Under the banner of ‘Building a Better Future: Children’s Health & Education’ (note the catchy title – de rigueur for policy letters these days), these cost-neutral measures will lead to reduced charges for children aged 17 and under when visiting their GP or the PEH Emergency Department (both down to £25) or to the medical practice nurse (£15), and will include entitlement to a free annual dental check-up and access to improved dental health education. Too good to be true? Not if the GP and dental practices embrace the need to change. The same new policy will also provide much-needed additional cultural enrichment activities to primary school children, too many of whom experience too little. The annual cost of all this (£1.73m.) will be met by excluding families with a gross household income of £120,000 or more from any entitlement to Family Allowance and by ending a child’s eligibility for payment of the Family Allowance on their 18th birthday. This amounted to an interesting and potentially controversial departure from the principle of a universal benefit, but the £120,000 threshold (all that was necessary in order to produce the required funding) was so high that, rightly or wrongly, few tears were shed for those who will lose their entitlement.

The committee was on dodgier ground when it brought its anti-discrimination policy to the States for debate in July this year. A few States members thought the proposals went too far, others that they didn’t go far enough. The amendments piled in. In the end the proposals – relatively undamaged by amendments – together with a firm timeline for legislation, were soundly endorsed after a debate during which genuine compassion from some members mingled uncomfortably with self-congratulatory virtue-signalling from others. At the end of it all, and with the blessing – even encouragement – of the Bailiff, various interest groups in the public gallery applauded so enthusiastically that the ESS committee’s sigh of relief went unheard.

If the committee regards the safe passage of its anti-discrimination proposals as the crown jewel of this political term, then it has to acknowledge its failures, too. It failed to secure additional land on which to build more and better social housing for the GHA’s partial ownership scheme. It is not as if the land is not there, but the ESS is not the first States committee – and will not be the last – to fail to unlock timely access to the States-owned property estate. Within remembered time the States have been aware that they own mega-bucks-worth of property without ever giving the impression that they have a clue what and where it is, let alone know what to do with it. Hopes rose in April 2018 with the publishing of the STSB’s Estates Plan and its accompanying policy letter with the optimistic title of ‘Optimising the Use of the States Land and Property Portfolio’. Thereafter, Property Services seem to have migrated to P&R, and if any ‘optimising of the land and property portfolio’ has occurred during the intervening two and a half years, it has been kept a close secret.

The committee set itself two further targets which it failed to achieve, with the result that pockets of poverty which could be relieved by better targeted use of limited resources will remain as blots on our social landscape. I refer to the intended review of the basket of goods whereby welfare rates are set and a further review of benefit limitation, both of which were not completed, having run out of time and money. Mind you, had the committee been able to bring the outcome of those reviews to the States, the ensuing debate would have provided an interesting and defining litmus test of the 2016-20 Assembly’s social conscience, bearing in mind the current upper limit for the amount of benefit that can be awarded to a family is already £850 per week. In its way this would have repeated the exam question which was posed to the States when they first assembled in 2016 and was left incompletely answered as they departed in 2020. ‘The responsibility of government for the welfare of its citizens trumps the personal responsibility of individuals for themselves and their families. Discuss.’

I predict that the next States, whatever their make-up, will find the question even harder to answer in the aftermath of Covid-19, and the next Committee for Employment and Social Security will do well to match the performance of its commendable predecessors.

ESS rating over four years: 7/10