Harbours meeting analysis – recollections may vary

Their analysis of the last States meeting was somewhat lacking in accuracy, to say the least. I must endeavour to better inform your readership.

The main contentious point of issue in that three-day meeting was the consideration of the proposals for the development of the harbours. The matter is complex so I will try to be as succinct as possible to avoid losing everyone’s attention.

There were votes on amendments upon amendments which would be too difficult to follow for anyone who has a life to get on with, so I will not go into that.

We were presented with well-prepared papers from much-respected Stuart Falla and his team providing a number of our options re the possible development of our harbours. These were outlines of possible ways to proceed but without – and this is important – a cost benefit analysis of each. The proposals most discussed were:

• Combination 5/6 – a total rearrangement including a new harbour at Longue Hougue for commercial shipping, costing £35m. for basic repairs plus £326m. for the rest.

• Combination 2 – keep SPP harbour roughly as it is and do necessary repairs and upgrade the terminal, reorganise the port area and add extra parking levels at North Beach and a cruise ship pontoon, costing £35m. for the basic repairs plus £80m. for the rest.

• Combination 4 – a new harbour east of the current SPP harbour, costing £35m. for the basic repairs plus £479m. for the rest.

Deputy Roffey represented his preferred option, Combination 5, on behalf of the States’ Trading Supervisory Board.

After debate it became clear that the Assembly was not prepared to spend this much taxpayers’ money without a clear cost benefit analysis – which we did not have.

Hence the proposal from deputies Ferbrache and Helyar to consider this aspect in detail and the further amendment to set up a Regeneration Board to consider this rather vital aspect.

We really should not spend hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money without a commercial cost-benefit analysis.

Pretty obvious, one would have thought.

It might well be that spending £326m. for a harbour at Longue Hougue would be totally uneconomic even if it were technically possible and seemed like a ‘nice idea’. Deputy Roffey’s proposal would have involved spending at least £4m. with consultants to check the seabed and monitor tides at Longue Hougue in circumstances where the whole thing might be a waste of time and, further, Deputy Inder had pointed out from his experience and with further input from ex-deputy Paint, that these proposals were a non-starter for technical/tidal/sea depth reasons.

So the immediate point was, should we risk £4m. for consultancy fees on a proposal that may not be economic or feasible at all? In the real world, £4m. is a lot of money. Think of 300-400 knee replacements or three new MRI scanners. The mood of the assembly was clearly turning to requiring more economic justification. It was not ‘kicking the can down the road’.

It was agreed that the basic maintenance of the current harbour which had been overlooked by previous States should proceed as a priority.

It was also agreed that there was a clear, commercially justifiable need for a new marina in the harbour pool with associated facilities and that these should proceed.

Young Deputy Taylor, contrary to his trashing by Richard Graham, made a great speech, both analytical and entertaining, covering the spin in government reports and, broadly, the need to be cynical. It was so good that he generated a round of applause. Deputy Taylor is a guy to watch and certainly did not deserve the attempted evisceration in former Deputy Graham's column.

Unfortunately, Deputy Roffey, sensing that the mood of the Assembly was turning against him, engaged in an extraordinary, vitriolic attack against what he regarded as a conspiracy by the Guernsey Party and what he called the ‘Van Party’, which is not a party at all and, even if it was, we together had nine votes in the Assembly. Very unpleasant indeed and he was reprimanded by Deputy Ferbrache and, more forcefully, by Deputy Inder (whose blue touch paper one lights at one’s peril).

I fear that Deputy Roffey judges us by his own standards. We do not enter into secret pacts, unlike his gang in the last States. Remember the ‘Group of 21’ who held secret meetings and agreed on votes ahead of States meetings? 21 is an interesting number in a house of 40. It does not leave much for the other 19 to do.

No such thing happened in this States meeting, at least so far as the Guernsey Party is concerned.

We all voted as we thought best, with the independents carrying the day.

Deputy Roffey, I fear, is too used to having his own way. Seven terms in the States? It seems longer, maybe too long. After 50 years of age, one cannot be an Angry Young Man or a Rebel Without A Cause.

Gone With The Wind might be a better analogy.

Anyway, many of us new deputies are looking forward with enthusiasm for four more years of a new, optimistic and competent States that can, after eight years of disastrous, spendthrift incompetence, collectively think its way out of a paper bag.

JOHN F. DYKE

john.dyke@deputies.gov.gg