Scrutiny is in need of more focus
IT DID not take long for Deputy Paul Le Pelley to remind the Scrutiny committee that he did not want to appear at its public hearing just yet. That came during the first topic for discussion, Education Sport & Culture's 2017 budget and what it would mean for frontline services. But it is doubtful if Scrutiny had waited until after the Budget debate that it would have extracted any more enlightening answer than was given – broadly Education will try its hardest to meet it, but it will be tough and it does not know where the savings are going to come from. Scrutiny is planning on holding monthly hearings with the committee presidents. At the moment it is still finding its feet. These work best when there is a focused topic to be analysed, as with the waste issue last month. Too often yesterday answers drifted away from the question being asked.
They should also be a chance for the committee president to succinctly explain what it is doing and why – an opportunity to get a clear message out to the public. But there was little of that.
Scrutiny has to decide whether it wants to continue with a softly-softly approach to these hearings, or whether a more aggressive line of questioning and drilling down much further into individual issues would be more effective.
For example, faced with questions about on-island teacher training, ES&C managed to answer without once talking about the overall costs of the scheme, how that compared to alternatives, and crucially its success rate.
Having spent the majority of the hearing on education, when proceedings moved to sport and culture, what followed was a simple reading of things that had happened so far, many of which, like the Island Games, were inherited. There was no probing of the Beau Sejour budget deficit, for example.
It was a missed opportunity from both sides and with it a missed opportunity for the public to gain a real insight.
It is, though, vitally important that these hearings continue. As policy positions become more clearly thought out, with the right approach to questioning they can lead to better decisions that are more widely understood.
