Woolly plan is starting to unravel

It’s too slow, too wordy, too inflexible.

Most damningly, the States’ blueprint for the future is failing to get committees to make difficult decisions or to stop random projects sneaking in.

The P&R plan is supposed to force deputies to choose, so that the limited cash the island has is spent on what really matters.

If it’s a choice of better healthcare or better education it should at least be a considered decision, not one driven by timing or the forceful demands of a committee president.

However, both Policy & Resources (that’s the committee, not the plan) and Scrutiny agree that, instead of instilling discipline in committees, the masterplan is often being ignored when it comes to pet projects.

That means that potentially millions of pounds and hundreds of staff hours are disappearing from committee budgets on what amounts to the whim of a few politicians.

Which is all the more disappointing considering that the list of priorities in the P&R plan is already far too generous in giving the States 23 areas on which to concentrate.

As Scrutiny says, ‘When so many areas are a priority, then nothing is truly a priority.’

So, two years in, it is clear that the big picture lacks focus. It needs to be a streamlined process which comes into action much earlier in the States term as a brief document setting out with clarity the agreed aims of States members.

As part of that, the number of priorities needs to be crunched down, perhaps even halved.

If it is working, deputies will wail and gnash their teeth about how terrible it is that their area of interest is being ignored.

The fact that they aren’t complaining at the moment is the clearest indication that the system is failing and it is business as usual.

As it stands, 2020 will arrive and this group of deputies will not only have failed to get to grips with many of the most serious issues of our time – they won’t even know what they are.