Sidestepping Privy Council needs caution

One of the greatest concerns is that the States can quite properly enact urgent and powerful primary legislation – through what’s known as a Projet de Loi – only for it to be delayed by the current process of referring it to the Privy Council so that ministers there can advise Her Majesty that it is fit to be approved.

Bringing that process ‘in house’ so the Lt-Governor as her personal representative discharges the same function – but more speedily – ticks many boxes, as constitutional expert Advocate Gordon Dawes explained here recently.

There is, however, a wider issue. Under the current system, the law officers can advise the States on the need for a new law, help write the policy letter justifying it, draft the legislation after the policy letter is approved, interpret that same legislation when enacted, and then prosecute islanders for breaching it. That, no matter how theoretical in actuality, is a tremendous concentration of responsibility and one that has previously been criticised by politicians here. The Privy Council, for any imperfections in the process, does at least act as a final check before wide-ranging powers are adopted by the States.

That, too, can be brought in-house – but only by asking what support the Lt-Governor will have to assist him in deciding whether to grant royal assent or not. If the Privy Council is simply a cumbersome rubber-stamping exercise, then islanders should be told that.

The point remains that every law passed restricts individual freedoms and liberties to some extent and should therefore be proportionate and as narrow in scope as possible to achieve no more than the stated aim.

If that process is effectively to pass into the hands of the States – notoriously poor at scrutinising legislation – and the law officers with no external oversight, then islanders need to be very well aware of that too.