CCA answer a cause for speculation

For that we thank the committee. For what was contained within those answers… less so. It is likely that few will be surprised that, at this stage at least, detail on why emergency powers were invoked to buy the boat is, if not scarce around the committee table, and apparently, rather convincing, has still been kept largely private.

If the CCA’s response is an invitation to read between the lines on why it got involved, the forensic reader might speculate that the ‘emergency’ looks similar to that when the States bought fuel tankers necessary for St Sampson’s harbour before somebody else did.

Today's matter was ‘time-sensitive’. ‘Prompt action would mitigate an emergency situation from arising,’ the authority told us. And interestingly, the arrangements previously outlined, where the Guernsey Investment Fund would have bought the vessel, ‘would have achieved the same outcome’.

It was also reassuring to learn that ‘there are rigorous tests that have to be satisfied to justify the use of emergency powers, and these tests were met in more ways than one’.

The confirmation of a number of points may one day follow, which would, one hopes, be rather more revealing.