Nothing is assured

SINCE the States last met three weeks ago, the refreshed Conservative government in London has performed a gigantic fiscal policy U-turn with the largest injection of borrowed money into the economy since Ted Heath’s government’s ‘dash for growth’ under the leadership of his chancellor, Anthony Barber.

Prime Minister Liz Truss’s chancellor, Kwazi Kwarteng, appears to have found the magic money tree that Deputy Ferbrache has repeatedly told us does not exist. The bond and foreign exchange markets don’t much like this fiscal incontinence, with bond interest rates rising rapidly and the pound tanking (which will cause further rises in both inflation and mortgage rates for us all). Deputy Helyar’s instincts at the beginning of this political term – to fill his boots with public debt whilst interest rates remained absurdly and historically low, allowing the real value of the borrowings to be inflated away over time – were right. However, having bottled it, the opportunity has now been lost and it will not return soon – or ever.

To put Kwarteng’s mini-budget into a local context, the £105bn cost next year of tax cuts and public spending on capping energy costs would be the equivalent of Deputy Helyar announcing, in his 2023 Budget next month, £105m. of tax cuts or spending increases – around 25% of the entire budget. The UK’s reversal of the previously planned UK corporation tax rise and the accelerated reduction in the UK basic rate of income tax to 19%, below our own at 20%, both put more rather than less pressure on making our own bold tax policy choices. Meanwhile Jersey last week also approved its own mini-budget in response to the economic crisis under its own new leadership team, Chief Minister Kristina Moore and her treasury minister, Ian Gorst, raising personal allowances by 12% and temporarily cutting social security contribution rates by 2%.

Although the Policy & Resources Committee told us in its Government Work Plan in June that inflation and housing are the two most pressing issues of our time, the States of Deliberation this week won’t be troubling itself with either of those – or indeed any of the matters bothering everyone else. Instead, it will be going down its own agenda of business that’s worked its way through the sausage machine of government.

As ever, the meeting will kick off with committee statements. Up this time are Environment & Infrastructure and Education, Sport & Culture. The former will probably trigger all sorts of accusations of calumny about weedkiller, while the latter will likely be the normal word soup that we’ve come to expect in this term from Deputy Dudley-Owen: seeking to reassure without offering anything of substance, accompanied by saccharine-rich questions from the faithful and a head-teacherly telling-off response to substantive challenges.

Environment & Infrastructure is progressing water pollution legislation that began its journey fully two decades ago, with further policy direction given in 2012. The delay illustrates the very real constraints when the States’ resources are so limited in highly technical areas.

There is a rather dry policy letter that will sensibly give yet more discretion to P&R in relation to negotiating free trade agreements post-Brexit. There’s another technical policy letter from Home Affairs, albeit initiated by the law officers, recommending changes to criminal justice legislation to catch up with jurisdictions around us (Jersey and the UK, primarily.) There’s also a worthy offering from Economic Development, which has progressed a genuinely new policy to relieve debts for those least able to pay, which its predecessors in the last States term dismissed. Although it’s not going to unleash economic growth and productivity that you might imagine are the priorities that keep Deputy Inder and his committee awake at night, providing debt relief for those in the community least able to meet their debt obligations will be of significant benefit to this group.

Health & Social Care is recommending some reforms to the Children’s Law. This is the next stage – the draft legislation will follow – in a long journey. The objectives are admirable and important: to improve and expedite the processes that our society needs to make involving decisions around one of its most vulnerable groups: children in need and at risk.

The policy letter has, rightly, involved cross-committee working and follows extensive consultation, albeit with one glaring omission, namely the families and children who are the ‘clients’ of the system.

The recommendations are clearly a classic ‘Guernsey compromise’ but there has to be a nagging doubt that such an approach is the right one for such a vulnerable group. The challenge we have with the Children’s Law is marrying two systems with different heritage: the Convenor and Tribunal whose practice is aligned with Scotland; and social workers and a court system more familiar with English practice.

There are some carefully considered amendments from Deputy Roffey (whose late wife, Jean Pritchard, can take so much credit for the current Children’s Law) and Deputy Burford, whose predecessor Scrutiny Committee – initiated by Deputy Lester Queripel and his brother, former Deputy Laurie Queripel – commissioned an expert, Professor Kathleen Marshall, to review the operation of the current law.

The pedigree of the amendments ought normally to enhance their chances of success, but that is not assured in this Assembly. If the amendments fail, there is a real concern that the courts and Children’s Services will struggle to deliver faster and better outcomes for vulnerable children without considerably more resources.

And finally, of course, we have the anti-discrimination legislation.

Fifty years after the Race Relations Act in the UK, we will be facing a raft of wrecking amendments to our own attempts to outlaw discrimination against members of our community. The most significant amendment would exempt two-thirds of businesses from the law’s application.

This legislation has been years in the making and has had extensive consultation with interested parties, including business groups, none of whom are calling for these amendments.

There is a nagging concern that if this legislation was being laid by any of the ‘leading lights’ in the governing coalition, rather than Deputy Roffey and his committee, it would not now be facing the challenges which it is.

While our near neighbours are worrying about more immediate economic challenges, it would be perverse, indulgent and an absolute travesty if this Assembly decided to gut law that provides for legislated inclusion of all members of our community.

This law is decades overdue and supported by most businesses. I’d like to be able to confidently predict that this will not be the outcome but, sadly, with this Assembly, I cannot do so.