Value for money?

MUCH oxygen will be wasted this week when members debate how much they should pay themselves.

It is never an edifying spectacle, but one that excites members more than most issues, particularly coming on the eve of a general election when the public's gaze is so much more intense.

Some aspects of the report before members should be nailed on.

Scrapping the gold-plated pension that deputies have been able to claim is a key element of the independent panel's report – one that is very hard not to agree with.

After all, with finances stretched and talks already under way on reform of the public sector final salary pension scheme, there is a chance to put an example-setting marker down.

It also seems an uneasy fit for the panel to propose that future pay rises be linked to average earnings when the States is insistent its employees negotiate around RPIX as a starting point.

The headlines make themselves and taxpayers will feel rightly aggrieved if, while restraint is being felt elsewhere, deputies end up with an above-inflation pay deal because it is pegged to average earnings. Treasury and Resources has sounded the warning shot on this already.

So those two elements were the easy bit, what comes next?

How to work out the salary is where members are all getting wildly excited and busy coming up with their own pay schemes.

For Deputy Mary Lowe, it is all about linking pay to workloads.

She has suggested a £65 payment for each half day of every official minuted meeting attended.

Her open cheque book proposal rings alarm bells, given the tendency for a States with too many members already having the ability to create work for itself just to fill the time.

No other business would suggest that just because someone is in a meeting, they are making a more valued contribution than someone who is not.

Performance is about so much more.

Deputy Rhoderick Matthews is suggesting something akin to the Jersey model, with a flat rate of pay of £36,000 with no extras for positions taken up, as now.

It is very egalitarian, but it fails miserably to take account of the slacking member with no departments or committees, or the very real extra workload and responsibilities taken on by the ministers.

All are arguing their proposals are value for money.

But not even the panel has been able to win that case for the simple reason nobody has set out what is expected of a deputy – the role is something different to each person who takes it on.

Are they really like a board of a company, setting strategic direction and making policy decisions?

Or are they there to field constituents' phone calls about bin collections? Perhaps they should be scrutinisers? Lawmakers?

Take the Education Department example

exposed in recent weeks and all the evidence suggests that even if they are meant to be there to set policy, they do not perform adequately – this is one example of the deputies being led rather than setting the direction to follow.

Would you spend nearly £2m. a year on 45 people when you had little idea of their abilities, had no intention of training them to improve their performance and virtually no chance of removing them in the next four years if they are not up to scratch? Essentially, that is what happens.

The panel has put on record some areas that were outside its simple wage-setting remit that needs to be explored.

As it acknowledges, 'the absence of a clear definition of the various roles and responsibilities of States members is a deficiency of the current system that needs to be addressed'.

Essentially, the pay scale it recommends is guesswork, much like members' attempts to come up with their own schemes.

The panel states that only the chief minister's role can be considered full-time – with it would come a £58,520 pay slip under its recommendations.

A typical deputy with two departments only has a part-time job, according to the panel – all of a sudden its recommendation for a £32,155 starting wage seems attractive?

No doubt we will be hearing much talk about members working through the night to read reports and answer phones, which some do, but it is not necessarily the norm.

Some even find that voting is an inconvenient optional extra nowadays.

Life in the deputies' goldfish bowl, often for the ministers, at least, under public scrutiny is not always going to be an easy one.

Last week, this desk took several phone calls from people wanting to know more about the role of a deputy.

Anyone thinking of standing will not be making an informed choice because there is no definition, no level of expectation.

Just as different chief ministers have interpreted the job in different ways, so have different deputies.

For the electorate, as the panels report says, there is no standard against which to evaluate a candidate.

How do we have a hope of knowing we are getting the best people for the job if we are not clear what the job is? We do it all reliant on a sixth sense.

One thing is certain – candidates' manifestos are hardly worth the paper they are written on, because under the current system of government, and with no political parties, there is no way of guaranteeing to be able to successfully pursue an agenda – it can simply come down to force of personality.

And without the party machine to hold someone to account, the flip-flop becomes standard footwear.

It can also leave individual deputies bereft of support for things like detailed research if they ever do try to influence the policy direction from the outside.

In April, we will be electing 45 members on a wing and a prayer and with only a minimal lobby with any hope of really influencing the decisions they take and the way they act for the next four years.

Maybe we should just adopt the pay model that Radiohead and a few other bands have used when releasing digital singles – you pay as much as you think it is worth.