The state of health care is firmly in the public interest
NEXT week the States will suffer the indignity of debating whether to reprimand Deputy Mike Hadley for releasing a report that was critical of how the local Accident and Emergency Department is run.
NEXT week the States will suffer the indignity of debating whether to reprimand Deputy Mike Hadley for releasing a report that was critical of how the local Accident and Emergency Department is run.
If past examples are anything to go by, it will accept the independent panel's findings and give Deputy Hadley a slap on the wrist.
But it is a saga that goes straight to the heart of whether the States really believes in transparency.
Of course, it should not be so.
If there was a debate to be had it should be on the service, improvements needed and the progress, or lack of, being made by Health and Social Services.
That it is not shows the Policy Council, and by implication the 'States of Change', in a bad light.
Just take a look at how critical reports of A&E centres in England have been widely commented on after being freely released last week and ask, what is so different here?
What has happened to the public's right to know and make informed judgements on the services they pay for?
Deputy Hadley faced a code of conduct complaint signed off by all the ministers for emailing to States members the College of Emergency Medicines review of 2011.
Note, this is not about a release to the public, although thanks to the Guernsey Press the public did finally get to find out what was going on.
As an aside, it is difficult to see how this release to members of confidential information was a code breach while the Home Department briefing members on the confidential AFR settlement was not.
But back to A&E.
The ministers argue the email to States members was a serious breach of confidentiality and that releasing the reports could lead to difficulties in carrying out independent reviews in the future.
They also raised data protection concerns, but it is understood those complaints have not stood up to scrutiny.
Deputy Hadley argues that HSSD had circulated the report so widely itself that it held little regard for the confidentiality issues.
The panel had some sympathy with that argument.
But it is the mainstay of Deputy Hadley's defence which was unsuccessful with the panel that should be worrying to transparency campaigners.
Last term, the States tightened up the code of conduct to spell out that minutes and papers circulated to board members were confidential and should not be released unless the board voted to do so.
It pointedly made no specific reference to a public interest defence for doing so.
Deputy Hadley argued that the requirement for members to 'primarily act in the best interests of the public' outweighed the confidentiality requirement in this case.
It appears, at least according to the panel, that there can be whistle-blowing in terms of some of what members receive.
One of the rules states members must bear in mind that confidential information which they receive in the course of their duties may be used only in connection with those duties – one of those duties is to act in the public interest.
But, as I read it, whistle-blowing only barely extends to the rule on papers that go to the board members from within their committee or departments.
That means there is essentially a gag on all papers and documents States members receive unless board members vote and agree to release.
The default position is therefore secrecy.
So while politicians have spoken for years about the need to be open and transparent, they have put in place rigid rules that are a bar to that whenever it gets uncomfortable.
'If a member does not wish to be bound by such restriction, he or she should not join a department,' the panel said of the rule.
It concedes that in 'rare circumstances' there might be a higher duty than the confidentiality imposed by the rule, again without spelling that out.
'But all other reasonable and realistic avenues of redress should at least be explored first,' it said.
None of this is clear in the rule book.
And again, it is hard to know what a member needs to do to get the information released.
It has to be more than Deputy Hadley did, according to the panel's decision.
Deputy Hadley held talks with HSSD ministers, members, the chief minister and senior civil servants
Among his failures was, it seems, not asking formal written or oral questions.
The ruling leads the reader to think the public interest is, in effect, of no interest.
It seems the States has set the bar so high for whistle-blowing when dealing with department papers that it is impossible to get over.
If this is not the 'rare circumstance' where treating everything produced by the department as confidential can be overridden, it is hard to know what is.
And it is a ruling that will only cement the practice of keeping confidential reviews of public services paid for by public money.
Each and every time a review is conducted, all a department has to do from the outset is state to those taking part that the review will be kept secret and that, effectively, is that – no arguments.
Worse still, without Deputy Hadley's intervention this time, the public and many States members would not even have known there was a review.
The A&E review contained nothing that the public should not have been able to know.
Perhaps more worrying was the press release rushed out by HSSD when it learned that the Guernsey Press was going to publish details of the review.
Its response when compared with the contents – and its 'progress list' which was so limited in scope – showed how willing it was to create a smokescreen and why departments cannot always be relied on to be open.
This mess would not have happened had HSSD decided to release the report back in 2011 – even a summary report might have been enough. But instead it chose to turn its back on the public.
The whole Policy Council supports that secrecy and is so willing to entrench it that it has taken the unprecedented step of a code of conduct complaint signed off by all the ministers.
This is a council that was committed by its predecessors to releasing reports paid for by public money unless there was an overwhelming reason not to do so.
The reasons not to publish are far from overwhelming here.
Yes, not everything that goes across the board table should be released – there will be instances where confidentiality is justified.
But protecting public health and safety is one of the key definitions of a public interest defence – and that should apply with the release of the A&E report.
