Let me be clear

I refer to my offering celebrating our low birth rate and suggesting that we should use it to stabilise our population, while still allowing those with the skills we desperately need as a community to move to our island.

I suggested we should take this unique opportunity to tackle the difficult challenge of creating a strong economy based on a stable population rather than taking the easy route of relying on ever-rising numbers to create economic growth.

The column generated a considerable reaction. I thank all those who contacted me to say they strongly agreed. The few detractors – on both extremes of the debate – seemed to have misread the content of the column. Whether wilfully or otherwise is hard to tell. One even called for me to clarify my position in a future Roffey Writes.

Well it’s probably rather self-indulgent given the number of other important issues needing to be covered but the reader is the boss – so here goes.

Firstly I emphatically did not use the expression ‘enough is enough’. The sub-editor may have done so but as all contributors to newspapers will appreciate, the one thing they cannot control is the headlines. It is not an expression which I think holds much currency among those of a thoughtful and reflective nature. However I can’t argue that as a statement of my personal feelings about the number of people Guernsey can comfortably accommodate, the sub-editor was spot on.

A letter writer suggested this expression was ‘anti-government’. It has certainly been used as such by some and as a member of government one thing I can’t abide is deputies suggesting that they are somehow outside government in order to maintain their ‘street cred’. Our unique system of government means all deputies are part of the executive and enjoy both influence over, and responsibility for, the decisions the States take. Long may that continue.

That said, no lobby group owns an expression and just because a campaign has used a well-established phrase as a slogan doesn’t mean the expression’s use in any other context implies support for that campaign. I might happen to say ‘every little helps’ but it doesn’t mean I am promoting Tesco.

Secondly I did not say, as some have suggested, that ‘for the first time we can give rights to those born in Guernsey’. Such a suggestion would be complete nonsense. We always could and did afford such rights. While quoting part of a sentence can be fun, it very rarely throws much light on a subject. The full sentence read: ‘We can, for the first time in our recent history, give rights to those born here and warmly welcome newcomers without increasing our population’. A simple statement of fact arising from our low birth rate.

Thirdly, it was suggested that I had tried to prevent something called ‘birth right’. That has to be completely wrong because no such concept has ever been presented to the States. Far from providing a birth right to those born in Guernsey, the current population regime simply divides Guernsey people into sheep and goats.

For example a child born here, and both of whose parents were born here too, does not get an immediate and irrevocable right to live here. By contrast, a child who is born here and who has just one locally born parent and one locally born grandparent [like myself] does enjoy such an immediate right. It was this sort of divisive nonsense which I opposed, together with other very ‘local’ deputies such as Peter Ferbrache and Matt Fallaize.

That is why I proposed instead universal rights for all locally born children after a modest qualification period designed to exclude those who happen to be born here to short-term residents with little or no connection to the island.

On the other side of the coin, I have been accused of revelling in population decline. Quite untrue – for me, population stability is the Holy Grail.

I have even been accused of being against the finance industry when I am a huge supporter of this engine of our economy which has provided the cash to deliver so many of the social policies I care deeply about. Anybody who saw the way I campaigned vigorously for the Zero-10 regime to protect our finance industry, despite my instinctive dislike of the policy, will realise how committed I am to our main industry.

One foolish person even implied that this column was the start of a campaign to become the next president of Policy & Resources. Well he said ‘chief minister’ but as the States has no ministers, it obviously has no chief minister. Anybody who knows me will realise how absurd such a suggestion is. I would rather have my fingernails pulled out. Anyway it would be an odd tactic to go against what I perceive to be most fellow deputies’ views in order to garner support.

In reality my position is simple and I know it is shared by many other locals. I really welcome incomers. I welcome their skills and their economic contribution as well as the cultural and genetic diversity they bring to Guernsey.

We should celebrate them.

At the same time, I fully defend a policy of giving the first right to live in Guernsey [if there needs to be restrictions] to those born and brought up here. That has to be morally right, but it shouldn’t involve convoluted rules dividing Guernsey people into first, second and third class locals.

Finally, I emphatically do not want to see a continuation of the relentless population increases Guernsey has experienced in its recent history. This is not me being xenophobic or even misanthropic [although I probably am something of a misanthrope], I just want to protect the quality of life for everybody who lives here – locals and incomers alike.

I realise that trying to create a strong economy with a stable population is very hard but sometimes the difficult path is the right one. I am sorry if all this wasn’t very clear in my first column on this subject but I hope it is now.