Safeguards needed in States reshuffle
WE ARE a small island where we can all contact each other and there is plenty of opportunity to exploit the benefits of flexibility, nimbleness and 'mucking through'. This is our strength; we need our quirks, 'Guernsey ways', traditions and anomalies. If we accept a global 'one size fits all' philosophy, we are dead in the water. An analogy: go-karts are quicker up Le Val des Terres than dragsters.
Spoonerists will find it appropriate that it is Matt Fallaize who has spearheaded proposals to reduce the number of States departments from nine to six. This will mean having six obese departments. I have seen numerous illustrations that departments are already too large and cumbersome; I was even told by a deputy that Mark Dorey's former HSSD board had 19 different working parties reporting to it on one particular issue. Given the increased size of their departmental mandates, in the long term it's likely that deputies will become less 'hands on' and will increasingly farm out decision-making to consultants and experts largely appointed by committees and sub groups made up of civil servants and consultants appointed by civil servants, etc.
Will having fewer deputies and fewer departments lead to a 'you had your chance to speak at the election' attitude from government? Effective lobbying by the electorate between elections could go out of the window. With fewer deputies it could also be harder for deputies to spend time on individual cases of their parishioners; one complaint I hear from members of the electorate is that it's hard enough to find a deputy to listen to them as it is.
If there is to be a top table/small group of politicians setting general policy, then I think each member of the electorate would feel much more comfortable and it would be much more democratic if he or she had a direct representative on that top table. I suggest therefore that if we do go down the potentially rocky 'more power in fewer hands' road, there are three potential safeguards:
1. Island-wide voting;
2. Regional voting and the top performing candidate from each jurisdiction (reduced to five?) with four years' experience of politics automatically has a seat on the 'top table';
3. After the results of the initial regional elections have been declared, successful candidates who wish to be considered for the top table stand for that role and the electorate votes again, this time island-wide, to select the top table.
Irrespective of the merits or otherwise of the proposed government reforms, no fair-minded person would implement them until an electoral system which is designed to accommodate them has been implemented beforehand. We've already been conned once by the majority of this Assembly in May 2012 when they changed the rules in the middle of the game to allow candidates with no political experience to stand for chief minister.
MATT WATERMAN,
Flat 2, 3, Burnt Lane,
St Peter Port, GY1 1HL.
