Alderney governance
AT A MARATHON States Meeting in Alderney in October, David Earl spoke of Baron Montesquieu, who wrote about ‘concentration of powers’ in the 18th century. Montesquieu said that, if legislative, judicial and executive (law enforcement services, including the army, prisons and police) powers were not separated, the resulting concentration of power would undermine liberty. It’s hard to argue with that thesis, which is probably why Mr Earl used it as a smokescreen in his speech.
I want to blow some of that smoke away.
Her Majesty’s Government currently has a Cabinet of 22 politicians running a nation-state of about 67.5 million people. Another 270-odd MPs are whipped through the lobbies to keep the Cabinet in power, at least for the time being. The Cabinet isn’t just a group of legislators; it has executive power and could even take the UK to war without consulting parliament. That’s what ‘concentration of powers’ looks like in the real world, and it’s a continuing source of friction between the judiciary and the legislature.
To claim, as Mr Earl did, that our committee system violates the principle of separation of powers is to ascribe an intention to Montesquieu that he clearly didn’t have.
There isn’t a village council anywhere in Europe where the elders of the community don’t take an active interest in the management of public buildings, roads and common-pool resources like fisheries and productive land. That’s what village councils are for. Montesquieu wouldn’t have cared how many legislators sat on our Policy and Finance Committee because separation of powers here is crystal clear.
In addition to one of the highest rates of democratic representation per capita in the world, Alderney has the people’s meetings, we have regular elections and, above all else, we have the Chuter-Ede governance reforms, including the 1948 Agreement; a topic Mr Earl has studied in depth and lectured on.
Under these reforms the president was intended to be a sort of village mayor (none of them ever were, but that was the plan). Presidents wouldn’t be styled ‘judge’ any more. Like the other Crown Dependencies, Alderney was not allowed to develop its own foreign policy or sign treaties. We would have no standing army. Under the ‘transferred services’ arrangement, a well-regulated police force and prison service was developed to serve the whole Bailiwick. Serious criminal cases were to be heard in Guernsey. The whole caboodle was run through a well-regulated committee system, which enjoyed the support of a clerk, co-opted experts and public employees.
Our committees aren’t as stringently regulated now as they were 70 years ago. The CEO is much more like a managing director than the States’ agent, which is what he would have been under the Chuter-Ede system. Alderney has had clear separation of powers since 1948.
The reason Alderney’s ‘good governance’ initiatives get kicked into the long grass is that two irreconcilable models of reform have been given the same name.
The first, which I think of as the Arditti model, would reduce P&F in size and limit its executive power. P&F would become a sort of think-tank, exploring policy options, scrutinising States management and preparing accounts – a bit like SMC in Guernsey, but with a clear mandate for reconnaissance. Decisions currently made behind closed doors would henceforth be made by the whole States, in public, after passing through a people’s meeting.
The McDonald Report (‘Alderney’s Choices’) written in 2016, hints at a second model, which would involve a shift to a cabinet-style P&F with two or three States members, ‘guided’ by the CEO, making decisions for the States as a whole. This model would further compromise the political impartiality of the civil service, undermine democratic oversight and concentrate powers in the hands of a few States members and their co-opted advisors.
So which model of ‘good governance’ is Alderney considering?
Come on, Mr Earl; do tell us, we’re agog.
NICK WINDER
Address withheld.
Editor’s footnote: David Earl declined to comment.