Testing their mettle

Would the editor ask the paper’s music critic to report on a concert where the orchestra turns up, the leader gets the first and second violins to adjust their G strings, and once all players are in tune and we’ve clapped the conductor onto the stage, they all pack up and go home?

I have lost count in this new political term of how many States meetings have not lasted into the afternoon of the first day, let alone beyond the end of that day. It happened in 2016 and it is happening again – a new States term takes time to get into its stride as a States of Deliberation.

The latest States meeting didn’t even make it all the way to its first lunchtime before the Bailiff said that they could all go home and prepare something interesting to say when they next meet in four weeks’ time – and if they didn’t, he for one wouldn’t bother to turn up. I made that bit up, but I bet that was what he was thinking. I was.

Don’t get me wrong, as far as I am concerned, the less time any States Assembly spends thinking up ways for government to interfere with our lives the better, but we do expect a certain amount of entertainment value from our one and only political theatre, especially since the tickets are going to get more expensive for the taxpayer, by all accounts.

Such meat as there was in the April meeting was provided by routine updates from two committee presidents, P&R and Economic Development, and by the questions which then followed them.

Delivering a statement written for you by civil servants hardly tests the competence of our committee presidents, but we can really identify their talents, or lack of them, when they have to go off-script in responding to questions.

The P&R president, as we might expect, made a good job of telling members what his committee has been up to since his last statement.

There were two minor problems, neither of them of his making. The first was that nearly all the points were already out in the public domain, so there was little scope for the ‘wow factor’.

Secondly, the P&R mandate is so wide that it was difficult to cover it all in the 10 minutes allowed for the update. The result was that he had to gallop through his statement at a pace which I suspect was a good deal faster than he would have preferred.

The P&R president dealt well with the questions which, to be frank, were not very challenging. I thought the question with most significance for the future was asked by Deputy Kazantseva-Miller, who pointed out that the structure of the civil service is now out of alignment with the States’ political structure. The former has just been realigned to work vertically, while the States committees remain working horizontally. (Please don’t ask me to explain, I am limited to 1,200 words). Deputy Kazantseva-Miller wanted to know which was the horse and which was the cart on the way towards any future governmental arrangement. Judging by the president’s response, my bet is on the civil service pulling a cartload of reluctant committees behind it – intended destination, cabinet government.

After the P&R president had given us a demonstration of competence, a painful contrast was next provided by the president of Economic Development.

He was not helped by the banal statement that had been written for him, but in his delivery of it he could have at least tried harder to hide his own boredom with it. He would do well to let his vice-president have a go at writing and delivering it – it’s part of his skill-set.

But it was in his response to questions that the ED president’s true mettle was exposed. Its tone was petulant and bad-tempered, and its content somewhere between woeful and inept.

Deputy Dudley-Owen had heard him say that his ‘committee’s vision for the economy is to be investing in new and innovative economic opportunities that will position Guernsey as a “go-to” jurisdiction of choice for a wide diversity of global business’. Wow! So, not unreasonably, she asked if after six months in office he had identified any such new and innovative opportunities. ‘Not a clue,’ came the response. Well, he didn’t use those exact words, but that is what his incoherent reply amounted to.

Undeterred, Deputy Parkinson asked if the report on the feasibility of a niche university in Guernsey could be put into the public domain. It had cost taxpayers more than £200,000 so perhaps they deserved to have sight of it. The ED president sounded as if he was genuinely shocked to hear such a suggestion. He trusted taxpayers enough to let them cough up the money, but not enough to actually see the bloney report. Whatever next? It belonged to his committee, so there.

I was beginning to think that the session couldn’t get any worse, when it did. Deputy Trott asked a straightforward question about the relationship between the size of the public sector and population levels. The response of the ED president was to the effect that he didn’t understand the question and he was blowed if he was going to waste time responding to questions that he didn’t understand.

After that, I was surprised that anybody bothered to ask further questions, but Deputy Burford is made of more determined stuff. She had heard the ED president conclude his update with the statement that the committee was intent on driving ‘sustainable economic growth’. She was curious to know what he meant by the term. So was he, apparently, because all we learnt from the president’s reply was that he had noted it meant different things to different people and that he appeared to have no idea what he thought it meant himself.

Mercifully the session drew to an end, but it had been embarrassing to listen to on the radio and must have been a toe-curling experience for those in the chamber. Which is a shame. It is an important committee with a couple of talented new members who deserve better.

Deputy Gollop has been recently outed as the States champion of Rule 11 questions and he was next up with questions to the P&R president about our government’s communication techniques. A number of new deputies have indicated their dislike of any parliamentary device that encourages members to ask questions of committee presidents unless the questioner effectively bowls slow full tosses with very short boundaries defended by fielders with their hands tied behind their backs.

Such a cringingly-timid view of politics was exposed as nonsense when Deputy Gollop by his questions and the P&R president by his answers demonstrated the democratic value of the Rule 11 format, which allows interesting, topical issues to be raised and discussed in an open forum even though they are not scheduled for formal debate.

At this point I heard across the radio waves the clunk, clunk of Deputy Vermeulen gathering his thoughts as he prepared to ask the first of five questions to the E&I president about coastal defences.

He plodded his way through these and any number of supplementaries, at the end of which I believe we had learnt that sea defences are important to us as an island and are so expensive that we have to prioritise them in order of urgency and importance. Well, fancy that.

And we also learnt that Deputy Vermeulen, who as a Guernsey Party candidate campaigned for reduced government spending, now wants to increase government spending on sea defences.

It is encouraging to note that at least one journey from election candidate to serving deputy has led to a readiness to change one’s mind when confronted with the reality and responsibility of government.

I am left with the thought that six months into the new political term we have yet to spot an emerging Cicero amongst the ranks of our deputies, but there is still time.

On the other hand, one or two have already managed to audition quite convincingly for the title role in this year’s Gadoc pantomime, ‘Basil Fawlty and the Beanjar’.

Book your tickets now – it promises to be fun.