Richard Digard: Dear Deputy, welcome to your in-tray

Well, congratulations. You’ve just been elected as a People’s Deputy in this fair isle of Guernsey, with at least £172,000 coming your way over the next four years. So what do you have to do to earn that minimum of £43k a year plus a complimentary laptop? As it turns out, not much.

After turning up at the Royal Court to swear allegiance to be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty the King and promising ‘well and faithfully’ you’ll perform the duties attaching to membership of the States of Deliberation, you’re pretty much free to do what you like. Smoke roll-ups outside Coco* at our expense, if the fancy takes you.

The official guidance, via the members’ code of conduct, is sparse. ‘The primary duty of Members is to act in the public interest and to represent the interests of those who they have been elected to serve conscientiously.’

This, you’ll quickly realise, gives you enormous scope to interpret the role pretty much as you choose. Which is why some former members I could mention rarely bothered to read their Billet. That’s short for Billet d’Etat, by the way, the formal agenda of the States of Deliberation. This broadly sets out what committees want to do, why, what it will cost (ish, these days budgets aren’t worth the paper they’re written on – just ask Health, Education and those behind the Alderney runway fiasco) and the laws needed to underpin the wish-list.

Access States’ advice on the role of States members and it’s a bit more helpful. The three main tasks of a deputy are as a member of parliament, known as the States of Deliberation or States Assembly; as a member of a committee, overseeing policy aspects of operational delivery; and as a constituency deputy, helping islanders with issues they may have that relate to the policies or services of government.

Again, all pretty voluntary. As officials acknowledge, ‘no two deputies will undertake the same balance of these roles’, confirming that the actual process of deputying is discretionary. You are expected to turn up to States meetings – every three weeks except in school holidays – but even that’s become optional these days. Pitch up for the morning roll call and you can pretty much bunk off for the rest of the day.

Former deputy Mary Lowe, who has a better track record of attending States meetings these last five years than some current members we could also mention, has a fascinating record of comings and goings in the Chamber but is surprisingly coy about releasing them. Get a wiggle on, Mary, this is public interest stuff after all…

The other aspect of deputying, which doesn’t get much attention, is what’s called ‘high level oversight of the delivery of public services’. Basically, that’s holding your colleagues to account – scrutinising what they and their departments do (or don’t do), how well they perform, at what cost and whether policy initiatives have done what was intended in a timely and affordable fashion.

Well, two points on that. As a taxpayer and long-suffering island resident, you will immediately spot that this pretty vital element of public service is sadly neglected. Unsurprisingly, really. The States is a factional old boys’ club where criticism is either a) discouraged or b) punished if it happens, and therefore best avoided.

As a new States member, however, you will quickly realise that this is the area most likely to upset the tranquillity of a reflective fag outside Coco. The grubby public, you see, are particularly attuned to what we might term WTF moments (ask someone, I’m not going to spell it out), whereas most States members appear oblivious to them.

Which is why we get diving board bans and flocking pigeons of death and Barry Brehaut’s ‘Gategate’ at La Salerie plus a local airline that’s neither local (hence getting, ‘Bula qiri mai, au sa biuti iko tu ga vakawawa**’ when you ring its help desk in Melanesia) nor reliable, which is why you rang in the first place. And you, dear deputy, are held responsible for all of them because the institution you have just joined is widely regarded as useless, clueless and uncaring.

This category of uselesness is pretty broad, by the way, and rapidly expanding as things go from bad to worse. Much of what you’ll be blamed for – especially by those who didn’t vote for you anyway – will be the responsibility of your predecessors. Pointing this out won’t help, especially on something called Guernsey People Have Your Say (GPHYS).

After all, over the next four years it will be you voting for GST and/or public service cuts and slashing Alderney’s subsidies and taking people’s homes off them when they become old and infirm and most in need of a bit of tenderness. Pulling the plug on the Health Improvement Commission to save a million quid a year will be child’s play in comparison.

Don’t fancy that? Well, £700,000 on Youth Service administration would be a saving, or £600,000 on the quango that’s the Guernsey Employment Trust could certainly go, eh? All in all, there’s £40m. a year spiffed on more than 40 various grants and subsidies. End those and that’s the financial black hole plugged and you’d be a hero.

True, that means ending bursaries for nurses and asking the Lt-Governor to work for free and pay his own staff but needs must and, anyway, you’re a States member now. So ending the £12 grant to see a GP or making those grasping pensioners pay for their prescriptions and bus fares is what you signed up for.

At least you left the £5m. a year for overseas aid alone, which, at £110 per taxpayer, is their money very well spent, as the fair-spoken folk on GPHYS will be the first to tell you.

The other thing you’ve agreed to do, since previous colleagues have lamentably failed to do so despite repeated promises, is resolve the island’s demographic time bomb. That, in all sorts of interesting ways, is exploding slowly while gathering pace just at the same time as you also need to resolve the island’s public finances, build god knows how many new homes each year but without using Leale’s Yard, tame the public sector, encourage economic growth and repair the botched ferry services.

To that you’d better add Aurigny, which has just cost us another £10m. and continues to trash the island’s reputation as a destination. On the plus side, you can probably continue to blame black swans and dodgy foreign charters for the airline’s mess. It’s worked for Peter Roffey long enough.

As you’ll quickly see when you glance at the States of Guernsey’s collective in-tray, nothing you said in your manifesto will prepare you for any of this. Quite the reverse if you, for instance, promised no more tax rises. But there are those around who can offer advice on how to wriggle out of that one as well.

In short, it’s only when you’re ‘in the States’ that the Mission Impossible nature of the task you’ve so willingly embraced becomes clear. That’s especially the case if you’re one of the conscientious ones who takes being a deputy seriously. As indeed you should because the lives, prosperity and happiness of many thousands of islanders depend on what you do – or don’t do. So no pressure there then.

And since you ask, no, there’s very little help available to enable you to hit the ground running. But that’s deliberate, too, since having deputies who knew what they were doing would be deeply troubling for the civil servants who actually run the show, especially in Education. Yes, you get the blame if they get it wrong, but you signed up for that too.

So, welcome to the new role, safe in the knowledge that there are around 45,000 people who could do your job better but couldn’t be arsed to stand. They will, of course, be the first to offer words of, ah, encouragement and practical advice over the next four years.

That alone is one reason to avoid being seen in public, even at Coco.

*A popular Town cafe. Other establishments are available.

**Google Translate’s Fijian for hello caller, I’m just putting you on hold…’