Polly Allen: What I mean by ‘executive government’

Having been corrected by Deputy Peter Roffey about my reference to ‘executive government’, in this article I shall be more precise and refer to ‘cabinet government’ and hope that I can avoid another correction.

In his recent article in the Press, Deputy Roffey said that he preferred to keep the consensus-style government that we have at the moment, but have fewer deputies. I can see where he is coming from and in fact that was where I started when I began to think about how our government had become so unworkable over the last 15 years. Three reasons came to mind:

1. no power base;

2. too many individuals not working together;

3. no learning path for new members.

1. You could have thought that the lack of power base had been dealt with when it was decided to elect a chief minister, except that the States members could not quite bring themselves to trust any one of them to have any power more than the rest. So the chief minister has no more power than the rest of the deputies. Not only that but they could not bring themselves to give ‘the senior committee’ any such powers either. So the whole system relied upon people being able to work together and realise when compromise was needed. Sounds good, but in effect it has left the system toothless.

2. It was also decided that maybe 57 deputies were too many for just about 60,000 people, and so the number was reduced to 38 deputies from Guernsey (and two representatives from Alderney). Deputy Roffey suggests he could live with 35. I thought a better number of deputies was more like 25, because the more there are, the less likely it would be to get a majority to agree.

3. As for the lack of mentors, I once heard Deputy Heidi Soulsby bemoaning the fact that there were no mentors to help the new members. Heaven forbid that I should refer to the past, but we used to have that format when we had the conseillers as the elder statesmen. They would take the newbies under their wing and teach them the ways of the Force. When the more socialist-leaning members voted the conseillers out, thereby arranging for all deputies to be equal, they effectively swept away all the knowledge and experience gathered over many years and opened up a system without mentors to guide the newbies and teach them what qualities are needed to be part of an effective government.

About the same time, Jersey did away with its senators, but they seem to have realised the error of their ways. Maybe we should too. Perhaps we can do this by introducing a cabinet-style government where the members of the cabinet become the elder statesmen. If not, the backbenchers should have more time to spend mentoring the newbies.

Again, rather than change the system, Deputy Roffey says we should think more carefully about the people that we elect to the States. He is not alone in voicing that thought, which was also recently covered by Richard Digard in one of his excellent articles, and several other people in various letters to the Press. I don’t wish to be rude, but is that not a matter of stating the obvious? We should always choose our deputies very carefully, but we do need to know what qualities we are looking for in the candidates’ manifestos. (Spoiler alert: More about how to go about choosing who to vote for in my next article.)

Would you be happy just to reduce the number of deputies to 25 and leave the system as a ‘consensus government’ as it is now? That would at least help out with the island’s finances because we could save about £750,000 in salaries.

However, that still doesn’t solve the matter of lack of teeth as all deputies would still be equal and could all wallow on in indecision for another four years until we are bankrupt.

In my opinion we still need to have a chief minister with a cabinet of his choice of, say, seven deputies, as ministers, who would take responsibility for specific areas of government. The chief minister would direct the ministers in their work, to bring into effect the policies that have been agreed between them. The ministers would be responsible to the chief minister for their actions, and if they fail to meet the high standards required, could be fired from the cabinet.

That leaves 17 deputies, who would include the newbies, all or any of whom could be co-opted to work alongside the ministers as required, but whose main job would be to monitor the workings of the whole government to provide a first line of scrutiny and accountability. These ‘backbenchers’ could work alongside the cabinet by bringing separate applications before the Assembly for any matter to be considered, and if a sufficient number of deputies agree with its inclusion it could be debated by the whole Assembly.

Alternatively, if sufficient deputies were of the opinion that the chief minister and/or his cabinet are not acting in the best interests of the island, then the Assembly could bring a vote of no confidence, as happened recently when the chief minister and Policy & Resources were removed.

But, I hear you say, what if the chief minister chosen by the Assembly was not one of your favourites? And what if you didn’t agree with which deputies had been made ministers?

Well, I am afraid that that is what is called democracy. If you have done your best and registered to vote and have vetted the candidates that are standing, that is the best that you can do. You will just have to trust those elected and now in power on the basis that other people did vote for them and they must have had a good reason.

The alternative to democracy is authoritarian government as in Russia and China, and I am assuming that you don’t want that. Be thankful that we have seen what is happening in America at the moment and make sure that you do your best to choose the best people possible for Guernsey who we are going to form our government for the next four years.

I will give you some pointers as to what questions I think you should be asking the candidates in a future article.

Vote for change.