Peter Roffey: ‘Of course parliamentary vacancies should be filled’

Should there be a by-election to replace Jonathan Le Tocq? Could the number of States members be modestly reduced? Two excellent questions. But totally separate ones. Just because someone believes, as I do, that the States could be slightly smaller, doesn’t mean they support cancelling the by-election.

However big or small a parliament is, casual vacancies should always be filled. The UK has 650 MPs but would never consider not filling a vacant seat. I know it’s slightly different over there because a vacancy would leave a particular constituency unrepresented. I concede that isn’t true under island-wide voting, but the principle of not leaving parliamentary seats empty is pretty much a universal one around the world. I don’t think Guernsey should depart from it.

The only exception should be for a vacancy which arises in the very tail end of a States term.

Why is the need for a by-election even being questioned? It never has been in the past when the States has lost a member through death or resignation. The answer of course is the high cost of holding one under our new-fangled electoral system.

I have two answers to that. Firstly, that if a territory’s electoral system doesn’t allow it to hold a cost effective by-election then they have the wrong electoral system. Secondly, I could never see why a by-election was estimated to cost £200,000, even under IWV. Thank goodness that Sacc has now had a reality check.

A contest between five or six people to fill a single seat is utterly different to one where about 100 hopefuls are battling it out for 38 places. So the States doesn’t need to spoon-feed candidates with expensive ways to get their ideas and policies across to the electorate. A series of traditional hustings meeting would fill that bill.

Nor do I think such an election would require the same number of polling stations as a general election. Frankly four or five thoughtfully distributed around the island should suffice.

Before leaving by-elections and going on to the totally separate issue of how big our States should be, I would make one further observation. The fortunes of particular candidates are likely to be very different under a by-election and a general election.

Imagine two candidates.

The first is a character who is very much Marmite. Twenty-five per cent of islanders think he is the best thing since sliced bread, but the other three-quarters wouldn’t want him anywhere near Guernsey’s government.

The second candidate is a far blander individual. Most people like her, and think she might have something to offer, but almost nobody thinks she will set the world alight.

In a general election Mr Marmite is likely to struggle because he will be excluded from the voting lists of 75% of electors, who can instead fill all of the places with people they far prefer. But in a single vote by-election the picture is different.

If there are, say, six candidates for one seat, and all of Mr Marmite’s supporters vote for him, and the single votes of those who think he is an idiot are roughly equally distributed among the other candidates, he might well get in.

By contrast Mrs Bland may well do quite well in a general election where lots of people include her as ‘padding’ on their list of 38 – despite not thinking she is an outstanding candidate. But in a single vote poll she might be very few people’s first choice.

(By the way, my choice of gender for these two mythical candidates was random. It could equally have been reversed.)

Moving on to whether it would be possible, or wise, to shrink the States. Personally I think that wouldn’t be a problem. Not by too much or else factions would become too powerful. But would it really be an issue if we had 35 States members instead of 40? Probably 34 deputies and one Alderney Representative – with an alternate AR for when the main one couldn’t make a meeting. In my view that would be no problem at all.

I didn’t support a requete seeking to slash the number of States members during the last term for two reasons. Firstly, it went too far. Secondly, any such move should come off the back of a properly researched policy letter, which carefully considers the practical impact on how our government works.

For instance could 35 members fill all of the required committee seats? We need five for Policy & Resources alone and they are barred from also serving on principal committees. The last States increased the number of principal committees from six to seven which equals another 35 seats reserved for States members. Then there is the STSB and Sacc, and the DPA and the Scrutiny Management Committee. So around about 60 committee seats to be filled.

Obviously 35 members could fill all of those seats but there are good ways and bad ways of doing this.

For example, it would be a disaster if our new slim line States decided to also shrink the size of its committees. Some have suggested only having three States members on each but that would be a very bad idea indeed.

Firstly, it would only take one weak member, or a chum of the president, for the president to always get their way with very little challenge. But the whole idea of our committee system is that decision and policies are properly scrutinised within the proposing committee first to test them out. Without any diversity of membership, or thought, this would stop happening.

Secondly, it would inevitably be a stepping stone to full ministerial government. In fact it would already look as if there was no longer a departmental committee but instead a minister and two deputy minsters.

By far the better way for a smaller States to populate all of the required positions would for it to be the default position for each member to serve on at least two committees. Far from being a problem this would be very healthy indeed as it would stop members viewing politics through the lens of the single department they serve on.

I look forward to hearing from Sacc on this matter later in the political term. In the meantime, of course parliamentary vacancies should be filled.