Apologies to those of you with a sensitive disposition, but I’m beginning this week by quoting Nigel Farage, he who insists that Britain needs Reform. Why? ‘Every problem we face comes from the same root: weak, failed… leadership,’ he says. Well, that’s a bingo since even his political opponents agree with him.
Obvious to highlight, but successful governments are the ones that Get Things Done. It helps if they’re the right things, obvs, but doing stuff – ooh, I dunno, building social housing or growing the economy perhaps? – is what saves them from being called ‘worst ever…’.
And Guernsey, demonstrably, does not get things done. I use that D word deliberately because I was accused over the weekend of being relentlessly negative about our beloved leaders and the States generally. Hurtful, but we rise above such things.
And anyway, the evidence is on my side. Not just the MyGov/IT-£42m.-wasted fiasco or the botched hospital modernisation project (cost unknown and ongoing). Or even Alderney’s spectacularly mishandled runway refurbishment that’s seen the price rise from £12m. in 2019 to £24m. – before the job even begins in 2028.
That’s a display of ineptitude, incidentally, that caused no less an authority (and Alderney resident) than the former chief of the Chartered Institute of Building, Chris Blythe OBE, to accuse successive P&Rs since 2019 of ‘being guilty of political incontinence’.
Anyway, I’m setting the zero-delivery burden of proof against myself higher still – tested against government’s track record on its own strategic objectives. And I’m doing so for a curious reason. To show it’s not strictly all government’s fault. Tricky to argue, I agree, but bear with me on this.
When the Harwood Panel (remember that?) was commissioned in 1998, it was because there was near total agreement the then committee-based system of government wasn’t fit for purpose. Two years of work, 81 oral witnesses, 122 written submissions, visits to Alderney, comparison with Jersey (which was running its own parallel review) and the Isle of Man, plus advice from Professor Stewart of Birmingham University, all identified the same problem that was highlighted as far back as 1945 – no identifiable government because it was diffused between more than 30 active committees that were all largely autonomous. Not joined up at all.
Specifically, the complaints against the structure were: no identifiable political leader able to speak externally for Guernsey; no ownership of strategic policy; poor coordination and cohesion; political reluctance to engage in strategic policy-making; a desire by politicians to get involved in administrative detail that should belong to the civil service; and a system that was structurally biased toward maintaining the status quo.
Peter Harwood’s panel offered solutions to this. Predictably, the States of the day fudged things. Rather than adopting a genuine ministerial/cabinet system with an appointed executive bound by collective responsibility, the Assembly cobbled together the 2004 ‘reforms’ that produced pretend ministers and a system that was so bad it had to be changed again in 2016. But, in reality, that second stab at it merely rearranged the deckchairs while scrapping the title ‘minister’.
Despite this fiddling, all the core deficiencies of the machinery of government remained – no effective, accountable political leadership. Part of that second review demanded Policy & Resources (which replaced the previous Policy Council) prepare a Future Guernsey Plan to put some strategic backbone into getting stuff done.
That process and its name has changed over the years but, surprise surprise, the issues it was commissioned to deal with haven’t. The key themes were, and remain, fiscal sustainability, housing supply and affordability, cost, quality and affordability of healthcare, public sector transformation, population and economic growth, and environment/energy.
Trawl through endless priorities and reports – and even the latest ‘super priorities’ of the government work plan – and a common theme emerges. Identification of problems has consistently outpaced resolving them and ‘action plans’ get renamed more often than they achieve any objectives.
As has been well documented, the MyGov and hospital modernisation projects have hit serious cost, governance and timeline failures, which brings you to a further conclusion. Delivery, actually getting things done, isn’t especially confined to political indecision over money (say tax reform or housing) but extends into programme and contract/project management capability within the civil service itself.
So we have a so-called senior committee in P&R but it has no real authority over political colleagues or other committee presidents and can be turfed out any time 21 or so other deputies think it’s getting too big for its boots. Hurrah, you might say. No dictators here thank you very much.
But the downside to that is strategic plans failing because there’s no single body empowered to hold committees, contractors or itself accountable for delivery. No one saying, why hasn’t this been done? Let me give a simple example. Health and the Medical Specialist Group are not hitting the contractual obligations agreed to ensure your welfare.
Result? Health is simply going to stop reporting those embarrassing failures. And ‘chief minister’ Lindsay de Sausmarez can’t summon Deputy Dr Oswald to her office to say, ‘Sorry, George, time’s up. That’s the last straw after the modernisation malarkey so I’m replacing you.’
Despite tinkering, the government system hides poor performance (States school achievement being a particularly good example of that) and deflects blame, responsibility or ownership of outcomes. Which is why nothing gets done and the structural bias toward the status quo identified 26 years ago by the Harwood Panel is not only alive and well but positively thriving.
Why this matters so much is because anything a committee wants to do has to be strategically aligned with the government work plan. Yes, success is being benchmarked against something that’s never really delivered and arguably can’t and never will.
In fairness, I should say that the energy policy with a net-zero target by 2050 and an interim 57% reduction (on 1990 levels) by 2030 has been implemented and is on track. However, without being too negative, that’s thanks largely to the sub-sea cable link with France, which pre-dated the 2004 government reforms or action plans.
Now, here’s the rub. A quarter of a century after identifying the problems inherent with the machinery of government and despite half-hearted bodges to it, we’re still faced with the same issue that confronted the Harwood Panel.
That’s either commit fully to an accountable executive model (a chief minister who can appoint and dismiss a cabinet bound by collective responsibility, checked by a genuinely independent, properly-resourced scrutiny function) or accept the existing committee-and-consensus model and stop expecting it to produce a cabinet-style action-this-day performance it was never designed to deliver.
Black and white. Either, or. There is no half-way house. No good old Guernsey compromise. The visible, demonstrable evidence since 2004 has proved that. So, stick with the current shambles or be bold and adopt a system that can get things done?
It’s a simple, binary decision.
To the anti-executive government lobby I’d say the need for a decision is pretty pressing. There’s already a significant cost-of-living crisis combined with and exacerbated by the housing crisis and people are looking to government to do something about that. Deputies cannot continue to let them down.
At the same time our current system, where ‘government’ is ultimately 40 people individually unaccountable for pretty much anything, will always reliably provide the appearance of, if not actual, failure. Remember, we’ve been debating, but not resolving, the States’ funding gap for 20 years!
Think about that for a bit and you can see how ludicrous the system has become. Much of the criticism the States receives – including from me – is over what it hasn’t done but which clearly needs to be done.
So forget the plans, visions and strategies that haven’t delivered or a system that keeps it that way. We, the taxpayers and electors, can cut through all this nonsense by asking each deputy and committee president one, simple question.
What have you done and what are you doing measurably and meaningfully to improve the quality of life for islanders?
That should focus minds and actions.
