Do you think the view is the States is unable to manage change, therefore can only continue on the current trajectory (of constantly higher spending and taxation)? I was asked by an accountant and wealth manager the other day. It’s a big question to answer.
Too many States members and their advisers believe the only function Policy & Resources/Treasury has is to fund their spending ambitions. Savings are for others to make. We’ll see this when the Budget is debated and deputies vote to increase expenditure and set the island on track for GST rising above 5% in a few short years’ time.
Equally, government has been revealed as being spectacularly incapable of managing major projects including – crucially – working harmoniously alongside the private sector on joint projects. So handling the processes required to reduce the size of the States and seriously reduce costs are currently equally out of reach. Even if we wanted to.
Not many would argue now, I think, that the structure of government works particularly well or produces the results islanders want or need at an affordable price. This has been the case for years but the cumulative consequences have made that conclusion inescapable.
But if it’s that obvious, why hasn’t anyone changed it? Which brings us back to the opening question – perhaps we really are incapable of sorting out the problems that are so readily identifiable.
After all, the Harwood reforms of 2004 and the reform of those reforms that followed in 2016 haven’t improved things. Then States CEO Paul Whitfield’s 10-year organisational change and transformation project introduced major changes to the leadership structure in 2018 which, as far as we can judge, are being reversed by new civil service head Boley Smillie.
Where, you might ask, were the deputies in all this?
Perhaps we should ask Charlie Parker. He, you will remember, was the man recruited to transform Jersey’s public sector, did a brilliant job in identifying the issues – ‘I don’t think that staff fully understand the size of the impact of government on the island’s economy… they don’t often realise how damaging the defence of vested interests, and/or self-interest by public servants, can be to our economy’ – brought in his own hand-picked team of axemen to implement those changes. And ended up being squeezed out.
My reading is that he pushed too hard and too fast, lost political support and was ultimately a victim of the vested- and self-interests he had so accurately identified within the service he was trying to change, Jersey’s ministerial government notwithstanding. His ill-advised (arrogant?) second job ‘side hustle’ was merely the excuse.
If you subscribe to Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy, that officials inevitably shift focus from their original mission to their own survival and growth, there’s plenty of evidence in these islands of what you might call institutional drift. Which is why, I suppose, we ended up with a Sir Humphrey in charge of something here called Place Policy.
Mark Helyar’s revealing interview with Matt Fallaize, featured over two pages here last week, happily reinforced many of the points I’ve made over the period about the deficiencies of the States. And there were two things in particular that resonated.
The first: ‘We have got ourselves into a position where government has become used not to executing anything but just making policy and not putting it into effect.’ The second, where he was asked if committees will vote in the Budget debate for whichever option gave them most money to spend: ‘If you could sign yourself up to a predictive market and bet on it, you should put money on that. You only need to add up the committees with higher spending and you’ve probably got 15 to 20 votes automatically from them, so it’s almost inevitable.’
This is why he says the culture must change and wants to enforce something like £33m.-worth of savings (my calculation) by losing 10% of headcount.
But changing the culture of a public sector bureaucracy is a difficult, slow and risky business and way harder than in the private sector because of deeply entrenched institutional, political, and structural barriers, as we’ve seen before.
Specifically, the States of Guernsey is risk-averse and its IT systems and operations are pretty clapped out and don’t support modern, collaborative, or agile working, as Agilisys found out the hard way.
Then you have the States term itself. Politicians and budgets come and go, civil servants endure. That’s why Home Affairs president Marc Leadbeater didn’t know about a priority so-called insanity law needed to deal with people charged with offences who are unfit to plead. Bull bars, for anyone with a long memory of grinding government processes.
In addition, I’m guessing many States employees have change fatigue, the heard-it-all-before mantra about reform, new ways, doing things differently and and and… Sit tight old chap, it’ll soon blow over. Look what happened to Charlie.
These are general issues of course. As applicable to Keir Starmer (remember him?), agonising over why he couldn’t get anything done despite being prime minister, as to Scotland, where the state is paying around 800 staff £27m. a year for non-existent jobs because it doesn’t believe in compulsory redundancy (taxpayers: but we do…).
However, implementing change in Guernsey is even more difficult because of consensus government. This means power – real power, the ability to enforce change – is decentralised. Hence Deputy Helyar predicting committees will vote for extra cash in the Budget despite the States having voted in favour of restraining expenditure.
We’ve also seen that there are remarkably few consequences for poorly performing officials, even where huge sums of money have been wasted. So why bother when someone higher up the food chain tells you to stop being obstructive and embrace change?
So, to answer the starting question, yes, I do think the prevailing view is the States can’t change and so the spending and taxes will simply rise. In part, that’s because many deputies themselves don’t really want to do things differently.
Serious cost-cutting and restructuring services is hard and unpleasant, particularly when it comes to losing colleagues. It takes skills and abilities many deputies simply don’t have and there is no collective incentive to try, even if their advisers were actively leading the process.
But here’s the dangerous part. The need to do things better, more cost-effectively, isn’t an academic, nice-to-have theoretical exercise, it’s essential to a functioning government. Which, the evidence suggests, in some significant areas of implementation we no longer have.
As Deputy Helyar observed, what should have been one-off costs from Covid have actually become baked in.
And what was in many respects the public sector’s finest hour – operating as a single unit with a relentless focus on keeping islanders safe – was also its high-water mark. All that trust and confidence in government has now ebbed away.
Not only is that unhealthy, my view is it cannot continue. Clearly, any organisation can change. What worries me is what external shock it will take to force that on us and who’s going to lead it.
