Some support for numbers but others question requete

Although Mark Helyar has previously indicated he would favour scrapping the island’s committee system of government, he looks set to lead a requete focused solely on cutting the size of the Assembly from 40 members to 30, by removing 10 deputies’ seats.

Several States members told the Guernsey Press yesterday that they might consider backing a reduction in the size of the Assembly if it was done alongside other changes.

‘Logically, it is possible to reduce the number of deputies, and I think we could bring the numbers down by five,’ said Policy & Resources vice-president Heidi Soulsby.

‘I would combine that with reducing the size of committees from five members to three, which is something I put forward in a requete last term.’

Simon Fairclough was happy ‘in principle’ to support a move for fewer deputies but not in isolation of other reforms which he considered at least as important.

‘It is unclear whether Deputy Helyar’s requete will also seek, for example, to make changes to the structure of the civil service and current committee system. It would be nonsensical to consider one without the other,’ said Deputy Fairclough.

He had not been approached by anyone behind the requete, which is understood to have the backing of at least 11 States members already.

A sub-committee set up earlier this term to review the machinery of government recently shelved draft proposals which it did not believe it could get through the Assembly before the end of its term in June next year.

Jonathan Le Tocq, a member of that former sub-committee, said the number of States members was not the most important issue.

‘The sub-committee was going to make recommendations to reduce numbers by five, but it was not our primary focus, which was more a reconstruction of the committees,’ said Deputy Le Tocq.

‘In this Assembly, we have had deputies not sitting on committees, so it shows that with a reduction of five members the committees would still function, but it would not save a huge amount of money.’

The most-recent adjustment to deputies’ remuneration, in May this year, pushed up basic pay to between £46,000 and £81,000 a year, depending on a deputy’s level of responsibility. Most receive towards the lower end of this range.

Both Deputies Fairclough and Le Tocq suggested that any reduction in the number of deputies should also lead to questions about whether Alderney, with a population about 1/30th the size of Guernsey’s, should retain two seats in the Assembly or be cut to one.

Writing in the Guernsey Press today, Deputy Peter Roffey said that Alderney now enjoyed ‘very significant over-representation’ in the Assembly.

His concern that democracy in Guernsey could be weakened by reducing the number of States members by as many as 10 was also shared by some other deputies.

‘My concerns in such a reduction would include ending up with too much power in too few hands, an inevitable reduction in scrutiny and simply not having enough members to populate committees,’ said Deputy Fairclough.

Despite favouring a smaller Assembly, Deputy Soulsby accepted that it would not guarantee one of higher calibre. She felt this was a particular problem under island-wide voting.

‘I think that’s why cutting numbers by 10 or more could be problematical until we change it, which I hope we do at some point,’ she said.

But David De Lisle would not back Deputy Helyar’s proposed reduction in numbers under any circumstances.

‘Democracy demands as broad a representation as possible and this would reduce numbers by a quarter,’ said Deputy De Lisle.

‘Already the system has been rationalised from 50 deputies to 38 and the number of committees have dropped from 50-odd to six or seven. That has put too much work on too few and it needs to broaden out.’