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Jersey's Chief Minister has described the damning report on the Innovation Fund as "shocking", adding he feels "angry" and "let-down" by the civil servants in charge.
Speaking this morning, Senator Ian Gorst also launched a staunch defence of his Assistant Chief Minister Senator Philip Ozouf who proposed the Fund in the first place, and has been directly responsible for it since 2015.
Senator Gorst said the only positive in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report were the actions of Senator Ozouf since he took over the Fund - it's emerged no loans have actually been made since at least the beginning of 2016, and the Board has been "stepped down" - so the Fund has effectively been suspended for many months now.
The Chief Minister was clear that the main fault lay with the civil servants who managed the Fund - he referred to the resignation last week of the former Chief Officer of the Economic Development Department, Mike King, who was the 'accounting officer' for the fund until last November, and who was heavily criticised in the Comptroller's report.
Speaking on BBC Jersey this morning, Senator Gorst said: "I feel like I have been let down, as have others been let down, and it's unacceptable. There have been severe failures in governance, management and administration and it's unacceptable."
Senator Gorst also revealed that the States' senior civil servant, John Richardson, was now reviewing what he described as other "similar" States arrangements, to make sure the failures in governance weren't repeated anywhere else, an investigation was beginning to see if there are disciplinary issues within the States to deal with, and he proposed another "independent" review to find out if any political failures contributed to the total break-down of the Innovation Fund.
The Comptroller's report is also critical of the way the Advisory Board, which was made up of representatives of the private sector and the civil service, was run, noting:
members of the Board on more than one occasion asserted that they did not have the time or expertise to undertake the key task of monitoring loans advanced from the Fund despite the duty in the Operational Terms of Reference for the Board to report to the Minister on the progress of loans made;
on a number of occasions, the minutes show that private sector members recognised and declared direct financial interests in borrowers that were the subject of discussion by the Board but nevertheless participated in deliberations. Such an interest should, in accordance with normal standards adopted in the public sector (which are based on the Nolan principles), have meant that they did not take part in such deliberations. In my view officers should have provided a clear written framework for the management of such interests when the Board commenced its work.
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