Q&A with departing Assistant Minister

Tuesday 03 November 2015

After a year as an Assistant Minister, Deputy Tracey Vallois has quit her job and returned to the backbenches.

She explained to Bailiwick Express why she had taken the unprecedented decision, and about her experience working with ministers after six years on Scrutiny.

Here’s the transcript of her interview with Bailiwick Express…

What’s going on?

“I’m resigning as Assistant Minister for Treasury and Resources. There is nothing that I can do on the inside compared to what I can do from the outside, and I do not feel like I’ve been trusted. I’ve been promised time and time again to have delegation for specific areas, and it’s never happened."

What was the role that you agreed to take on?

"As I understood it, they wanted me to be part of the public sector reform program – when I spoke to the Chief Minister about taking up the role, he wanted me to be the ‘challenger’, if you like. That’s fair enough – it’s what I’d have done anyway, that’s who I am, I ask questions."

After six years in Scrutiny, what was it like going into the Treasury department as an assistant minister?

“It is very difficult. I’m not part of the team. Actually working inside the ministerial circle is a bit hit and miss. To a certain extent, it’s dysfunctional. You hear them talk about productivity all of the time, but they don’t actually do it themselves. And for me, I’m a very organised individual, so that’s a huge frustration, seeing people who are running the Island and how disorganised they are. From my point of view, it does not seem as joined-up as it should be – as much as they like to say it is. And that’s from the inside.”

Does that mean that they’re not tackling the issues?

“You cannot get anything done unless you work as a team. It is too big to handle on your own. As you get to the nitty-gritty stuff, there are huge things that need to be changed. It is not necessarily taking things away from people, but improving programmes and making things flexible and sustainable for the long term and as you go through all of this stuff it starts to feel more like you are dealing with it around the edges, not the fundamentals. It’s the fundamentals that are the real problem.”

What’s stopping that progress?

"When it comes to delivery, it’s politicians handing the confidence to senior management teams to deliver the political decisions. There are grey areas between operational and policy/strategy. We have some fantastic individuals in the States that I believe could carry out this delivery,  but there are also individuals that like to hamper the progress and do not like risk and some of those people are higher up the ladder and therefore they stop things from changing. So my confidence at this point… at the beginning it was much higher."

But what does that mean in terms of the big challenges – the States have to fill a £145 million black hole, if they’re struggling now, how is that going to work?

"It’s more likely that we’ll see more charges or the growth required for areas like Education and Health will have to be withheld.  There is an absolute recognition that the deficit and growth funding needs to be tackled. But I am not convinced that the urgency is there. I’m not sure that there is the willingness to take the kinds of risks that need to be taken across the board.  In terms of progress, I do not think that it’s where it should be, given the stage that we are at. If you were to ask the Chief Minister ‘at the end of this political term what do you want the public sector to look like?’ there’s no clear answer."

Is there a clear voice coming from the rest of the Council of Ministers?

“Where you would expect there to be some form of proper debate and discussion about policies, or things that are coming forward. For me, there’s not enough challenge from all of the people around the Council of Ministers table. There’s no vigorous debate, you just get the odd person that pipes up. And these are life-changing decisions that are being made.”

What’s missing?

“Leadership. Strong leadership. For the type of change that has got to happen – and it really does have to happen – the public sector needs to change with the times and we need to modernise and we need to have a customer service focus. But in order to do that, we need strong leadership and I do not have the confidence that we’ve got that. It’s not all about talk – it’s also about action.”

Do you think the public would be surprised to hear all of that?

"The public are not stupid. They know what’s happening. The public are more informed now than they have ever been. And it doesn’t matter how much you try to make things look pretty – there are big problems. There are legacy issues that we have to grapple with, but the way that the Council of Ministers engages with the public does not do anyone any favours. They have the odd meeting every three months – fair play. But they send out these huge, thick consultation documents and expect people who have jobs to do to read them, digest them and reply with a sensible response. The Council of Ministers is never going to please everyone all of the time anyway, that is politics. But the States Assembly feels this way – it feels like the ministers impose things and they are expected to approve it, but I think that Members would like to be engaged and understand the options before it comes to the final decision."