Efforts by the Scrutiny Management Committee to work with other committees on their policy letters before they go to the States for a vote have been thwarted.
Led by Deputy Andy Sloan, the SMC wrote to all other Principal Committees last year, suggesting that proposals are scrutinised before being finalised, and then put up for debate.
“The response we received, via Policy & Resources, was in effect a polite refusal,” said SMC President, Deputy Sloan.
He had wanted to progress a “practical and proportionate approach to pre-decision scrutiny”, he said.
This would entail working with the committees responsible for the island’s finances, taxes and benefits, health, education, culture, economy, environment, the law, and housing on any proposed work streams before final documents are published ahead of States debates.
Deputy Sloan said he agreed that Policy & Resources “has an important coordination role” but he “was not persuaded that acting as a gatekeeper to that engagement added value”.
He also said it was a “missed opportunity” to ensure policy letters are not rushed and that there is a proper assessment of “costs, risks, and alternative options”.
“The SMC has a right to comment on policy letters, and it is a right we will continue to exercise wherever timescales allow,” said Deputy Sloan. “That right is meaningful only where policy development is sufficiently mature and policy letters are not rushed – I want to say bounced – through at speed. When policy development is rushed, it is usually for a reason — and often at the expense of proper assessment of costs, risks and alternative options.”
Speaking to the States yesterday, giving his first update as SMC President, Deputy Sloan used this week’s debate on the Government Work Plan as a “case in point”.
“It was progressed rapidly and expressly records that scrutiny was excluded from discussions,” he said. “That omission arguably contributed to the surreal situation in which the President of P&R is seconding amendments to their own Committee’s policy letter — a scenario that earlier scrutiny, including assessment of impacts on economic growth and competitiveness, might reasonably have helped to avoid.
“The Government Work Programme remains a candidate for future scrutiny work,” he added.
“Our interest is straightforward: to examine it through a cost-benefit lens, including administrative and opportunity costs, and whether outcomes are proportionate to the scale of effort and resource involved.”