“Last week in the States did not surprise. It followed a predictable path with a predictable outcome. Hours and hours of debate with little discernible progress and an incomplete agenda that will need to be finished in January”
That was how I opened my commentary from December’s meeting. Replace ‘January’ with ‘February’ and the statement holds true for last week’s meeting too.
A raft of business from December will now be rolled another month.
Fortunately, despite being told there is an avalanche of business heading our way ahead of the six remaining States’ meetings, the next meeting’s business remains relatively light so may provide an opportunity to catch-up.
The routine committee statements which began the meeting from Scrutiny Management and Economic Development were the last to be delivered during this States’ term. This provided an opportunity for the committees to undertake a valedictory tour of their work over the last four years.
Deputy Gollop’s questions to Environment & Infrastructure on the plight of crustaceans being predated on my octopuses, provided a moment of levity when, in all seriousness, he asked if it would be possible to address the problem by moving some of the species.
The meeting resumed debate on the Kazantseva-Miller Requete to introduce a Committee for Housing. The rearguard attempt by Environment & Infrastructure and Employment & Social Security to see off the challenge to strip housing from their respective mandates by introducing a Commission instead, was narrowly defeated. Those external to the States might reasonably have questioned whether the difference between a committee and a commission is more than being a different noun. The Committee will be a formal structure within the States, with a mandate, staff, and a budget. The Commission would have brought together all those with an interest in housing into one room. The real question for the States was whether either will actually increase the number of houses being built. The simple but correct answer is neither will, because those houses are actually built by developers, not a group of people talking in a room, under whatever organisational structure they are meeting.
This debate was the latest repetition of a recurring theme for the States. When it fails to deliver (either adequately or at all,) the demands become more strident that, ‘something must be done.’ The response is often to call for another re-organisation under the misunderstanding that it is somehow just the current organisation – whatever it happens to be – that is impeding progress. That’s why the States was reformed in 2004 and again in 2016, with the number of committees being reduced on both occasions. Despite the apparently contradictory calls for ‘smaller government,’ we are now headed the other way with a new committee as a solution to the current problem. This was evidenced by a number of speakers saying they would vote for a new committee in the ‘hope’ that it would make a difference. Hope alone will not of course make a jot of difference to the number of units built (or not) each year. Policies might make a difference but in two days of debate, policy options and levers did not feature at all. So, we are left with hope and a new committee.
The third day was taken up entirely with another entirely internal debate about the States’ own rules of procedure. Most memorably this included, without any irony, a multi-hour debate on whether to impose a limit on the length of speeches. This was followed by consideration of: whether deputies should speak or merely stand when they wish another member to give way during a speech; how long an interjection can be – two minutes, if you were wondering; how to remove a Vice President; and whether there should be 15 minute ‘comfort breaks’ (specifically, not toilet breaks apparently) in the morning and afternoon of States’ meetings. There was much talk of the need simply for more ‘discipline’ in debate but instead the dissonant response was to impose a greater number of more complex rules. With 14 amendments lodged on such subjects and only eight dealt with, there is at least another half-day’s debate to finish this item at the beginning of the next meeting.
Three entire days of debate and not a single policy was discussed, or any legislation approved. The economy is stagnating, the States is struggling to deliver improved educational and health outcomes with too few resources and the community is straining under rising inflation, a lack of affordable housing and deteriorating off island connectivity.
Meanwhile, the Assembly interminably (it seems) discussing its own rules of procedure is an embarrassing collective tone deafness that is not lost on those few who listen in.