FOR an island seeking to be taken seriously on the international stage, a press briefing held this week highlighted an embarrassment bordering on the humiliating.
The issue was Public Services’ rather plaintive request to be allowed to get on and choose which of eight short-listed tenderers should build the island’s now desperately needed waste-treatment plant after the bids have been evaluated.
The reason is so that its minister can go ahead and sign a contract with confidence, knowing that the States cannot later turn around and have second thoughts, as members did in 2004, leaving contractor Lurgi high and dry at the last moment and Guernsey’s reputation as an employer in tatters.
And, unfortunately, however the request is viewed, it reflects badly on the States’ ability to conduct its affairs.
As the specialist department, it is quite right that Public Services should evaluate the various waste treatment options and that Treasury and Resources should have the final say on costs and the contract details themselves. But should they be empowered to commit the States to a multi-
million pound project with a 25-year lifespan without further reference to the House itself?
Yet arguing that they should not is either to imply that the two departments cannot be trusted to do the jobs to which the deputies themselves elected them or that there is some other obstacle, which will probably be wrapped up as not diminishing the democratic role of the assembly.
The reality, of course, is that some members will not trust Public Services and/or Treasury and Resources without some sort of group sign-off. In addition, if the inclinations of the previous House are any guide, rather more deputies will not wish to forego their right to overturn departmental thinking on whatever whim should they so choose.
All in all, it rather neatly illustrates what the chief minister coyly refers to in the latest Billet d’Etat as the need to manage ‘the political tensions that underlie Guernsey’s consensus form of government’.
In fairness, so too does the scale of the residual waste treatment project itself. The former £80m. incinerator plan was loathed by islanders and overturned only on becoming an election issue, preventing the minister from signing a contract.
To resolve this problem, the States is going to have to start trusting itself.
A matter of States trust
FOR an island seeking to be taken seriously on the international stage, a press briefing held this week highlighted an embarrassment bordering on the humiliating.
The issue was Public Services’ rather plaintive request to be allowed to get on and choose which of eight short-listed tenderers should build the island’s now desperately needed waste-treatment plant after the bids have been evaluated.
The reason is so that its minister can go ahead and sign a contract with confidence, knowing that the States cannot later turn around and have second thoughts, as members did in 2004, leaving contractor Lurgi high and dry at the last moment and Guernsey’s reputation as an employer in tatters.
And, unfortunately, however the request is viewed, it reflects badly on the States’ ability to conduct its affairs.
As the specialist department, it is quite right that Public Services should evaluate the various waste treatment options and that Treasury and Resources should have the final say on costs and the contract details themselves. But should they be empowered to commit the States to a multi-
million pound project with a 25-year lifespan without further reference to the House itself?
Yet arguing that they should not is either to imply that the two departments cannot be trusted to do the jobs to which the deputies themselves elected them or that there is some other obstacle, which will probably be wrapped up as not diminishing the democratic role of the assembly.
The reality, of course, is that some members will not trust Public Services and/or Treasury and Resources without some sort of group sign-off. In addition, if the inclinations of the previous House are any guide, rather more deputies will not wish to forego their right to overturn departmental thinking on whatever whim should they so choose.
All in all, it rather neatly illustrates what the chief minister coyly refers to in the latest Billet d’Etat as the need to manage ‘the political tensions that underlie Guernsey’s consensus form of government’.
In fairness, so too does the scale of the residual waste treatment project itself. The former £80m. incinerator plan was loathed by islanders and overturned only on becoming an election issue, preventing the minister from signing a contract.
To resolve this problem, the States is going to have to start trusting itself.
Article posted on 12th July, 2008 - 9.53am