AFTER more than two years, Guernsey’s first major report on the possible implementation of island-wide voting has been published by what is now the States Assembly and Constitution Committee. And if it achieves one thing, it is to ask: why bother?

Although the obstacles to islanders electing all their deputies in one go are not insurmountable, they do present what the Electoral Reform Society calls significant practical difficulties.

Admittedly, they could be resolved at a stroke – either by introducing political parties or by slashing the present House from 47 to just 20 members. While party politics has never found favour here, reducing the number of deputies might be popular with voters.

It will not, however, appeal to the States members actually taking the decisions, especially those whose own vote was marginal, even though it would save the taxpayer in the order of £750,000.

But what the report does not do is to consider what members and electors are hoping to achieve through island-wide voting.

The strongest recommendation from the Electoral Reform Society is to retain the current districts and make electors’ ballots more effective by adopting a single transferable vote system, which has a lot to recommend it.

More fundamentally, however, the report – it is now the fifth to do so – poses questions about whether the current system of government is fit for purpose. It is less obvious than some earlier consultants’ work but there are many deficiencies in having such a comparatively large Assembly that attempts to govern on the basis of, ‘if it’s OK with everyone else…’

It was the central point addressed by the Harwood Report and ignored by then members largely on the narrow grounds of self-interest, but it will not go away.

Indeed, the amount of time and money the States spends commissioning reports on various issues which all conclude that the current system is fundamentally flawed only to ignore the advice has become embarrassing.

The time has now come either for the States to accept what it has or else tackle the issues in the round – and be prepared to listen to what its own experts are saying: give islanders a government capable of leadership.