ONE of the most significant items in this month’s Billet d’Etat is also, on the face of it, the dullest: legislation awaiting Royal sanction. Yet the underlying issue – the UK Government stepping in to restrain Guernsey’s law-making powers – is of the utmost significance.

Put simply, and to paraphrase leading local historian J. H. Le Patourel, islanders’ liberties hinge on being judged by their own laws. Being able to make that legislation is the bedrock of the Bailiwick’s independence.

So the UK seeking to limit that freedom is worrying. More disturbing, however, is the Ministry of Justice’s intervention having been triggered by Guernsey’s own legal advisers drafting legislation that would, if ratified by the UK, have given the States power to circumvent the Privy Council’s role to ensure the island’s good governance.

The technical device used to do that has been adopted before, but subtly. Recently, St James’s Chambers has pushed too hard and got its knuckles rapped – to the detriment of the States as a whole.

It is one reason why HM Procurer had to write to the MoJ assuring the Lord Chancellor that there was no intention to change the constitutional relationship with the UK. The stakes, in other words, are very high.

Which raises the question of on whose authority the Law Officers attempted such a potentially fraught strategy. The Policy Council says that St James’s Chambers would always seek the relevant States departments’ approval, but it is difficult to accept that explanation.

To do so is to embrace the following scenario:

‘Minister, I suggest inserting a Henry VIII clause so we never have to go back to the UK even if we subsequently make the law viciously draconian.’

Minister: ‘Can we do that?’

Law Officers: ‘If no one notices.’

Minister: ‘What if they do?’

Law Officers: ‘Critical legislation gets blocked, St James’s Chambers is humiliated, the States has eggs on its face and we run around like headless chickens patching things up and pretending the MoJ has imposed “new principles” on our freedom to pass laws.’

Minister: ‘Excellent. Let’s do it.’

The question has to be asked again – who really was responsible for letting this embarrassment occur?