ON MONDAY local businessman Philip Duquemin wrote a detailed analysis of the areas where government could improve its performance and therefore its service and value to the island.

In doing so, he touched on one of its most criticised characteristics: protracted States meetings dragged out by repetitious speeches and hamstrung by a collegiate process trying to achieve consensus in a sea of conflicting ideas and beliefs.

What the comments helped to highlight is that there is an almost total absence of accountability within the government process – and that it cuts two ways.

Departments, ministers, or individual States members… all have to be dragged to the point of resigning because there is no tradition here of anyone carrying the can for mistakes, misjudgments or getting things wrong.

Equally, and arguably more importantly, there is no accountability in the Assembly as a whole when members decide to indulge in a spot of yo-yo government because the affected department simply shrugs its shoulders and wastes more time and money because of a knee-jerk policy reversal.

But how much different things could be if, say, Education had come forward with the recommendation demanded by its own research and the economic climate that two schools had to close and that its members would resign if the States voted against?

How much more quickly would the incinerator debate have been dealt with if members knew that a Public Services Department defeat would mean mass resignations and the States having to start from scratch with a new political board?

In the absence of such sanctions, deputies have power without responsibility and no accountability for launching opportunistic attacks on a policy that may have taken years to produce.

The reverse is also true. Treasury and Resources should have resigned when its capital prioritisation/commercial borrowing plans were undone. Not to teach members a lesson but because it was the price to pay for so badly misjudging members’ and islanders’ wishes in a critical area.

Unfortunately, the desire to do what’s right or necessary for the good of the island takes second place to holding onto the influence of remaining on a department.

That, surely, has to change.