States lacks guts to lead on population, says estate agent

Monday 24th January 2011, 2:29PM GMT.

St Peter Port High Street. THE States has been accused of lacking ‘the stomach to lead from the front’ on population issues.

Lovell & Partners director Chris Lovell said the recently released report from the Population Policy Group offered no answers and he questioned whether such a wide-ranging consultation was the right way to decide policy.

‘Should you go out so wide that you end up with 61,500 different views?’ he said. ‘Or is it better to have 12 good men and true who will come up with the policy?

‘I don’t know. But this is the decision, whether we like it or not, our government has taken – they do not have the stomach to lead from the front, they would rather go out to consult with everyone in the island.’

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1
Dani

January 24, 2011 at 2:44 pm

I personally would have been really angry should the states of should just changed the whole system without taking into account my views, and that of others. It affects so many lives it would be wrong not to.

Also considering as they are there to serve the public its not too odd for them to ask what we think about major issues.

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2
slep

January 24, 2011 at 3:05 pm

That`s the essence of democracy, innit?

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3
Paul Le Page

January 24, 2011 at 4:34 pm

Chris Lovell is mistaken. The States will not get 61,500 responses, as notwithstanding the fact that many are too young to understand (can’t imagine my 1 year old filling in the form) there will no doubt be the apathy factor.

In my opinion government is a double-edged sword. When I fill in my ballot paper, like Chris Lovell I expect those elected to government to lead and at times make unpopular decisions.

However, when matters of such wide ranging and critical importance are raised – such as the very question of citizenship – the population has a right to have its voice heard before those decisions are made.

After all, surely the essence of an elected assembly is that they represent their electorate?

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4
CD

January 24, 2011 at 5:35 pm

No offence to Chris Lovell but, as an Estate Agent, he clearly has a vested interest in ensuring that whatever population measures are introduced they result in lots of houses being bought and sold (preferably on the open market for lots of money).

All perfectly valid of course, but there are many more important issues to consider – balancing the needs of the local population against those of employers being foremost.

I still cannot see what the States are trying to acheive by tinkering with the current housing system – it may have weaknesses but it has worked reasonably well for decades.

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5
ChrisJ

January 24, 2011 at 5:52 pm

Paul Le Page,

The answer to your question is yes… and no. :-)

The primary duty of a Deputy is to ‘act in the public interest’.

That doesn’t mean they have to do what we tell them to do, because they have to allow for the fact that it may not actually be in our interests for them to do what we are telling them to do. They represent us, yes, but they have to represent our interests first, and our opinions only second.

The States is not required to have its decision directed by the opinions which come out of a consultation, because it shouldn’t allow those opinions to trump the public interest.

In any case there will be all sorts of biases which mean the consultation will not be representative of public opinion anyway. Consider for example a consultation which asks the public whether they have to time to participate in consultations. It should come as no surprise if the result is cast-iron proof that everyone has time to participate in consultations.

What the States is required to do is to ensure, as dispassionately as possible, that the decision it is going to make can be justified in the face of arguments which the consultation unearths. If 999 people respond to say ‘I think X is a good idea’, but one replies with cast-iron justification to say ‘X is not in the public interest because…’ – then the States has to go with the 1, not the 999. Regardless of public support for X, the responsibility for the consequences of carrying it out lies with the States, and if the outcome of the consultation is that the States knew X wasn’t going to work (because someone told them) and they did it anyway, then they can be held to account for the consequences.

It does seem that public consultation is sometimes wrongly used in Guernsey. Too often the decision is a fait accompli, and the consultation is a sham which has been loaded in one way or another to produce the desired result. This is a consequence of people noisily demanding the States bow to the will of the people all the time, because it means the States can then use consultations as a convenient way of dumping responsibily for the decisions they make.

Whether this particular consultation is an example of that I don’t know!

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6
Expat80

January 24, 2011 at 6:23 pm

It’s common sense, as plain as the nose on your face, and yes it takes guts, the only way for Guernsey to even begin solving it’s increasingly problematic population growth is for the States and the People to work as one in placing a CAP on population growth, and I would say that the CAP is needed right now. Otherwise what else can be done? Multi-storey high-rise apartment buildings all over the island? Four-lane highways? Larger maternity wards?

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7
Islander

January 25, 2011 at 3:27 pm

At last.
some have come to conclusion that the states lack the guts to listen.
It’s not so much they haven’t the GUTS, but they are frightened of loosing the perks ,

Oh yes I refer not only to money, that’s by the way affair. but the feeling of using the rod.
I imagine they have read *Mein Kampf”

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