On page six of todays Guernsey Press, Guernsey’s director of population policy provides the clearest explanation to date of the complexity and consequences of scrapping the island’s housing control laws.

That legislation has to be replaced some time soon because it is not human rights compliant but without it, all residential property would become open market – available to the highest bidder without restriction.

The challenge the States faces when the control laws are repealed is two-fold: how to continue to protect what is known as the local market while also recreating the open market.

Because that sector is in effect a legal loophole in the current housing laws – the registered properties are exempt from the controls placed on the rest of the island’s housing stock – it will have to be recreated under a different legal framework.

While this might seem an arcane point, it is also an essential one. When politicians say that nothing will happen to the open market under any new population management regime, that is actually incorrect.

At a time when deputies are devising legislation to put more controls on more islanders, they will also have to draft the new law so that it exempts certain individuals or properties.

As the PPG answers to this newspaper make clear, that can be done and, from what has already been stated, there is a willingness that it should be.

The point, however, is that ‘no change’ to the open market is not an automatic process and its continuation will require a number of clear political debates and decisions.

And since the sector emerged by accident, that debate will inevitably provide an opportunity to question its function, benefit and contribution to the island and whether improvements can be made.

So for probably the first time in its existence, the open market will be exposed to a forensic examination of its existence and purpose.

That will not be a bad thing because the sector is a valuable and under-recognised asset for the island in many ways and there is little doubt that the States will want to and should retain it.

But deputies are in danger of misleading people when they claim there will be no change to it – because there has to be for it simply to continue.