When the States meets today, members will be asked to approve a U-turn by Public Services and not pursue a quasi tax on the ports and boatowners.

If – or perhaps that should be when – the climbdown is approved, it will mark a return to common sense and government will learn that it cannot go around needlessly alarming people over the possible introduction of punitive increases.

The waste of time, effort and money that has been involved by third parties in preparing cases to try to counter PSD’s flight of fantasy has been dreadful – and should not have been necessary.

As we have asked in a different context – the abandoned meetings – what purpose is the Policy Council actually serving?

If its meetings are to be more than a nice ego-massage for the political heads of departments, then the deliberations have to add value to the political process and it is far from clear that that is the case.

While PSD may have been obeying orders in coming up with its tax on port users, any rational group of adults ought to have seen the pitfalls. Firstly, the original decision leading to the instruction on PSD was flawed and opportunistic and, secondly, the department’s reaction to it was disproportionally burdensome on narrow sectors of the community. It was a non-starter.

At that stage, the requirement was to prevent mischief but without appearing to flout the authority of the Assembly. And that should have meant going back to the States with a joint PSD-Treasury report endorsed by the council pointing out the damage adherence to the original instruction would cause and proposing a different solution.

That is what will effectively be achieved this week if PSD’s amendment to its own report is approved. But this whole farce has now been played out in public, to the consternation of those who would have been impacted by the port tax, and government’s reputation for judgement and leadership is further damaged.

The States really does not need these own goals and, since the Policy Council’s function is to advise on the coordination of the work of the States, it needs to do better.