WHAT’S the workload of a States committee? How long is a piece of string? In reality, the throughput of any committee depends mainly on its members’ appetite for work.

Of course, the committee’s mandate is relevant as well. You’d expect HSSD or PSD to get through a lot more business than Culture and Leisure or the Parochial Ecclesiastical Rates Review Committee (remember that?) because they simply have bigger tasks allocated to them. But the key criterion determining the activity of any committee is the work ethic of its membership.

There have been a few shocking examples of work-shy committees revealed in recent weeks. What’s been worse has been the arrogance shown by deputies in defending their inactivity, even when it means they’ve failed to properly discharge the mandates given to them by the States. This really is cocking a snook at the States and saying, ‘we don’t care what we’ve been told to do, we’re only going to do what we fancy doing’.

The first example is the Legislation Select Committee. Its chairman, Deputy John Gollop, came out with the classic line that it was simply a ‘proofreading committee’. How can that be the case when a quick glance at its mandate shows that it’s empowered to suggest to the Policy Council items that might require changes to island legislation?

It could look at Guernsey’s huge body of legislation and identify lacunas, outdated laws that need updating, archaic ones that need repealing, or confusing sets of laws that need consolidation and simplification. It could even look at other territories and try to learn how to make law-making in Guernsey better.

Instead, it chose to limit itself to ‘proofreading’. Surely, if this is all it does, it could be done more cheaply – and probably better – by employing law students during the university holidays?

What is most surprising about this lack of ambition by the committee is that a few years ago, its chairman was constantly complaining that he was ready for a ‘leadership role’, but that the States wouldn’t give him one. Well, now he has one but he’s unwilling to lead. Instead, he spends his time proofreading. He claims that the committee has always done this, but that overlooks the fact that in 2004 it was transformed into a select committee – the clue is in the name.

The other real scandal was the news that the Policy Council had met only twice in the first 10 weeks of this year. Even worse was the off-hand explanation that the reason it wasn’t meeting was that it had no work to do. How can this be when you look at its mandate?

The council is responsible for formulating and implementing economic and fiscal policies – we have a budget deficit and non-compliant tax regime. Then there’s ‘consultation with departments and committees to ensure appropriate responses to strategic issues that confront the island’. Are we facing so few challenges as a community that the Policy Council can put its feet up?

What about ‘coordinating the work of the States’? Are our departments so perfectly joined up that there’s nothing to do?

One dreadful excuse from a minister was that civil servants, not members, put together the agenda. What a cop-out. Of course it’s the officers’ duty to bring forward relevant matters for discussion, but the political members are equally free to table matters for debate.

These aren’t junior deputies, finding their feet and needing to be led by the hand by their officers. These are our senior politicians. When they identify strategic issues needing resolution, they should be insisting that the council deals with them. If they can’t see any such issues facing Guernsey, then what parallel universe are they living in? Nothing seems to have changed since the Harwood Panel said politicians were failing to take the lead on policy formation, preferring instead to leave it to their officers.

If the Policy Council really has so little to do that its members can take time out or spend hours on internet forums, then I have a suggestion: how about working on all those things the States has told them to do, but which they have simply ‘parked’ as not being priorities? For example, years ago they were instructed to draw up a report on civil partnerships as soon as possible. They’ve ignored that instruction, claiming that they have more important things to work on. How does that tally with not having enough work to meet for weeks on end?