THE muddled thinking of States members over transparent government is illustrated perfectly by items up for debate next week.

On the positive side, deputies are asked to fund a Hansard-style report detailing every utterance made within the States Assembly.

Such a move is long overdue. So long, in fact, that the Bailiwick of Guernsey lags behind every parliament in the British Isles and both large and small jurisdictions throughout the world.

If the Falkland Islands (population 3,140) can consider a written record of its parliament essential, affordable and practicable it is hard to imagine why Guernsey, until now, has not.

A jaundiced observer would certainly suspect that it would not have occurred to many of the island’s politicians past and present to make its government accessible and inclusive.

‘Why on earth would we need a written record, we heard it first-hand?’ would sum up the closed-minded view regrettably adopted by deputies who fondly remember an age where islanders meekly accepted decisions made in their name.

Those States members will presumably be the same deputies who were happy to reject a Freedom of Information law on the basis of ‘an informal email survey’. Unnamed, unnumbered and unaccountable, it was the perfect ‘Guernsey solution’ response to a fundamental question about open government.

It will be those politicians who are happy with a States which pays out large sums of taxpayers’ money to UK fishermen in a secret legal settlement. And it will be they who will back to the hilt Education’s determination not to release full details of GCSE results school by school simply because ‘we never have done in the past’.

They will also be applauding to the rooftops Environment’s determination to pull up the drawbridge and refuse to discuss its decisions.

There are more enlightened souls in the States who have honestly bought into the principle of good government that calls for transparency – but the battle is far from won.

The establishment of a Hansard report allowing ordinary islanders the opportunity to review and challenge what their deputies say on any given subject is just one step in the process.