We now come to the Business Plan and, in the anticipation we are not going to complete it today, I am going to ask the Greffier only to read paragraph (a) of the proposition.

The Greffier of the States:

The States are asked to decide whether they are of opinion to receive the draft Annual Business Plan 2012 and (a) to approve the summary set out in Summary Table A, page 69, being the gross revenue expenditure of each States funded body, including depreciation, a proposed transfer from the Health Insurance Fund of £6,131,000, and the additional provisions of net revenue expenditure for central reserves of £12,485,000 and restructuring costs of £10,000,000 as part of the total net revenue expenditure of the Treasury and Resources Department and, having taken into account any income due to each of the States funded bodies, the total net revenue expenditure of £655,920,000,to be withdrawn from the consolidated fund in 2012; with any increase above this figure to be compensated by appropriate measures within the draft Budget 2012 to enable the Minister for Treasury and Resources to present a draft Budget which forecasts a return to balanced budgets by 2013 as set out in Figure 4.6.

1.1 Senator T.A. Le Sueur (The Chief Minister):

I stand here today to present my last Annual Business Plan with a mixture of feelings, all of which I am pleased to say are positive ones. Naturally after 24 years there is a twinge of regret that I am coming to the end of a long and generally satisfying political involvement. At a personal level, I have a sense of satisfaction that the plan before us today represents an ongoing step in our longer term objective of seeing the Island in the sound and secure position it has enjoyed for many years. Indeed we are in a sound financial position at the current time, thanks to the prudent policies we have adopted in the past but I do want to return to balanced budgets as soon as possible. Our objective is to do that by 2013 and this plan confirms that, if we adopt it, we shall indeed be on course to achieve what is a very challenging but necessary objective. We are on course and we must not allow ourselves to be deflected by pursuing fleeting promises or jumping on an election bandwagon. The future of the Island is too serious for us to get side tracked. As I say, Jersey starts from a sound and secure position; however, we are not immune from global pressures and the current state of the global market remains uncertain and fragile. We have to be firm in our resolution to pursue what looks like being a long and difficult road to recovery. This underlines the importance of our objective of balancing our books and controlling our expenditure so that it does not exceed our income. We do face some challenges. Jersey’s economy declined in 2009 by about 6 per cent and was not forecast to increase significantly during 2010. The Fiscal Policy Panel told us to plan for a fragile and drawn out global recovery and that panel has estimated that although growth will resume this year and next, it will be at relatively weak rates. More recently, the European and American situation since that report only serves to harden that expectation. The fact that interest rates look set to remain at a historically low level will clearly not be helpful for our banking industry so the focus now must be on economic growth. We must improve the competitiveness of Island businesses and help them to gain market share so they are well placed to benefit from global growth. It is timely that the Minister for Economic Development has published a draft economic growth strategy for consultation and I hope Members will be making their views known. Jersey’s financial services industry remains a vital component of our economic prosperity. We need to develop new products, attract business from emerging economies like China, India and Israel and maintain our global reputation as a jurisdiction with the highest standards of regulation. We must also create a more diversified and balanced economy through exploiting the growth in global e-commerce, putting ourselves at the forefront of the digital economy and investigating the potential to use the Island’s natural resources in a sustainable, environmental and commercial way. We must work to create new opportunities for existing sectors by developing our tourism strategy and continuing to support growth in the rural economy. I am sure Members will agree that in the current economic climate, having restored our public finances to a sound footing, securing future economic growth is the challenge for our Island but the key to our success in the future will not just be the performance of our economy; it will be the performance of our public services. If we want to compete in the world, if we want a fair society, if we want to get real value for money while providing the decent, reliable public services that make life better for people, then we need to modernise. That is why it is so important that funds have been earmarked for modernisation and restructuring and why it is vital that we continue to apply those monies for that purpose and that purpose only. If we fail to modernise we cannot expect to achieve longer term sustainability. There will be no progress if we just stick with the status quo. This Business Plan maintains our commitment to saving £65 million by the end of 2013. As we continue to work to reach this target, we also need to focus on developing a modern public sector that can meet Islanders’ needs not just today but in a challenging future where we know there will be increasing demands on many of our core services. This will involve changing the way our public sector works, harnessing new technology and making best use of the people and resources we have available. That is why the Council of Ministers is putting forward this vision for the future based on a business plan which must ensure that we have balanced budgets by 2013. It is only when we have achieved this that we can go on to benefit from a recovering global economy. Previous generations saw the wisdom of not letting our spending exceed our income. We must follow that good example and continue our savings programme. Last year we were looking at a structural deficit of around £100 million. This year we have brought that down by successfully removing £12 million from budgets in 2011. Next year we will add a further £20 million to that figure and in 2013 a further £33 million will be removed from expenditure, making a total of £65 million over those 3 years, just as the States agreed in the Budget last year. We need to stick to our policies of facing up to challenges and finding the best solution for Jersey. In that respect I have been looking at some of the amendments before us today with some concern. It seems that some Members are still not thinking through the long term consequences of their short term priorities. It takes courage to take decisions which are not populist, decisions which secure a successful foundation for our economy. I was pleased that Members found the political resolve to approve measures in the 2011 Budget which are now being implemented and are beginning to bear fruit. I hope Members can maintain that courage today. I hope we can look beyond the next few weeks of frenetic electoral activity to make the right decisions for the future that will present serious funding challenges for some of our most fundamental public services, a future in which tax receipts will not immediately bounce back to their previous levels. This Business Plan is part of a structured transition from global downturn to economic growth. It is the latest step in an ongoing process and should not be viewed in isolation. It proposes a continuation of the 3 part plan to deliver savings, support economic growth and to deliver a flexible tax strategy to enable that return to balanced budgets by 2013. It sets out in detail how departments plan to spend the funds we propose to allocate to them. We have been put through challenging times and I believe we have put in place the right mechanisms to meet future challenges head on. Today I am presenting a plan that is comprehensive and clear in its vision and also flexible enough to withstand shocks along the way. The 2012 Business Plan is the right way to steer us clearly through the years ahead and is the rock of stability on which a sustainable recovery depends. We are in a good position for continued long term success. We have strong finances with no debt. We have a resilient economy, thanks to successful long term strategic planning. We have implemented a successful fiscal stimulus strategy, supporting local people through one of the most turbulent global economic environments in living memory. We have been able to maintain comparatively high levels of employment and take action to reduce the impact of unemployment on the more vulnerable members of our society. This Business Plan is well thought out. It is realistic. It allocates extra money where needed and it cuts spending elsewhere. It acknowledges the pressures we face but is realistic about the way we need to face the future. I hope that my successors can build on these developing initiatives to the benefit of all of us who are privileged to live in these islands. That is our task, our challenge and our opportunity. I urge Members to endorse the proposals of the Council of Ministers, to support these measures to continue to work to reform our public services and to balance our public finances. I hope that Members will see the value of remaining resolute and prudent and will support this plan in its entirety. The first part of the proposition deals with total net States revenue for 2012 and I am pleased to say that we are on target to deliver the savings that were proposed, and even though we have had a slight difficulty with Projet No. P.72/2011, the Council of Ministers remains absolutely committed to developing that £65 million of savings and avoiding the need for additional taxation. These proposals do that and I propose part (a) of the proposition for States net revenue expenditure for 2012.

The Deputy Bailiff:

Are those proposals seconded? [Seconded]

1.2 Draft Annual Business Plan 2012 (P.123/2011): fifth amendment (P.123/2011 Amd.(5))

The Deputy Bailiff:

We now come to Amendment No.5 which, according to the Annual Business Plan running order is the next on the agenda in the name of Deputy Southern and I ask the Greffier to read the amendment.

The Greffier of the States:

Page 2, paragraph(a), after the words “withdrawn from the consolidated fund in 2012” insert the words: “except that the net revenue expenditure of the Chief Minister’s Department shall be increased by £60,000 to enable the Statistics Unit to produce a ‘Relative Cost of Living’ comparator between Jersey and the United Kingdom by 2013 and the net revenue expenditure of the Treasury and Resources Department (Provision for Restructuring Costs) shall be reduced by an equivalent sum in 2012”.

1.2.1 Deputy G.P. Southern of St. Helier:

Although a small sum of money in terms of £600 million plus this, I believe, is an essential amendment to the Business Plan. It addresses a comparison between the cost of living in Jersey and the cost of living in the U.K. (United Kingdom) and that, I believe, is a central issue as we go through not only the immediate future but into future years. Time and time again we are told of comparisons between Jersey and the U.K. with no benchmark fixed figure to make any absolute statement about. Quite recently we were told, for example, that the average earnings in the U.K. rose by 2.1 per cent and the average earnings in Jersey increased by 2.5. Thus we can make a similar parity; however, in terms of the cost of living, what does that mean? It means our cost of living, if you look at the R.P.I. (Retail Price Index) figures, the most recent ones being R.P.I.y. of 3 per cent, below that of the U.K, the change is comparable but what does it mean? In terms of the pensioner with her or his £184 per week, compared to the U.K. with £102 per week, what does that mean? The answer is it sounds very generous but the answer is not in comparing relative R.P.I. changes or relative average earnings changes. Where is the starting point? Where is the marker that says: “the cost of living in Jersey is ...?” If I went round the room and said: “how much more expensive is it to live in Jersey than it is in the U.K?” we could all have a guess. Where would we be? My guess is that even the Council of Ministers would be talking about the 20 per cent mark. It must be at least 20 per cent more expensive over here. Some others might well be, I believe, more realistic and start talking about 30 or plus more expensive to live here than in the U.K. but: “we do not know” is the answer. Nobody here knows how expensive it is to live in Jersey than it is in the U.K. and yet we educate our children at university level in the U.K, we bring them back, we employ them. We set the pay rates by comparison with the U.K. Why do we do that? Because we need to recruit skilled workers. We need to recruit teachers. We set the terms and conditions and the pay rates in comparison with the U.K. It has to be healthy and the most vital case that we have come across day in and day out is the critical lack of nursing skills in the Island. Why? Because we can’t apparently recruit and retain skilled specialist nurses in Jersey. Have we got an absolute marker that says: “and that is because it is 20 per cent more expensive to live here so therefore we ought to be paying them 20 per cent more”? We do not have that marker. Now, the £60,000 suggested as ultimately the cost of doing such research is actually a reserve position. Despite the Council of Ministers’ words that say this comparison between U.K. and Jersey has a low priority compared to other initiatives and is not on the schedule to be done, I have spoken to the Chief Statistician and he says he has got it pencilled in for this year’s work. He wants to produce a comparator between Jersey and the U.K. so that we can start to make those benchmark figures so we know where we are. Not only that, he has allocated some time for one of his officers to do that. He tells me if they can get access to the figures, either from the O.N.S. (Office for National Statistics) or the European figures and make the comparison, he would do it the way he likes doing it, which is in house. He says he likes to do things in house and he does not want to go out of house unless he can help it. If he can get access to the right figures, it can be done. We can start to have a reasonable comparator that places us where we are in comparison with the U.K. (United Kingdom) so we can make those benchmarks about how much more expensive it is here. He is quite willing to do that and he is prepared to do that. The £60,000 comes into play as a plan B if the access to those figures becomes difficult or he cannot get access to them, then he is prepared to go to an outside body to do a different piece of research to give us some figures to work on but it is definitely a fallback position. He trusts the work his own department does and that is what he intends to do. So the £60,000 although it is sitting there, we have got to make that transfer, it is not the real spending of £60,000; it is from one pot to another. It is there; it is very much a plan B fallback position. While we are on that, that £60,000, which is made to seem quite a lot by the Council of Ministers’ comments, let us examine what is happening. We are told that we are conducting a root and branch examination of terms and conditions along with pay for our public sector and we are doing that from next week when the negotiations open if I am to believe the Chief Minister and his answer yesterday. As part of that, what do you think will be happening? Each sector will be seeking to have a proper comparison. The teachers have just gone through such a position. They employed Tribal, they have changed their name since, and the system and the assessment, the review, has completely broken down. It has been working for some 3 months now and they are getting nowhere. Why? Because terms change, conditions change but they have no figure on which to base what is the absolute cost of living between Jersey and the U.K. so how can we place teachers at the bottom end and head teachers compared to their counterparts in the U.K.? The answer is they cannot. In fact, things have got so bad they cannot even do a decent comparison with Guernsey who were initially interested in joining in because they would like to know their figures for their purposes as well. Ditto; 2 surveys, how much did they cost? IDS and Tribal again into the relative pay and the problems around retention and recruiting nurses. How much did those 2 surveys cost? £10,000 apiece, £20,000 apiece? I do not know. We will be spending money on such comparisons and we will be producing answers which are partial. I do not believe that is good enough; I believe we can do better. The Chief Statistician says he is quite prepared to do it and get on with it. It would be a useful figure for everybody in this Chamber and for everybody out there to know where is the benchmark in comparison because we use terms and conditions, we use pay scales from the U.K. all the time. If we do not set the figures right, we will get what we have got in nursing recruitment, which is we cannot find the staff. Just as a by the way, the IDS survey said you should increase the pay scales for grades 5, 6 and above by 5 per cent immediately. The States Employment Board has refused to do that and that is the minimum comparator if you want to recruit specialist nurses at the top end.

[10:00]

So the problems are already here about the lack of the comparator. The work can be done. It could be done in house and delivered and that going into the future, come to the end of the year, the time scale is right, again, I have checked that out with the Stats Department, I have said before 2013. He says: “That is exactly the right time scale, I can deliver in that period.” We can have a figure for future reference which gives us some real idea of what we are doing when we are making that comparison and make life easier for us, for the Chief Minister, for us all, in terms of where are we relative to the U.K. What do Jersey figures mean in terms of cost of living? This is a vital step. It is something that has been considered for the past decade but never quite made it to the top of the list. Put it on the list now and in the future, we will all be better off.

The Deputy Bailiff:

Is the amendment seconded? [Seconded] Does any Member wish to speak?

1.2.2 Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire of St. Helier:

Deputy Southern’s amendment, I think, is probably the most important amendment within the Business Plan we are debating. He says it is a vital step and I agree with him. It is imperative when we bring about savings of the order of £65 million within 3 years taking that money out of the economy that we understand fully the implications of that. Politically, it seems good business and it is argued that it is good business to do this and we are told about the laudable position in the past about spending less than we have made and it sells great to the I.o.D. (Institute of Directors) and the wealthy in the Island. It also sells well to those that are comfortable in the Island but it does not sell well to those that are struggling day to day, week to week, month to month. Year on year, the position of the ordinary person in Jersey is diminishing and very interestingly this morning on the radio I heard that Guernsey has just produced its comparison with the United Kingdom and it has found that it is 25 per cent more expensive to live in Guernsey than in the United Kingdom and 50 per cent more expensive for pensioners. So when they introduce cuts and savings to address their budgets and when they introduce taxes and when they introduce policies and when they look at the measures that they can influence their economy upon, their people can understand, along with their politicians, exactly how things are in Guernsey compared to the United Kingdom. When you get to pensions and how much money you decide to give in terms of pensions, when you get to pay and you decide how much money to give in terms of pay, it must be a significant opportunity for a real decent comparison for the people and the politicians, for the politicians to go to the people and look them square in the eye and say: “I have done this and it is justified.” At the moment, I do not think any of the proposals that the Council of Ministers has been making or the previous States of Jersey were making, have been justified because there has never been a real decent comparison with the United Kingdom. On the weekend, I went to Les Quennevais swimming pool for a swim and on the way home my wife said to me: “Oh, look at that lovely house for sale on the left.” I did not even turn my head to look at the house because the concept of buying a house has just been completely driven out of my mind and on a wealthy States Member’s income if it has been driven out of my mind, what about the majority of the people in the Island and the young people? We are talking about an economic growth strategy that is going to encourage people to be in Jersey and do business in Jersey and retain our younger people and succession training. The only thing I hear successively in the States is how we fail to train successioning. The reality is that the cost of living in Jersey, especially the cost of accommodation, the affordability and the availability of accommodation, which is a key factor in living anywhere, is through the roof and beyond reach: £460,000 or £540,000, I have lost the figure, an astronomical amount of money for the ordinary average house. We do nothing relatively to protect people within Jersey from an open door policy within the European Union for people to come in and undercut existing workers and existing contracts by people who are paying for houses in the European Union where you can buy a brand new house, deck it out for £70,000. So we are failing completely in our duties and it is because, I would say, and this may get some people upset, because too many of us are too comfortable in here financially because we do not understand and we do not appreciate the reality of people’s lives in Jersey for the majority of people. The majority of people are not represented, I would say, by the presence of the Members in this Assembly. There is a smattering of people that come from and understand and represent them. Although we all argue that we represent them, very few of us have the experience and those that do are actively campaigned against at every opportunity, dismissed, demonised and driven out. So I am certainly supporting this this morning and I think if we are going to do anything in the future, any kind of plan, as I said yesterday, this whole debate is going to be a load of waffle that will not last as long as a waffle because once they get past the elections, they will be divvying the cash out among themselves for this, that and the other as and when they need it, £800,000 on a compost heap and another £5 million to keep the smells under control and we are celebrating the fact that we are planting 2 trees in the middle of town, 10 years late. Nothing is in reality in focus and it will not be in focus until we as an Assembly recognise what we are doing in light of reality, the reality of the ordinary person based upon a U.K. comparison. How can you justify a pay rise that is in line with the U.K.? How can you justify a pension increase that is better or worse or the same or in line as the U.K. when we have no concept, no understanding, no real numbers on comparisons. It is 25 per cent more expensive in Guernsey to live than in the U.K., news today on the radio, and 50 per cent more expensive for pensioners. I implore Members; this is a very, very small amount of money. Senator Ozouf came into the Assembly screaming and shouting from the rafters, rightfully so, about the need for better information, better statistics. He was absolutely right then. I am absolutely right in reminding us all about what he said then and I am certain if we can save £56,000 last year on advertising with the Jersey Evening Post, we can put some of that money and some more money next year if we can do anything like that in savings in areas where we are just not paying attention, and pass this money over for better statistical information so when we make decisions like we are going to make for the rest of this debate, we do them in line with reality. I certainly will be supporting Deputy Southern.

1.2.3 Senator T.A. Le Sueur:

This is the first of several amendments and I think we need to put its relevance into context and try to understand just how we can use our time fairly wisely. It is a fairly simple amendment based entirely on the need for further statistics. Now, I am very keen on having statistical information, reliable information rather than hearsay, and I very much applaud the fact that our Statistics Unit in recent years has grown from one man and a dog to a few more people. Certainly, one can carry on creating more and more statistics, almost ad infinitum and one has to say you have to be realistic and say how many of these statistics are needed and which ones are the most important. That is a judgment which is perhaps not best made by politicians because that judgment tends to be coloured then and for that reason, the States some time ago set up a Statistics User Group, an independent group of people whose remit, among other things, was the relevance and appropriateness of the statistics for the purposes for which they are used. What are they going to be used for in this case? According to Deputy Southern, for entry into wage negotiations to create a far greater differential between Jersey and the U.K., a differential which perhaps we cannot afford, a differential which may be [Aside] ... the Deputy can have a chance to respond at the end. This particular statistic is not one which the Statistics User Group, the independent group, suggests is particularly necessary at the current time. Why is that? That is because the Statistics Unit is already producing a U.K. Jersey price comparison on a simple basket of goods. In other words, they are doing the basic amount of work which can be done already. What is being suggested by Deputy Southern is far more complex and has a danger of being misleading. Are we comparing with the price of goods in London or the price of goods in Lerwick? They again are going to be totally different. So is this information going to be statistically useful for us or not? I have to say that neither Guernsey nor the Isle of Man currently produce a purchasing power parity index, which is what this is and at the current time, this is not something which is high on the list of priorities. Yes, it is something which would be nice to have along with lots of other statistics but we have to prioritise here, we have to say what is the best use of our resources. If another £60,000 were to be made available to the Council of Ministers, to the States, what would we use that £60,000 for? Would we use it for some social benefit, would we use it maybe to provide some additional benefit to carers or something like that or would we use it to produce more statistics, statistics which have limited practical value? The Deputy in his proposition suggests that this comes from the restructuring provision and I said how important it is in my opening speech that that restructuring provision is used for modernising the public service and not as a help yourself buffet and £60,000 may not sound a great deal. It is indicative of the thinking which says it does not matter, we can carry on spending in the same old way. We cannot carry on spending in the same old way. We have a deficit of £65 million to address and unless we address it seriously, we are not going to get anywhere. This may seem a simple amendment. It is not necessary and it is really contrary to the objectives which we should be looking for in this Business Plan. I urge Members not to waste undue time on this particular amendment but to reject it.

1.2.4 Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier of St. Saviour:

I have to say, oddly enough, I did start partially in agreement with the Chief Minister but as his peroration proceeded, I have to say I lost the spirit to live. I think we have to put this in context. There is no doubt this might be seen as a Trojan horse by Deputy Southern in order to pursue a particular trade union agenda. I do not think there is any doubt that that is what some people are thinking. My view is it is a slightly more nuanced proposition and there is an issue of be very careful of what you wish for. I have got no problem with this because clearly there is a recruitment issue but the group he has used, nurses, of course, the recruitment issue is global. It is not U.K. only and if he were to go, as he well knows, into U.K. hospitals as well as obviously the local hospitals, he would find a multinational workforce from places like the Philippines, Spain and so forth. It is a much different situation and to try and characterise the situation as one only of Jersey’s high cost of living versus the U.K.’s lesser cost of living is not really the full picture. The second issue is I have got no problem in nurses’ conditions being examined. They have to be examined, quite frankly, bearing in mind the global recruitment crisis. The second issue is what are the issues locally and I have had complaints about accommodation, for example, the standard of accommodation and the availability.

[10:15]

Particularly now that we have moved to the permanent (j) situation, perhaps if we were offering them innovative solutions or shared equity solutions in dealing with accommodation rather than the blunt approach of just comparing the cost of living in one country versus another, again, that might be more helpful to them. So my view is yes, I have got no problem with this and I certainly do not think it is the end of the world or the end of our budget cuts if we approve this. I really think in terms of the overall scheme of things, it is a modest proposal but I do wonder about the identification of the real issue here and quite what is being sought because I would much rather that the Health Department have set up a taskforce to look methodically at what are the issues preventing nurses from coming here. What annoys and frustrates them when they do come here and they try and cope with the cost of living and, particularly, as they tell me, with the property issue. It would be nice to think we were looking at innovative solutions in a particular way to deal with that. I have no problem with the overall. I do not think it will lead to the dire consequences outlined by the Chief Minister although I do appreciate his concerns but I do wish and hope that Deputy Southern will look at the issue in a broader context.

1.2.5 Senator A. Breckon:

For me the issue this touches on is a longstanding one and I think it was looked at years ago by the former Economic Adviser and then Chief Adviser and that was pound price parity. If we forget about wage negotiations and you think perhaps about pensioners, then I think Deputy Southern mentioned in his speech about a single pensioner getting £184 a week and that sounds a lot of money until you try and do something with it, of course. In the U.K., the basic pension is about £80 a week less but it is supplemented by about another £30. The basic pension is lower but probably nobody gets less than £130. On top of that, many pensioners do not pay any health care costs at all, nothing. Dental, optical, G.P.s (General Practitioners), do not pay a thing, nothing. They also get, not means tested, £300 in about October of each year so they do not have worry about switching on the heating or the electricity or whatever else it is and these payments have been looked at obviously but that is where it is. I remember there were discussions many, many years ago with the Economic Adviser, the Chief Adviser, how can we compare? You can say easily pensioners in Jersey, of course, are much better off, but are they? In the U.K., for example, many pensioners living in social housing pay hardly any rent at all and the reason for that is it creates a “money-go-round”. What do we do here? We have got a “money-go-round” where we might have say Hue Court where a single pensioner is assessed as having to pay £400 a month. Of course, they do not have £400 a month so we create a subsidy system that goes from Social Security to Housing and back to the Treasury and some of it goes to private landlords. So if we look at some of the real issues which I think are in here, the other thing where there are some differences is in basic living costs, utilities, food, things like that. Now, as the Chief Minister has mentioned, there is an annual consumer price comparison which comes out at the end of August/September every year but it is not as comprehensive as this. The Statistics Unit are very professional and they can produce this but what is a little bit disappointing for me is the Chief Minister’s Department has a budget of over £4.5 million and I would question who is in there, what are they doing? I would have thought there is a cost saving in there because we are having a debate here about a sum of money which is a fraction of a percentage and there is a: “We cannot do this, save the money, we need to save;” £65 million. The next thing is some people we have not heard of have been paid £100,000 to produce a report that we are never going to take any notice of so that is really where we are. The problem is with this Business Plan and the processes, who is setting the agenda? What is on it and what is off it? I think this is a worthy thing and it is a shame that we have to go to this length to get this in. Whether it will go in or not is another issue but maybe there is another way and if the Chief Minister and others are going to come to this debate and say: “Oh, we cannot do this, no, no, sorry, it is not our idea. It might be a good idea. It does not fit.” Well, let us cancel the Foreign Minister’s next world tour. Let us stop that. That would create the money to do this. Let us think outside the box a little bit. So there are things that we can do to prioritise but it is a question of who wants to do it and this might not be high profile. The other thing, of course, is it could prove to be very embarrassing and there is an example that is available. If you look at the average earnings, it is about £33,000. If you look at the average property prices, it is about £500,000. Where does that fit with affordability? If you bring that down to groceries, utilities, whatever else you want to do, then you can say Jersey is a nice place to live but it is very expensive and that then becomes an embarrassment for the people who are promoting whatever they want to do, economic growth and whatever it may be. That is where I think the problem is. It is not on the Council of Ministers’ agenda because I think there is a serious embarrassment factor. It has got nothing to do with nurses or anybody else. It is about statistical information and that is the way we should look at it. It may well be used as a comparator for pensioners and others say: “Well, yes, you get this” but is it enough and the answer is probably: “No, it is not.” So that is maybe where it should be. There are other things that could relate to this and I think it is an important piece of work and while it is, as I say, a minuscule part of this whole thing but again this Chamber is the final arbiter of this and we have this torturous business planning process and unfortunately this is a part of it. Members should consider any amendments that individuals have brought having looked at it in the whole because the other thing for Members to remember is most of us were not party to bringing this thing together so we have been presented with it in mid July: “So there you are, there is your present for your summer holidays. Who wants to do some work?” Some Members have done that, some scrutiny panels have looked at things but we need to restrict that and not just dismiss it because the Council of Ministers or a Minister says so because they are not the final arbiter. This House is and I hope Members will take note of that. It is a small amount. It can be worked around and I think it will be a worthwhile piece of work. For those reasons, I support this amendment.

1.2.6 Deputy T.M. Pitman of St. Helier:

I hope I can set a bit of a guide for the day and the week and just be fairly short. It was interesting to hear the Chief Minister say how he is keen on statistics. I think most of us would probably argue yes, he is very keen on statistics as long as they are not inconvenient. But surely knowing what you are basing policy on is a fundamental cornerstone of responsible government. I would really commend Deputy Southern for giving us that guide on getting through the Business Plan: concise, factual, logical, to the point. I think the Statistics Unit deserve a lot of credit; they do a lot of very good work. Why would we not want them to continue that good work by doing something that could clearly be so beneficial? Deputy Southern used the example, and he was right to, of course, for the nurses but in getting this core information out into the public, because the public should have this information, what about looking at the other end and how this might help us justify or not the completely over the top salaries that we seem quite happy to hand out willy-nilly to the boys at the top? Completely over the top salaries. What are they based on because I think if you spoke to 100 people, 99 out of those 100 would say they are not based on any reality whatsoever. Too many Members, I believe, have no idea of how those at the bottom and, indeed, middle Jersey, really live and struggle to live and this that Deputy Southern is suggesting for £60,000 can only go to enlightening all of us. The 53 of us could probably be asked a question, as Deputy Southern said, and we would each come up with a slightly different answer. Why not get the facts? As to why the Chief Minister really does not want this, I would have to wonder if it is because he has already allocated the entire central reserve. Possibly that is why he does not want this and life looks very different from an ivory tower. While we have got Zero/Ten and we can dismiss £10-15 million as it is not a cash flow problem, it is deferred payments, then I do not think we should even be squabbling over £60,000. What Deputy Southern is offering us is a chance to have something very solid and very beneficial in place and I would just urge all Members to support it and let us get on to the next item.

1.2.7 Senator F. du H. Le Gresley:

I have to say I was disappointed with the Chief Minister’s speech on this matter because when I first read Deputy Southern’s amendment, I thought “that sounds very sensible and I am sure the Council of Ministers will accept this amendment.” However, we now know that we do not want to go to getting this very useful information for the reasons that the proposer outlined. I would like to draw Members’ attention to the response to the comments on the eighth amendment, which is also Deputy Southern’s proposition. At the back of that one, from the Council of Ministers, we have an appendix and it sets out what is going to be possibly taking place with regard to review of terms and conditions. It starts with the words: “The Steering Group [and I am not sure who is on that] which considered the Tribal review on terms and conditions summarised the Tribal recommendations in the table below.” One of the key ones here is: “Migrate to U.K. pay scales for jobs which have direct U.K. counterparts, e.g., teaching, fire and police” and then the estimate potential savings: “More detailed costings to be carried out, impact long-term.” So I would read from that that we cannot migrate to U.K. pay scales unless we have more detailed information about the comparative cost of livings between Jersey and the U.K. Now, that is exactly what Deputy Southern is requesting and it seems that the Statistics Unit are quite happy, if they are given a little bit more money or time, to produce this information. The Chief Minister also mentioned that the Statistical User Group saw this as a low priority and again quoting from the Council of Ministers’ own comments to the fifth Amendment of Deputy Southern, this is the current one we are debating: “In 2002, a previous Statistical User Group...” Now, that is 9 years ago for the people who are not too sure when that was, 9 years ago. Since then, we have had a recession and we are still going through a recession and also this House has agreed to find £65 million of savings. Now, I would suggest that the Statistical User Group might be asked today if they still believe that this comparative is no longer required or not urgent. I think there are a number of reasons that the Chief Minister’s speech was rather poor in my opinion and that I would suggest that Members should be supporting Deputy Southern’s amendment.

1.2.8 Deputy R.C. Duhamel of St. Saviour:

We all know the saying: “There are lies, damned lies and statistics.” Therein lies the problem. When we are dealing with averages, it is an extremely useful measure in some ways but confusing measure in another. The Chief Minister mentioned what comparators were going to be drawn up if, indeed, we were going to come out with an average figure to peg against for the U.K. The U.K. consists of many communities all doing different things economically with various cultural habits which make people eat different foods. Indeed, if we go to fishing villages, fish may be cheap; other things might be more expensive. To assess against a basket of goods does not necessarily represent anything that is actual or, indeed, very useful. The actual comparisons, to do them properly, have to take into account a whole wealth of other directions and that would be expensive if, indeed, it were done. I think perhaps it should be done but not for a base figure which is just based on ordinary arithmetic means, the usual average.

[10:30]

The use of statistics and benchmarking is really down to give us an opportunity to assess or reassess our policy directions and therein lies another problem. We are having an argument fleshed out by Deputy Southern that the main comparison should be with the U.K. I personally think that it should be with a wider basket, if you like, of countries or group of countries and I certainly, if this work were to be undertaken, would wish to consider policy differences and cultural differences and community differences for not only the U.K. but for Europe, Scandinavian countries. Indeed, it was Deputy Southern who brought on another occasion arguments as to how the Scandinavian countries appeared to be happier and better off and spent more money on social issues and perhaps we should be moving in that direction. If indeed that is the case and it might well be that Jersey will wish to copy the Scandinavians and move towards those cultural values, then indeed just relying or over-relying on an average, a Mr. Average figure, for a person or a group of goods that do not necessarily exist in reality and pegging everything to the U.K. does not make sense. One might say £60,000 again is not a large sum of money but, indeed, in picking up what the Chief Minister said, it is indicative of this idea that this House likes to spend money that it does not have on things that it does not need. So my final point is that I think Deputy Southern has put his finger on something that could perhaps be useful in the future but in wording his amendment, I think he has drawn the terms of reference far too narrow and, indeed, on that basis, I do not think I can support it.

1.2.9 Deputy M.R. Higgins of St. Helier:

As a person trained in economics, I have been amazed at the level of economic data gathered by the States and how economic policy is determined by the Council of Ministers. Their policies, to my mind, are largely based on political dogma rather than on hard economic data. We have all read in the Jersey Evening Post during the summer recess that the Minister for Treasury and Resources stated that Jersey is doing rather better than the rest of the world and that we will sail through the recession and the ongoing crises that are going through the currency, banking and sovereign debt markets largely untouched. But on what data does he base his statements? Now, I can acknowledge that we have no public debt and that our structural deficit is minuscule compared to Ireland, Greece, Italy and the other countries but how does he reconcile the fact the our finance industry, the pillar of our economy, is based on what is going on elsewhere in the world, in the United States, in Europe? If those markets are depressed, it will have a knock-on effect on to our economy. So I have been critical in the past of the amount of data that we get and have called for other information; for example, the amount of bank lending that is going on in the economy. We are told constantly by the Minister for Economic Development that he has all these discussions with the banks and they are lending large sums of money to people but there is no data to back any of these sorts of statements up. So on this particular issue, I think there is merit in having this data and I will support the proposition.

1.2.10 Senator P.F.C. Ozouf:

Deputy Le Claire kindly recalled the call for better statistics when we both joined the States 12 years ago. He was right and today I think that this Assembly can be proud of having some of the best, if not the best, statistics of any …

The Deputy Bailiff:

Deputy Higgins, we will be inquorate if you leave the Assembly.

Senator P.F.C. Ozouf:

I am also quite pleased he is going to be able to listen to what I have to say but we have some of the best statistics of any small nation state in the world and it is not only the Minister for Treasury and Resources that says that. I recently organised for 2 of the external J.F.S.C. (Jersey Financial Services Commission) Commissioners, Lord Eatwell from Cambridge being one of them, to meet the Head of Statistics and the Chief Economist for them to explain what we do. The feedback that I had from Lord Eatwell and the other Commissioner was that they were, quite frankly, bowled away with what we do in Jersey, the quality of our statistics and the way in which we make economic policy on the back of it. I am also not a Jersey Nationalist but I think we also should be proud that the Head of Statistics is home-grown in terms of having come through the ranks. [Approbation] He does an excellent job with his colleague, the Chief Economist, and I think that this Assembly should have a great deal of confidence in the £432,000 that we spend in Statistics and the £418,000 that we spend in the Economics Unit. A Member asked where we spend money in the Chief Minister’s Department. If they will look at page 11 of the annex, they can see the breakdown of where we spend money. I have to say that I do not think that Deputy Higgins’ remarks were particularly relevant to this debate. He asked where we get economic advice. I would just politely remind him that, in fact, again, a world-beating difference in Jersey is the fact that we have the Independent Fiscal Policy Panel which writes reports, which independently reports to this Assembly twice a year. They will be reporting again in advance of the budget just as they have done so in advance of this. I do not think it is fair to say that the economic advice that Ministers get is coloured by political dogma. I certainly do not think that any of the eminent ex-M.P.C. (Monetary Policy Committee) members of the Fiscal Policy Panel would be happy with the characterisation that Deputy Higgins has made. Quite apart from the fact that we should not be politicising statistics and, indeed, economic advice, as the Chief Minister has correctly said, we do have an independent Statistics Unit. There should be a Chinese wall between politicians and statistics and, to some extent, economists. We should not be playing with statistics or seeking to have statistics for political purposes and we should rely upon the independent office of the Head of Statistics and, indeed, the Statistics User Group. I just say that because they themselves are saying that this is not a priority in relation to their own work. Deputy Southern, I think, wants to have a statistic for political purposes and I understand that but I would say to Deputy Southern that there is not a silver bullet in a statistic that could be got from a P.P.P. (Pound Price Parity) in terms of assisting with wage negotiations. We already have various different Jersey statistics of U.K./Jersey price comparisons and also I think it is fair to say and I do not know whether he is going to speak but we had a very good discussion at the Council of Ministers as to whether or not we thought that this was useful. We have a mathematician in terms of the Minister for Planning and Environment and we have an individual who is very interested in mathematics to my right. The point was very forcibly made that a figure of a U.K.-wide figure is not necessarily going to be very useful for our own wage comparators. The figures of prices in Lerwick or Cornwall are going to be different from those in central London and, indeed, perhaps more simply, statistics in terms of wage negotiations, one could take some advice from the respected Economist magazine who publish a Big Mac Index which shows the real price comparisons in different towns and cities across the world in terms of a P.P.P. The Head of Statistics does not believe that we need to spend £60,000 on this figure. I think we should listen to his advice. I do not think that we should be effectively using politics to influence their own independent advice. Where I do agree with Deputy Le Claire is on his concern about housing costs. There is much work to be done on affordable housing and this statistic will not solve that. In fact, if anything, if one was going to spend £60,000, I am not suggesting it, but one would probably be better spent on improving the policies that we have to deliver affordable housing. I agree absolutely with the remarks that have been made about nurses’ accommodation. We need more and better nurses’ accommodation, one of the issues that Property Holdings has got to deal with in terms of finding a better remuneration package which is not just about pay but is about pay and conditions and accommodation for our much needed nurses. A P.P.P. figure is also not going to deal with that. Guernsey has been mentioned and I am advised that the media reports in Guernsey yesterday do not talk about the release of a similar statistic in Guernsey. Guernsey do not have a P.P.P. figure, neither does the Isle of Man, and neither was one produced in Guernsey yesterday. It was a policy panel I think from the University of Loughborough that basically was remarking on the minimum wage issues in Guernsey and I have confirmation that they have no P.P.P. figure, they have no plans to do one and neither does Guernsey. It is an entirely different issue. If Members want to look on their internet sites and look at the reports in Guernsey, we can certainly get the report on social pay in relation to minimum wage. I do not think the case has been made for this figure. We already have good figures in relation to some aspects of U.K./Jersey price comparisons. We should rely upon the independent office of the Chief Statistician but we should also rely on the Independent User Group. The case has not been made to spend an additional £60,000. The final thing that I would say is that the restructuring provision is not there in order to pay for services in different departments. It is a one-off amount of money available for just 2 or 3 years which is designed to invest in reorganising modernising services, doing what the Connétable of St. Mary asked yesterday about investing in I.T. (Information Technology) systems, reorganising services, the one-off investment that is required in order to get sustainable £65 million worth of spending reductions across the public sector. It should not be used in order to effectively find solutions for service improvements in other areas. I am confident in the advice that we have received and I urge Members to reject this proposition.

Deputy M.R. Higgins:

Can I seek a point of clarification from the Minister for Treasury and Resources? I have also had private discussions with the F.P.P. (Fiscal Policy Panel) members and is he going to deny that they have been seeking additional economic data?

Senator P.F.C. Ozouf:

The F.P.P. always want better information but they are extremely impressed by the information that we have and, indeed, for a short period of time, they were also the F.P.P. of Guernsey and it is fair to say that Guernsey does not have dataset and the statistics that we do. Of course, the F.P.P. want more information. They always do in order to base proper economic advice but I have not had one conversation with them that they need this statistic in order to better advise us.

The Deputy Bailiff:

I am very much aware that there will be Members listening to this debate in the anterooms of the Assembly but until about 10 seconds ago, we were on an absolute minimum for the purposes of quorum and I suggest to those Members outside the Assembly that for the rest of the Business Plan debate, which is one of the most important debates which the States have to consider, [Approbation] it would be appropriate to have Members in the Chamber listening to the debate.

1.2.11 Senator B.I. Le Marquand:

I rise to add weight to the excellent speech already made by Deputy Duhamel, my fellow mathematician. This is an apparently beguiling proposition but as Deputy Duhamel has ably explained, a comparator between Jersey and the U.K. average will be of very limited value. It would be a very crude comparison. I believe that we do need to obtain comparative data but what is or what are the appropriate comparators? In pay comparisons, we have often looked at the comparison with central London. A study of comparisons with the costings in central London would, in my view, be of a much greater value than the generality of the U.K. We also have the potential comparator with our fellow Island of Guernsey. However, as Senator Breckon very ably explained, even if we do pick on the right comparator, it is only a small part of the overall picture because there are issues such as taxation rates. There are issues such as the exemption levels for taxation which in Jersey are very, very high compared with the U.K. There are issues such as the cost of local rates which in the U.K. are very, very high compared with the modest sums exacted by our Parishes. There are, of course, good reasons for that which I do not need to explain. So there are a whole bundle of differences. There are differences with Social Security rates; there are differences with extra bonuses and payments as was outlined. Having said that, I do accept that we do need to obtain some comparisons. I think a comparison with the central London figures would, in fact, be the most useful but I do not think that this particular limited comparator with the average of the U.K. is helpful at all and for that reason, I do not feel able to support this amendment.

The Deputy Bailiff:

Does any other Member wish to speak? If not, I call on Deputy Southern to reply.

[10:45]

1.2.12 Deputy G.P. Southern:

I rise to my feet smiling at the words of the previous speaker because nowhere in this text does it say “average”. Nowhere in his speech did he show any trust of the statistical validity of any work that our Chief Statistician will do. Nor did the Chief Minister and nor, indeed, did the Minister for Planning. They should because, quite rightly, as Senator Ozouf pointed out, we could be rightly justifiably proud of the level of statistics and the dependability of those figures and the independence of those figures that we do have. If we were to accept this amendment and go on to this stage of making the P.P.P. comparator, then those figures would come to us from the Chief of Statistics and I do not know why the Minister for Treasury and Resources is shaking his head would come to us from the Chief of Statistics with his caveat and with his reservations around it to say: “This is what it means.” As always, as always with these figures. The Minister for Treasury and Resources said that the Chief of the Statistics Unit does not need to spend £60,000. He said he does not need to spend £60,000. Quite correct because he believes he can do this in house with his own resources and that is what he trusts best; work done by his own officers in house and he has got it pencilled in. The desk is there waiting to be occupied by somebody doing this work. Only if the relevant statistics prove difficult would he resort to using an external body, hence the need for the £60,000 which might be required but it is only “might be required”. The Head of Statistics is quite happy to do this work, has it scheduled, and is prepared to do it in the time scale and it will not cost a penny. That is the reality; that is the reality because time and resource is there. The Chief Minister also said we have to be realistic. Realistic about what? I think Senator Le Gresley pointed him in the right direction when he said this survey done by Tribal, again how much did that cost, those 3 reports from Tribal in the last round? I do not know, £30,000, £40,000, I do not know, do not know what the figure is and we have not heard it but this is happening all the time. £60,000 is nothing compared to what we continually spend getting reviews of this, reviews of that and the Tribal stuff came up with something and nothing. As Senator Le Gresley said, if we were to migrate to U.K. pay scales for certain sectors, which might be a perfectly reasonable thing to do, we would have to do some research first in order to work out what that means. This is one of the steps towards doing that research and quite rightly. The Minister for Home Affairs was suggesting that, of course, P.P.P. straightforwardly is not a great deal to base anything on. It is a step in the right direction though and, yes, we do have to take into consideration the tax and benefit situation and I have talked to the Head of Stats about that and the exemption levels and the cost of housing. Of course, it is a complex business but unless we make a start, we will never know. We can sit there on our hands and say: “We do not quite know what the situation is compared to the U.K. so we cannot make any absolute statements whatsoever but in the meantime we would like to chip away at your terms and conditions.” What a nonsense starting point that is and I refer Members to the words in the Chief Minister’s introduction on page 7 of the Annual Business Plan where he says confidently: “The provision of quality economic advice will continue to support effective management of the economy as will the production of relevant statistics and statistical qualities.” Relevant statistics. What more relevance can you get to today, to tomorrow, to next year and the following year? Exactly. This piece of work needs to be done. This specious nonsense that whether we will be looking at London or Lerwick, have some trust in the Chief Statistician. What he produces will be solid. If there are reservations about it, they will be there. If you want to look at the cost of Inner London, then fine. There are widespread stats about differences between the rest of the U.K. and Inner London and the Minister for Home Affairs can satisfy himself that that is a valid comparison and let us go ahead with that. Come on now; do not be scared of this. It is not a revolution. Nothing is going to happen overnight. It is not a Trojan horse. We are not going to see troops coming out of it. It is a simple piece of statistical information that we have needed for the past decade and we could get on with it now. Let us do so. To Deputy Le Hérissier, quite rightly he points out that one of the big issues is the standard and affordability of houses. Of course it is but to say you have not addressed that in this particular amendment is rather specious and side-tracking. The fact is, as the Minister for Treasury and Resources said in supporting Deputy Le Hérissier’s reservations, yes, housing is the issue but we have got a housing transformation plan about to come forward with the future of housing and particularly affordable housing dealt with in that and it took 2 years in the making, so we are already doing that, we are making steps there. Let us make steps in the information on which we are basing the economic future of this Island and every employee and every employer in it. Whether or not the Guernsey information is about minimum wage or other conditions. Well, there is a thought; is the minimum wage set correctly? We do not know. It is compared with the U.K. and it keeps leapfrogging the U.K, April and October, April and October, but is it set at the right level? We have no idea and we will not until we start doing this type of work to find out. Please vote for this amendment. It is simple, it is straightforward, it can be done. We should be doing it.

The Deputy Bailiff:

The appel is called for on the amendment of Deputy Southern, amendment number 5. I invite Members to return to their seats and I ask the Greffier to open the voting.

POUR: 15	CONTRE: 28	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator A. Breckon	Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Senator F.du H. Le Gresley	Senator P.F. Routier
Connétable of St. Martin	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)	Senator J.L. Perchard
Deputy J.A. Martin (H)	Senator S.C. Ferguson
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Deputy of St. Peter	Senator B.I. Le Marquand
Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)	Connétable of St. Ouen
Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire (H)	Connétable of St. Helier
Deputy S. Pitman (H)	Connétable of Trinity
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Connétable of St. Brelade
Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)	Connétable of St. Saviour
Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)	Connétable of St. Clement
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)	Connétable of St. Mary
Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)	Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)
	Deputy of St. Martin
	Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
	Deputy of St. Ouen
	Deputy of Grouville
	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)
	Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)
	Deputy of St. John
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
	Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)
	Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)

1.3 Draft Annual Business Plan 2012 (P.123/2011): fourth amendment (P.123/211 Amd.(4))

The Deputy Bailiff:

Very well. We now come on to amendment number 4 which is in the name of Senator Ferguson and I ask the Greffier to read the amendment.

The Greffier of the States:

Page 2 paragraph (a). After the words “withdrawn from the consolidated fund in 2012” insert the words “except that the net revenue expenditure of the Chief Minister’s Department shall be increased by £18,400,100, (£10,194,500 in respect of the Information Services Department, £4,395,500 in respect of the Human Resources Department and £3,810,100 in respect of the P.E.C.R.S. pre-1987 debt) by transferring responsibility for the Information Services and Human Resources Departments back to the Chief Minister’s Department on a permanent basis, and the total net revenue of the Treasury and Resources Department shall be reduced by £18,400,100.”

1.3.1 Senator S.C. Ferguson:

I think this is one of the few amendments that does not spend any extra money. However, the problem I have highlighted in this amendment is a constitutional one. It is probably the most serious that I have ever come across in the States. The Council of Ministers appears to have forgotten that States decisions are supreme and changes to those decisions must come back to the Assembly for approval. Now, to be helpful, let me demonstrate what should have happened. On 9th June this year, the States approved the Draft Amendment No. 7 to the Employment Law, and this amendment transferred the administration of the Jersey Employment Tribunal to the Judicial Greffier. Now, if you turn to page 27 of your Business Plans - it feels like the schoolroom - there is a table labelled “Net revenue expenditure movements from 2011 to 2012”. If you look along the column titles, the third from the right is entitled “Service transfers” and going down to the “Social Security” line, there is a figure in brackets, 168.3, that is accountants’ speak for minus £168,300. On the following page, under note 5 in the endnotes, it says: “Within year transfers of funding and/or services are identified by departments as part of their Annual Business Plan review and these will be reflected in the department pages in the supporting annex to the Business Plan.” A nice piece of civil service gobbledygook. So we turn to page 89 of the annex, which is the reconciliation of net revenue expenditure for the Social Security Department. On the sixth line up from the bottom it says: “Jersey Employment Tribunal (£168,300)”. So, to summarise, that is how it should be done: amendment passed by the States, followed by inclusion in the Business Plan; extremely well organised and straightforward, as I would expect from Deputy Gorst. I would now like to refer Members to the second page of my report. This is an extract from the Machinery of Government proposed departmental structure and transitional arrangements, P.70/2002, passed by the States on 24th July 2002. It is quite clear that if you read the list of functions of the Chief Minister’s Department, the Human Resources and I.T. should be part of that department since they are strategic functions. Now, let me take you back to January 2009. [Interruption] Just ignore it, thank you. [Laughter]

The Deputy Bailiff:

I am not sure that contributions to charitable funds can just be ignored in a Business Plan.

Senator S.C. Ferguson:

My phone is on silent, Sir. Never mind.

The Deputy Bailiff:

Do you accept there should be a contribution to the fund?

Senator S.C. Ferguson:

Absolutely, Sir, I was just checking to see if you were awake. [Laughter]

The Deputy Bailiff:

Senator, I am so much awake, I was about to say to you that I noticed the Chief Minister and the Council of Ministers accept this amendment and no doubt you will be reprieved. [Approbation]

Senator S.C. Ferguson:

Yes, touché, but I happen to feel that this principle needs to be explained to the House. In January 2009 there was a press release appointing a new Deputy Chief Executive of the States as a way to bring together all the central resources under the control of one senior officer. The press release says: “As agreed in the Business Plan for 2009.” The only reference to anything about officers is a cryptic comment on extra senior staff for the Chief Minister’s Department. As I understand it and as we have frequently been told, the report to a proposition should not be relied upon. The only thing that matters is the proposition.

[11:00]

The only mention of a new Resources Department is within the report on the proposition and there was certainly, as I could not find, no mention of a Deputy Chief Executive. The new Resources Department was set up in 2009, transferring H.R. (Human Resources) and I.T. from the Chief Minister’s Department to the control of the Deputy Chief Executive but the budgets remained with the Chief Minister. The 2010 Business Plan made mention of the arrangements in the annex but the budgets had not been transferred. In the annex to the Business Plan it states, and remember this is written in September 2009: “The corporate support facilities of Human Resources, Information Services and Customer Services have been brought together with Corporate Purchasing, Property Services and Corporate Systems in a new Resources Department under the leadership of the new Chief Executive and the budgets remain within the existing structure within the Chief Minister’s Department” and so forth. The Accounting Officer functions were transferred to the Deputy Chief Executive in November 2009. Then, surprise surprise; in the 2011 Business Plan there is a service transfer. Deputy Vallois has made frequent mention of this £17 million on a number of occasions. Well, that is when the Budget went over. There is the same cryptic footnote in the net revenue expenditure movements in the main Business Plan and a note in the annex for the Treasury and Resources Business Plan that the Corporate Support in 2010. I am sorry; I thought they were done in 2009. I am confused, but anyway the Corporate Support facilities of H.R., I.S. (Information Services) and Customer Services brought together in the resources directorate under the leadership of the new Deputy Chief Executive and this directorate is now part of the Treasury and Resources Department. Quite a nice bit of smoke and mirrors tucked away in the annexes, apart from the fact that it was a cockamamie thing to do. With the greatest respect to the Treasurer, the function of the Treasury Department is to, and I quote from P.70 2002: “The present responsibilities of the States’ Treasury, including resource allocation and fiscal policy, payroll matters, pension administration, currency management and management of the capital programme, taxes and receipts, corporate property, allocation and monitoring of States’ manpower.” These are all on page 2 of the report to my proposition, together with States’ utilities and so on. The equivalent paragraph for the Chief Minister’s Department is: “The Chief Minister’s Department will provide support and advice to the Chief Minister and the Council of Ministers, enabling them to fulfil their duties and responsibilities for the Executive Government of the Island and as part of the wider responsibilities, I.C.T. (Information and Communication) strategy, Corporate Human Resources policy and various other things.” Now, it is quite clear from this that the functions of the Treasury are tactical and those of the Chief Minister are strategic. The talents required for tactical functions performed by the Treasury - and I say again, they are tactical functions - are totally different from the talents required to think strategically for the Island as a whole. I.S. and H.R. are strategic functions. To combine tactical functions with strategic functions is like mixing chalk and cheese. We are a national government, not a county council and we need the strategic functions located where overall policy and strategy is formulated. Effectively, this amendment is returning the departments to their proper place and role and is reminding the Council of Ministers that they should not treat this Assembly in such a cavalier manner. They ignore States decisions at their peril. My proposition P.127/2011 is in a similar vein and is designed to prevent further changes in States decisions without a proposition being brought back to the States to approve the changes before they are made. I have the greatest respect for the energy and enthusiasm of the Minister for Treasury and Resources. I would, however, remind him that the setup of Jersey Property Holdings and the transfer mechanisms for property to S.o.J.D.C. (States of Jersey Development Company) are statutory and should not be changed ...

The Deputy Bailiff:

Is this part of the proposition?

Senator S.C. Ferguson:

Yes, it is all part of the same principle. The Council of Ministers is ignoring States decisions and those decisions should not be changed until and unless these are approved by the States. Decisions of the States are supreme. [Approbation] Returning to the amendment, you will be glad to hear, I am pleased that the Council of Ministers accept my amendment and I would ask the Assembly to do the same.

The Deputy Bailiff:

Is the amendment seconded? [Seconded] Chief Minister I understand that the Council of Ministers ‑‑

Senator T.A. Le Sueur:

Yes. For the avoidance of doubt and despite trying to confuse me in the last few minutes, the Council of Ministers maintains its support for the amendment. [Laughter]

The Deputy Bailiff:

Just in case we are still debating the agenda at 10.00 p.m. on Friday, Members might like to take that possibility into account where both the proposer and the Council of Ministers agree this should be dealt with. Does any Member wish to speak?

1.3.2 Senator P.F.C. Ozouf:

I just want to say very briefly that this was a non-contentious issue. There are issues about the corporate departments that need to be dealt with and there is going to be an issue for the future Council of Ministers to sort out the right structure for these important corporate departments. It is not quite as Senator Ferguson said in her remarks. She has gone off on a tangent on a number of issues. I am quite happy with this issue because there is a debate to be had about the proper reorganisation of these important States departments which are fundamental to the management and to the reorganisation of the public sector going forward. It was non-contentious. Senator Ferguson has tried to wind us up but we maintain support for this.

The Deputy Bailiff:

Does any other Member wish to speak? Will all Members in favour of adopting the amendment kindly show?

Deputy C.F. Labey of Grouville:

Could we have the appel, please?

The Deputy Bailiff:

The appel is called for. I invite Members to return to their seats and I ask the Greffier to open the voting.

POUR: 31	CONTRE: 0	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Senator S.C. Ferguson
Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Senator B.I. Le Marquand
Senator F.du H. Le Gresley
Connétable of St. Ouen
Connétable of St. Brelade
Connétable of St. Saviour
Connétable of St. Mary
Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)
Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
Deputy J.A. Martin (H)
Deputy of St. Ouen
Deputy of Grouville
Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)
Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)
Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)
Deputy S. Pitman (H)
Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)
Deputy of St. John
Deputy M. Tadier (B)
Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)
Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)
Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)
Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)
Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)

1.4 Draft Annual Business Plan (P.123/2011): third amendment (P.123/2011 Amd.(3)) - paragraph 1

The Deputy Bailiff:

We now come to amendment number 3, paragraph 1, in the name of Senator Le Gresley and I ask the Greffier to read the amendment.

The Greffier of the States:

Page 2, paragraph (a), amendment 1. After the words “withdrawn from the consolidated fund in 2012” insert the words “except that the net revenue expenditure of the Economic Development Department should be increased by £1 million in order to provide a grant in this amount to the Tourism Development Fund in 2012”.

1.4.1 Senator F. du H. Le Gresley:

Before I start my speech, I would just like to say that I am rather dismayed that both the Jersey Evening Post and our Chief Minister have chosen to say that people who have brought amendments to the Business Plan are electioneering and I think that is a rather sad comment when people are doing their job, which is to challenge the Ministers and to amend the Business Plan where they think appropriate. Maintaining a viable tourism industry makes sound common sense and is prudent economic management. It is worth remembering that other countries are actively seeking to create what Jersey already has in place. These are not my words but those of the Tourism Committee in their report accompanying proposition P.170/2001, which asks the States to agree in principle that the sum of £10 million be allocated to a new tourism investment fund as part of a new 10-year strategy for the industry. This proposition was approved in December 2001 with 27 votes in favour and 19 against. The Tourism Committee of 2001 warned that without an adequate investment in the tourism product there was a danger of being caught in a spiral of decline from which it would become increasingly difficult to break out and that without investment, the industry would be unable to capitalise on any upturn in tourism when it came. During the 10-year period of this strategy, which was called “Tourism Adds Value”, registered bed spaces have declined by 27 per cent, from 16,388 to 11,887 and staying leisure visitors have fallen by 30 per cent, from 478,000 to 335,000. Meanwhile, only £2.2 million has been allocated to the Tourism Development Fund in those 10 years. I believe that the decline of the tourism industry has to be halted. More hoteliers are currently planning to leave the industry, having obtained planning permission for conversion of their premises into flats. Sir, am I at liberty to mention the names of any establishments?

The Deputy Bailiff:

Yes, if they are relevant to the debate.

Senator F. du H. Le Gresley:

Thank you. Most notable of these are the Metropole in Roseville Street and the De Normandie and Fort D’Auvergne Hotels at Havres des Pas. More recently we have learned that the Revere and the Stafford Hotel in Kensington Place also wish to leave the industry. The Jersey Pottery and the Living Legend are destined to close soon and there is an ever-diminishing range of quality visitor attractions. I do believe that now is the time to put money into the Tourism Development Fund so as to encourage matching private sector investments. The only significant investment in the tourism infrastructure since 2006 has been the fiscal stimulus grant of £1.5 million to the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust for their new visitor centre. The Tourism Development Fund currently has a balance of £45,538. The Minister for Economic Development expects to make available a sum of £100,000. I have since learned from the comments provided by the Council of Ministers that this figure will be £200,000 from department under-spends which will enable some new projects to go ahead in 2011 for the benefit of the 2012 season. In the comments to my amendment, the Council of Ministers states that £450,000 of unspent fiscal stimulus monies could be transferred to the Tourism Development Fund with the support of the States today and that the Minister for Economic Development plans to expand the scheme in the near future so as to enable grants to be made to private sector projects and a new financial appraisal model will be used to assess the viability of projects. The reason for bringing this amendment was to challenge the Council of Ministers and the Members of this Chamber to show united support for our tourism industry. I believe I have achieved that aim, therefore, provided the Chief Minister is next to speak and assures us here and now that the sum of £450,000 will be transferred from the consolidated fund before the end of this financial year to the Economic Development Department for the Tourism Development Fund, I will consider withdrawing this amendment.

The Deputy Bailiff:

Does any Member wish to speak? I am sorry, seconded. [Seconded]

1.4.2 Senator T.A. Le Sueur:

I was going to say, I can give more or less the undertaking that the Senator requires. He simply said “before the end of the year”. That is up to the Minister for Treasury, I think, who has the ultimate responsibility for this one, so that it may be more appropriate for him to confirm that it could be done before the end of this year. I would have thought normally one can only ascertain an underspend after the end of a financial year but if one can create something out of this, the objective is clearly agreed by both Senator Le Gresley and myself and the Minister for Treasury, that that is the way we should be funding it.

1.4.3 Senator P.F.C. Ozouf:

The underspend is from the Fiscal Stimulus Plan that has already been put in place so the money is, we think, there. I am happy to absolutely confirm the spirit of the remarks.

[11:15]

Senator Ferguson previously said the States is supreme; we are giving an undertaking that we are going to transfer this money. There is an underspend within the Economic Development Department and those undertakings are being made publicly and they will be done. There may well be a proposition to this Assembly in relation to that matter depending on how we choose to do it.

1.4.4 Deputy T.M. Pitman:

I never know which way to take categoric assurances. I was championing this issue 3 years ago so I will definitely be supporting Senator Le Gresley. It is my view that despite the words that we often get, our commitment to our tourist industry has declined ever since we moved to ministerial government and I believe and if I am still here next year, if not I hope someone else does it; I think we really need to move to a position where we have a Minister for Tourism, because at the moment the support in real terms is nothing more than lip service. This deserves total support and I commend Senator Le Gresley for bringing it.

1.4.5 Senator A.J.H. Maclean:

I will be brief in light of what has been said. I will just remark on the previous speaker’s comments. I believe the support for tourism quite naturally has been significant in recent years and, indeed, as far as a Minister for Tourism is concerned, although I am the Minister for Economic Development, tourism clearly falls as part of my portfolio. I do consider myself a Minister for Tourism as well. I do thoroughly support the industry and I think that has been demonstrated in recent years. We have, in fact, above and beyond the significant budget that tourism gets, put an additional £500,000 in 2009, 2010 and 2011 to react to opportunities for the tourism industry in terms of additional marketing and also challenges faced in areas such as the volcanic ash. I do not wish to go into any more details but I hope that does demonstrate to Members that we do take tourism and the value of the tourism industry to our economy extremely seriously. As such, to pick up on Senator Le Gresley’s amendment and his comments that he has very helpfully made. I welcomed his amendment in one respect; clearly I have a responsibility as a Member of the Council of Ministers. I am aware of the pressures that the Council of Ministers is under with the C.S.R. (Comprehensive Spending Review) and delivery of savings and the challenges in the capital programme, for example. Nevertheless, aside from that I would have quite naturally welcomed £1 million, as any Minister would, but in this circumstance we were looking for a more creative way to support tourism and a more creative way to recapitalise the Tourism Development Fund. As such, I can confirm to Members, and Senator Le Gresley has just mentioned it, but I will just confirm the point, that we have under-spends for 2011 of £200,000, which I have already instructed will be transferred to the Tourism Development Fund to ensure that this autumn’s round of bids can go ahead. We have an excellent Tourism Development Fund panel or board - they are described as a panel; you may wish to consider them a board. They are all honorariums in the truest sense of the word from the private sector and they do a splendid job, as I am sure Members will agree, in terms of assessing the value of projects and the distribution of funds. So, there will be a total - with the £45,000 residual that sits in the T.D.F. (Tourism Development Fund) - of £245,000 for this autumn’s bids and very helpfully the Minister for Treasury has agreed to an additional £450,000 from under-spends from stimulus. I would just say to Members that, in fact, Economic Development returned £500,000 earlier in the year from stimulus funding that was underspent. We have had that allocated. We had not, in reality, got a valuable source to continue on the funding of that so we returned it. If it was not going to make a viable investment we were not prepared to use it, we returned it. I think this is a good allocation and I think Senator Le Gresley’s amendment has been helpful in helping me to persuade the Minister for Treasury of the value of this particular investment, if I can put it that way, but I think, to be fair to the Minister for Treasury, he has a responsibility to ensure that money invested is appropriately invested and as such it took a discussion with him that I had where I explained we were going to change the terms of the Tourism Development Fund. To date, the position with the Tourism and Development Fund is that only States bodies and charities and not-for-profit organisations can apply and as such that has limited, in my view, the effectiveness of this particular fund and the support that it can give to the tourism industry. As such, I have prepared - shortly to be lodged - a proposition which will ask Members to support changing the terms of the Tourism Development Fund to allow private sector bodies and businesses to apply for funding private sector businesses from the tourism industry. The idea is to invite them to bid for funding on a matched fund basis, pound for pound. That will leverage the funds, the additional funds of £450,000 plus the £200,000. We will have nearly £700,000 for 2012 and with this change, with the support of Members, I believe that will give excellent support and leverage to the tourism industry. I do not wish to say anymore now; I just felt it was important to give confidence to Members that I believe we have the necessary funding in place with the agreement from the Minister for Treasury. Further funding for the Tourism Development Fund should be dealt with through the medium-term financial plan 2013 to 2015 and Members will have an opportunity to vote on that. On that basis I thank, if I understand correctly, Senator Le Gresley’s comment that he is perhaps going to withdraw this proposition on the undertakings that have been given by myself, the Chief Minister and the Minister for Treasury.

The Deputy Bailiff:

I was going to ask Senator Le Gresley that? Are you seeking leave from the Assembly to withdraw this proposition in the light of the assurances which you have been given?

Senator F. du H. Le Gresley:

Yes, I am seeking leave of Members to withdraw it. I thank those who have spoken and I recall that in last year’s Business Plan I also got an agreement from the Minister for Treasury and Resources to promise some money for St. Martin’s Primary School and he kept that promise and I am sure he will keep his promise for the Tourism Development Fund. Could I also say that on the basis of withdrawing this one, I will be withdrawing the withdrawal of £1 million for the Police Headquarters. Thank you.

The Deputy Bailiff:

Do Members agree that paragraph 1 of amendment number 3 may be withdrawn? Very well, thank you. That is withdrawn and we have noted that paragraph 2 has also been withdrawn. Now we would normally come to amendment number 12 which is in the name of the Deputy of St. Mary, who is malade and it therefore falls because he is not able to propose the amendment.

1.5 Draft Annual Business Plan 2012 (P.123/2011): fifteenth amendment (P.123/2011 Amd.(15))

The Deputy Bailiff:

We come next to amendment number 15 in the name of the Chief Minister. In accordance with Article 11 of the Public Finances Law the States will need to agree to debate the amendment as insufficient time after lodging has elapsed but I will first ask the Greffier to read the amendment.

The Greffier of the States:

Page 2, paragraph (a), after the words “withdrawn from the consolidated fund in 2012” insert the words “except that the net revenue expenditure of the Education, Sport and Culture Department shall be reduced by £15,000 and the net revenue expenditure of the Home Affairs Department shall be increased by £15,000 to reflect a transfer of funding in this amount to the Building a Safer Society service area in the Home Affairs Department for 2012”.

The Deputy Bailiff:

Chief Minister, do you wish to seek leave of the Assembly to debate this amendment?

Senator T.A. Le Sueur:

Yes. As the note on the amendment says, because it has been lodged for less than 14 days, I have to ask for the States’ consent for this and I propose that we have that consent.

The Deputy Bailiff:

Is that seconded? [Seconded] Do Members agree that this amendment may be debated? Very well, Chief Minister.

1.5.1 Senator T.A. Le Sueur (The Chief Minister):

Thank you. I bring this amendment really for 2 purposes. Firstly, in recognition of the concerns expressed by Senator Le Gresley and Deputy Southern about the important work being carried out by the Prison! Me! No Way!! initiative and in an endeavour to ensure that that work not only is carried out and continued but also is carried out and continued in the most efficient way. The second objective of this amendment is to give confirmation for the longer-term security of Prison! Me! No Way!! funding and the way in which that could be delivered. The benefits of Prison! Me! No Way!! are apparent to all who have been involved with it and the political involvement covers a wide cross section of Ministers and funding has also been from a number of departments. But it does appear to the Council of Ministers that without in any way diminishing the involvement and commitment of those Ministers, it is more sensible and more efficient that one department, one Minister, the Minister for Home Affairs, should have the responsibility to negotiate with Prison! Me! No Way!! and to establish terms of reference for the future, better operation of that initiative. This amendment seeks to provide that security to the Home Affairs Department. As Senator Ferguson will be pleased to learn, it is cost neutral in that it just transfers funds from one department to another but it does put the funds where I believe they are most appropriately identified within that of the Home Affairs Department. That means that we are transferring money away from Education, Sport and Culture to Home Affairs with the consent and confirmation of the Minister for Education - who will no doubt want to speak in due course - to provide the basic level of funding for 2012 but that in itself is not sufficient. Therefore, within the report, Members will see quite clearly that the Council of Ministers is prepared to commit to top up any shortfall in funding up to a total sum of £60,000 and that is there in order to address the concerns of Senator Gresley and Deputy Southern that the level of funding would not be adequate. That commitment exists for 2012, unless there is a shortfall for 2013 and onwards and that can be done through the growth plan and the medium-term financial plan. For the 2012 situation, that commitment of £60,000 is there but more importantly the responsibility for negotiation remains with or is given to one particular department, one particular Minister. That is the basis of the amendment which I propose.

The Deputy Bailiff:

Is the amendment seconded? [Seconded] Does any Member wish to speak? Deputy Southern.

1.5.2 Deputy G.P. Southern:

Yes, thank you. Obviously, this late amendment impinges on my own, the ninth amendment, which was originally intended to be a belt and braces approach to ensure that we got coverage for the funding of Prison! Me! No Way!! and built on the amendment of Senator Le Gresley. Obviously, I am extremely pleased to see that the Chief Minister has responded appropriately for the funding for 2012 and is committed to ensuring that that is maintained at the £60,000 level. The fact is that whatever has been talked about reserves in Prison! Me! No Way!!, the fact is that there is a very tight budget, it is almost, not entirely but largely, taken up by the appointment of a full-time co-ordinator from the police, which is a very effective way of delivering this particular service. In terms of the funding problems in the past, it has come to my notice that when there was an issue over BB guns and adapting Prison! Me! No Way!! to address that issue, at the time, because funding had not been delivered, the organisers had to go to the Lieutenant Governor to raise funds for a leaflet and a package that would address that issue, which the police considered was very, very important indeed and they managed to do that. So, it is always a problem; an effective delivery of funding is the central problem. While the commitment to 2012 is fine, what I was discussing with Prison! Me! No Way!! executives yesterday was that, in fact, after this debate Prison! Me! No Way!! will be advertising for and appointing a new co-ordinator for the years 2012 and 2013. That means they take responsibility for the pay of a police constable who organises everything.

[11:30]

That commitment to 2012 is a 2-year contract - 2012 and 2013 - and they will be appointed before the end of the year. So, the absence of any guarantee on a tight budget of funding for 2013 and 2014 makes life very difficult for any charitable organisation to continue to fund its activities in a safe and secure way. So, while the Chief Minister is to be congratulated for coming all the way on 2012, I would want to seek some assurance that funding for 2013 and 2014, despite any review that takes place - and I can go into the review that has taken place in 2010 and will do later if necessary - if he could guarantee that funding for 2012 and 2014 would be maintained at the £60,000 mark, then I would be quite happy later on to withdraw the third part of my amendment 9 but I would want that cast iron guarantee as Senator Gresley has just obtained for 2013 and 2014. I think it is entirely appropriate and will settle the issue once and for all. So, I am waiting to hear a guarantee like for 2012 on 2013 and 2014, in which case we can proceed fairly rapidly on to other issues.

1.5.3 Senator B.I. Le Marquand:

Prison! Me! No Way!! provides a valuable structure which delivers a programme to schools which involves the police, the prison, the fire service and the ambulance service. The Minister for Home Affairs, the Minister for Education, Sport and Culture and the Minister for Housing and indeed the Council of Ministers, are supportive of that programme continuing. However, the existing structure for the support of this is not suitable. It is much too complicated. It started off on the basis of there being 4 supporting organisations, 3 Ministers and one private backer. This has not been very easy to manage. It has taken up a great deal of the time of the executive co-ordinating officer in chivvying different departments, trying to get them in line in terms of financing and so on and so forth. For that reason alone there needs to be one Minister with responsibility to work with this agency and that Minister should be the Minister for Home Affairs because of the obvious linkage that the vast majority of the input in terms of personnel on the days is from Home Affairs. There is a small input also from the ambulance service. But on the other hand, there also needs to be a new service level agreement entered into. The current arrangements are much too loose in relation to linkage, oversight, what is expected and so on and so forth. That would have been virtually impossible to achieve with 3 Ministers involved. Thirdly, there needs to be a review of the content of the programme in order to refresh it, in order to ensure that it is delivering the best possible programme to the schools involved. Situations change. The nature of the message changes from time to time; the priorities within that. I have already been in discussions with the co-ordinator in relation to that. She knows very well what my views are in relation to that and the Minister - whether it is me in future or some other person - will no doubt continue to work on that. So, this particular amendment is just a small part of that package because it transfers the £15,000 from Education, Sport and Culture to Home Affairs but it establishes the wider principle that there is now going to be this centralisation of linkage. The financial arrangements in relation to Prison! Me! No Way!! are more complex than may appear because in addition to the £60,000 which is put in, there is a considerable investment from Home Affairs of the order of £48,000 a year in staff time. It is important that I say that so that people understand it. There is also investment from Education, Sport and Culture and there will also be some input from Education, Sport and Culture. I think I also need to make it clear that Prison! Me! No Way!! is not operating on the basis of … I am getting the wrong phrase but it is not absolutely desperately short of cash. It has substantial reserves. Deputy Southern is shaking his head but I have the accounts for 2010 and they show substantial reserves. I accept that there does need to be an ongoing provision but there is no sense of emergency here in relation to this. A very important point to make, and that is one of the issues I have to say which has created complications this year, particularly in the minds of some of my colleague Ministers who are aware of the size of these reserves and their own pressures. Nevertheless, I want to finish on a positive note. I am committed to the continuation of this project subject to the new service level agreement and subject to refreshment of the programme in the way that I have suggested.

1.5.4 Senator F. du H. Le Gresley:

I hope Members will support this fifteenth amendment by the Chief Minister, because from my perspective it achieves what I was trying to do in my … I think it would be one of the first amendments to the Business Plan which was to secure funding for 2012 because, as we know, this House cannot tie another Chamber to 2013 and 2014. So, this does achieve what I wanted to achieve. Because I will not be speaking on my amendment because I will be withdrawing it, I hope you will allow me just to make 2 points and then you probably will not hear from me for a long time. The 2 points being - and really I have been raised to this challenge by the speech of the Minister for Home Affairs - having run or certainly heading up a charity operating in Jersey for some 18 years, I think I can speak with some knowledge and experience. I do feel that it is not the job of Ministers to be interfering in the day-to-day operations of a charity. I perfectly agree that a service level agreement has to have some sort of a policy that is agreed by all the parties for the funding to continue but it is wrong - and I hope the Minister for Home Affairs will take this on board - to dictate what that charity does. It is wrong and I think this particular charity, Prison! Me! No Way!! has an excellent record and I hope if it is a new Minister or if it is the same Minister that they will not interfere in the day-to-day operations of this charity. That is not, in my opinion, their role. The other point I wanted to make was in the report to amendment 15 there is reference to - and this has come from the Education, Sport and Culture - failure really to carry out a review in 2011. There has been a lot of exchange of emails that I have seen and it appears - and you would think this would not happen, although we do know Jersey Post has some problems these days - that a letter from the department dated 9th March 2011 never reached the chair of this organisation and as a result of that there have been numerous communications between the Chairman and the Minister which was an assumption that neither party was doing anything or unable to attend meetings. I do want to place on record the fact that there was no intention of the executive of Prison! Me! No Way!! not to take part in a review and I hope that is clear for everybody. The final thing, I hope you will allow me to say, is that, as I said, I will be withdrawing my amendment with the permission of the States. I would just like to remind people why I brought that amendment was following the riots and disgraceful behaviour of young people on the streets of U.K. cities over that weekend early in August. That was not the main reason I brought this amendment. I did not have a lot of knowledge of Prison! Me! No Way!! other than I believed it was doing a good job. Since then I was also on a panel evaluating some charities for an award for Charity of the Year; Medium-sized Charity of the Year in this case. When I read the application from Prison! Me! No Way!! I did feel that it was a very strong candidate for an award. That led me to believe why would we be possibly cutting their funding. I am delighted that the Council of Ministers and the Chief Minister do agree that we should not cut their funding and we should continue to build on this organisation. So, with that I ask Members to support the fifteenth amendment. I will be withdrawing my first amendment and I will sit down and shut up.

1.5.5 Deputy J.B. Fox of St. Helier:

Prison! Me! No Way!! for years has been probably one of the best preventive voluntary organisations that works with and alongside multi agencies, i.e. the police, fire service, ambulance service and many others involving the schools, et cetera, et cetera. It is an important ingredient in prevention. Prevention, unfortunately, usually ends up as the first thing that gets cut and if you look at the reports from the various departments you will see that it refers in the police case to detection, detection, detection and in the fire service case under Home Affairs it talks about prevention, prevention, prevention. Minister for Home Affairs, please note that prevention is a core part of the service that the States of Jersey through the Home Affairs Department and through the various departments make and it is very easy to take a swipe at, when he has budget cuts, is to take these little voluntary contributions out of the equation because has got to cut budgets. There are other ones. There are road safety panels, crime prevention panels, some of which have got different names now, but they all provide a very inexpensive service that involves a lot of honorary volunteers. I, and many other people have been involved in these voluntary services for many years in providing this Island with the support to our young people and to others that are less fortunate than ourselves and it is important that this continues. I am pleased that this has been resolved. To me it should never have happened in the first place because there are these emergency service officers who have been giving of their time for years and in promoting it. They started it off and it has continued for some 18 years. Yes, there is a commitment from the police service, the ambulance service, fire service, et cetera, but that is part of its role in life. It is not just rushing off to a scene after something is happening; it is to prevent it happening in the first place and to do that you need to have education. The famous phrase “education, education, education” is probably the most important phrase that has ever been conjured up, because without education you do not have a quality of life in society, you do not have a competent workforce, you do not have the trained people to look after our health and the environment that we live in, et cetera, et cetera. So, education, education, whether it is health, whether it is the policing or whether it is education, is extremely important and this has got to be resolved. The bit I am a bit concerned about is this question that most of the money will be swallowed up in administration. We have numerous people in this Island that have got skills and qualifications, many of whom are retired and semi-retired; all usually busy people that give of their time and they will support but you have to seek them out and you have to ask them. Now, I am retiring from the States, everybody knows that. I am taking a year out and everybody around me knows that, but in a year’s time I have got no doubt, as is already happening, is that my telephone is going to be ringing and people are coming up to me asking that if I would give some of my time and my knowledge and experience for other organisations and the answers will be yes.

[11:45]

Now there are other people like me and many of you in here that do have these skills and these qualifications. Let us please use them and not end up by having to bicker over £15,000, £10,000, et cetera, on a major budget debate that we are having. This is ridiculous. Thank you, I do not think I need to say any more.

1.5.6 Deputy T.M. Pitman:

I have just a couple of points. I mean with a voluntary background and a professional background in youth and community I have seen how good this initiative has been. It is a very proactive initiative. It is one that certainly should not ever be put at risk. I did try to catch your eye, Sir, after Senator Le Marquand spoke because I would like clarity on a couple of points and perhaps the proposer can bring those. To my understanding having cash reserves is not quite the same as when you have got money that is already allocated for the basic core running of that initiative, so I would like some clarity on that. Also, the Minister talked about everyone supporting it; well, I was under the impression that the Minister for Housing no longer supported this, certainly with a cash voice. I would like some clarity on that. As Deputy Fox has said, it is crazy that we are haggling about such a small amount of money and talking about good quality people. I would really like to hear some initiatives to go out to some of those people who we really cosset and protect with our really beneficial and totally unwarranted tax benefits - 1(1)(k)s. Let us see if some of those can go out and contribute some of these little sums like £15,000, the dust out of their pockets. We have heard they all work in charity shops, well here is a really great initiative that some of those could give something back to the society that they are really living off the back of at the present. Thank you.

1.5.7 Deputy J.A. Hilton of St. Helier:

Can I just say in defence of 1(1)(k)s, or at least some of the ones that I have come across, that they do indeed give a lot of money to charity over here [Approbation] and contribute quite substantial amounts of money also and I think it is a little bit cheap sometimes to have these swipes at people who come into our community and do contribute.

The Bailiff:

Now we have had both sides of that argument. Can we please return to the amendment?

Deputy J.A. Hilton:

Yes. I just wanted to say in defence of the Minister for Home Affairs, I do not believe that he has ever spoken or had any intentions to interfere in the operational running of this charity. Both the Minister for Home Affairs and me have always been very, very supportive of Prison! Me! No Way!! I am very well aware of the brilliant work this charity does and support it wholeheartedly. This amendment is simply about transferring £15,000 from the Education Department budget to the Home Affairs Department. It makes absolute sense for this money, for the funds to be centralised and for one Minister to be dealing with it. I know from my conversations with the lady who runs this charity about the amounts of time that she spends running around trying to deal with 3 Ministers. So, simply support the granting of the £15,000 to Home Affairs; it does make sense. Also, a big thank you to Senator Le Gresley for agreeing to withdraw his amendment as well. I think it has been made quite clear that with the £20,000 that the Minister for Home Affairs is putting towards the budget and the costs and the additional £15,000, the Council of Ministers has agreed to provide the additional £25,000 which will bring it up to the current sum total of £60,000. So, I would just ask Members to please support this amendment.

1.5.8 Deputy S. Power of St. Brelade:

I will be brief. When I was at Housing I had to sit in on these meetings between Education, Sport and Culture and Home Affairs with the redoubtable directors of Prison! Me! No Way!! and I have to say that this amendment by the Chief Minister makes absolute sense. It is eminently appropriate because the number of times I sat with the Minister for Education, Sport and Culture… and indeed I remember one particular meeting with the Minister for Home Affairs in his office and we spent quite a considerable amount of time arguing over the effects that the Comprehensive Spending Review would have on the budget of Prison! Me! No Way!! To focus this now in Home Affairs makes sense. Deputy Trevor Pitman made a reference to the fact that Housing does not support this anymore. In actual fact the agreement - and I am sure if the Minister for Housing wants to confirm this - made a payment earlier this year over and above the original budget to cover the fact that the Housing Department was going to withdraw because of the Comprehensive Spending Review. So, I say to all of my colleagues that this makes sense, it cuts down on time, it make life easier for La Directrice of Prison! Me! No Way!! and it should be based with the Minister for Home Affairs. Finally, no Minister in my time ever attempted to tell the directors how to run the charity. It was done really on her terms and the agreed service level agreement.

1.5.9 Deputy J.G. Reed of St. Ouen:

Very briefly, I fully support this amendment. I do believe it is an appropriate response to dealing with this matter and it ensures that the funds will be available for 2012. Just addressing the point that Deputy Southern made, this does allow for the Minister for Home Affairs to work with the Prison! Me! No Way!! team to determine how the programme should be provided for 2013 and beyond and also enable time for that funding to be included in the medium-term financial plan that the new Assembly will be debating next year, which is to cover for the first time a 3-year period, which will give more certainty to everybody. I would just like to say, as I stand to support Prison! Me! No Way!! and their aims and objectives, I would also like to just highlight that they are by no means the only organisation that provides support for and within our community. Other groups that are funded through the building a safer society funding ring fence fund, should I say, are the Bridge, the Youth Action Team, the Youth Inquiry Service, the Street-based Youth Work and the Community Football and I would hope that when the Minister for Home Affairs sits down with Prison! Me! No Way!! and indeed all of these other groups, he looks at the services that are being provided to ensure that we are targeting the right areas for the right reasons.

The Bailiff:

If no other Member wishes to speak, I call on the Chief Minister to reply.

1.5.10 Senator T.A. Le Sueur:

I thank all those who have spoken who, I think, unanimously have supported the work of Prison! Me! No Way!! It is perhaps good to thank Senator Le Gresley and Deputy Southern for raising this issue and thereby enabling all of us within this Chamber to echo our support for Prison! Me! No Way!! and those initiatives. What this amendment will do, I am pleased to say, is to raise not only the profile of that charity but also the effectiveness of that charity going forward. I am pleased that both Senator Le Gresley and Deputy Southern are largely content that this addresses their issues for 2012. Deputy Southern talks about 2013 and 2014; well, that is a matter which will come up under part (e) of the Business Plan later in the debate. At that time we can discuss whether the funding that we give is the appropriate way. He seeks an assurance at this stage about the security of the 2013 and 2014 funding. I think that has probably been best-answered by the Deputy of St. Ouen, who says that with the medium-term financial plan and 3-year budgeting, we will be in a far better position in future to give longer-term security to these sorts of initiatives, rather than having to fight each year for whatever may be required. So, I would urge Deputy Southern to endorse the value of the medium-term financial plan in giving longer-term certainty and longer-term security to Prison! Me! No Way!!. What that plan will fund is still a matter of discussion because as the Minister for Home Affairs quite rightly says, there is a Senator-level agreement that needs to be worked out, not in order to interfere with the day-to-day operation work but to have clarity over the objectives of Prison! Me! No Way!! which I am sure we all have in general concept but sometimes it needs to be enunciated in a proper agreement. I appreciate the words of Deputy Fox; that we all can have a part to play here in this and in other organisations, depending on our skills, which will enable the community to live in a better atmosphere for the benefit of the whole Island. It is another aspect of what is maybe regarded as the third sector, but it is really the way in which Jersey can and does work together. So, I could go on, but I see no need to at this stage because Members are, I think, generally in favour, and I maintain the amendment.

The Bailiff:

The amendment is proposed. All Members in favour of adopting the amendment, kindly show. The appel is called for.

POUR: 42	CONTRE: 0	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Senator P.F. Routier
Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Senator T.J. Le Main
Senator B.E. Shenton
Senator J.L. Perchard
Senator A. Breckon
Senator S.C. Ferguson
Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Senator B.I. Le Marquand
Senator F.du H. Le Gresley
Connétable of St. Ouen
Connétable of St. Helier
Connétable of Trinity
Connétable of St. Brelade
Connétable of St. Martin
Connétable of St. Saviour
Connétable of St. Clement
Connétable of St. Lawrence
Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)
Deputy of St. Martin
Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
Deputy J.A. Martin (H)
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)
Deputy of St. Ouen
Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)
Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)
Deputy of Trinity
Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)
Deputy S. Pitman (H)
Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)
Deputy I.J. Gorst (C)
Deputy of St. John
Deputy M. Tadier (B)
Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)
Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)
Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)
Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)
Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)

The Bailiff:

Next on the running list is the amendment, paragraph 1 of amendment 9 of Deputy Southern. Deputy Southern, you wish to withdraw that amendment?

Deputy G.P. Southern:

Thank you, yes. The solution that has been arrived at meets my needs.

The Bailiff:

Thank you.

Senator P.F.C. Ozouf:

Would it be possible to have clarity if the other Members are going to withdraw their propositions in relation to Prison? Me! No Way! as well? Would this be an appropriate time just so Members get their papers in order of what is coming, or not?

The Bailiff:

Senator Le Gresley has already indicated he wishes to withdraw his amendment, the first amendment, and amendment 9, paragraph 2, Deputy Southern?

Deputy G.P. Southern:

Paragraph 1 and 2 I wish to withdraw.

The Bailiff:

You wish to withdraw both? Paragraph 1 …

Deputy G.P. Southern:

Paragraph 3 we will debate later.

The Bailiff:

Very well. Paragraphs 1 and 2 of amendment 9 are both to be withdrawn and Senator Le Gresley’s amendment, the first amendment, is to be withdrawn. We would normally next have come to the amendment number 13 of the Deputy of St. Mary who is malade, and they all fall.

1.6 Draft Annual Business Plan 2012 (P.123/2011): second amendment (P.123/2011 Amd.(2)) - paragraph 2

The Bailiff:

So, the next amendment is amendment number 2, paragraph 2, in the name of Senator Shenton. I ask the Greffier to read the amendment.

The Greffier of the States:

The second amendment, part 2, page 2, paragraph (a), after the words “withdrawn from the consolidated fund in 2012” insert the words “except that the net revenue expenditure of the Health and Social Services Department shall be increased by £100,000 in order to increase funding for the Alcohol and Drugs Service”.

1.6.1 Senator B.E. Shenton:

I do not plan to speak too long on this amendment and, in fact, I have not even teed up anyone to second it, so if no one agrees with me in the Chamber then it could be a very, very short amendment indeed. When I was Minister for Health and Social Services I was concerned at the escalating drug and alcohol problem on the Island and the fact that we were not necessarily dealing with it adequately. I was therefore a little bit concerned when I found out that under the Comprehensive Spending Review the men in suits decided that the Alcohol and Drugs Service needed less front line workers. I did not speak to the Minister on this issue, or the Assistant Minister, but I went down and spoke to the people on the coalface, so to speak; the people down at the Alcohol and Drugs Centre. They were struggling, without a doubt. I think it is too easy to underestimate the size of the drug and alcohol problem on this Island. I have been stopped by a couple of business colleagues, let us call them, who have criticised this amendment because they see that I am trying to spend more taxpayers’ money. To them, the drug and alcohol problem exists in Parade Gardens; that is the size of the drug and alcohol problem in Jersey. You can see all the drug addicts and all the alcoholics just by driving past Parade Gardens. They do not see the need to spend another £100,000 on front line workers to deal with the issues. They have got fairly cocooned from this. Both the people that criticised it have extremely well-paid jobs in the finance industry and they probably do not even drive past Parade Gardens that often in their expensive motor cars. I think the issue here is that drug and alcohol problems …

[12:00]

It is not just the people that have the problem that are affected; it is everyone that is around them, their families, their loved ones, their workmates if they are having to cover, and so on and so forth. It was quite harrowing to go down to Silkworth Lodge recently and have someone who has now sorted his life out recount how he became a drug addict from the age of 11, an alcoholic mother, he never really had a chance in life to get his life sorted out. You go down to the Alcohol and Drugs Unit and, as I said before, they are short staffed. They do not have enough resources to deal with the growing problem. Indeed, I attended a British-Irish Council meeting, one of the last things I did as Minister for Health and Social Services, where the topic was the drug and alcohol problems. We all sat around the table from all the different countries patting ourselves on the back at how well we were doing with dealing with the problem, what a major problem it was. We said, all of us, from Scotland, Ireland, that we were putting resources into it. So, what happens a few years later? The C.S.R. cuts the budget. What really annoyed me was my other amendment, which is to do with this sector co-ordinator, another man to sit at a desk and co-ordinate. We need people on the front line dealing with these issues, not someone sitting at a desk co-ordinating them. I think the facts from the Medical Officer for Health’s report was quite harrowing really: 42 Islanders die from alcohol-related illness every year, that is 5 per cent of all deaths; 26 per cent of all deaths under 75 are alcohol related; 1,000 admissions each year related to alcohol compared to just 700 in 2004; 60 per cent of arrests for domestic violence over the past 5 years involve alcohol; teenage girls in Jersey drink more than their U.K. counterparts. Obviously, as a father with teenage girls, I have a very good understanding of what that part of society gets up to. Other reports show that 7,500 people in Jersey are drinking at harmful levels and 5,000 are dependent on alcohol. A lot of these people that are on drugs and alcohol, they mask it quite well. They keep their drug and alcohol problems to when they get home at night. I am sure we have all worked in places and institutions where we know of someone who has had a bit of a drink problem, but it is sort of laughed up as: “Joe in the corner”, or: “He has got a bit of a drink problem, you know, I would keep away from him in the mornings” or something like that. So, I think where this money comes in, and certainly speaking to Alcohol and Drugs, is this £100,000, which at the end of the day is a senior manager’s salary, what we will get is 80 to 100 more people with alcohol or drug problems to be treated. We will get an extra 30 detoxes every year. We will see quicker response times resulting in fewer dropouts. We will see more drug users getting clean. We will see more drug users off sickness benefits and back into employment and reduced offending. The Alcohol and Drugs Unit will be able to recommence seeing families and carers for advice and support, which they can no longer do due to the budget cuts. This Council of Ministers promised when they were doing the spending cuts that there would be no effect on the front line. The Alcohol and Drugs Unit had to stop the service where they saw families and carers to give advice and support because of the cuts under the Comprehensive Spending Review. I will not go into the fact that a lot of the £65 million of savings is revenue from different areas. But I think that it is very important that as a House we stick to our word and we say: “Yes, we do not mind savings, but let us not cut front line services.” I should point out that when I brought this amendment I was well aware of the fact that I was not standing again. I would just reiterate what Senator Le Gresley said this morning that I think it is very discourteous of the Chief Minister to treat everyone that brings amendments to the Business Plan to imply that they are electioneering. It is extremely discourteous when the person who brings it is not even standing for election. So, I ask Members to support it. I hope someone will second this and I ask the House for their support. Thank you.

The Bailiff:

Is the amendment seconded? [Seconded]

1.6.2 Deputy M. Tadier of St. Brelade:

A brilliant bit of electioneering from … oh no, it is not, is it? It is not a bit of electioneering. This is being done, I think, for correct motives and I congratulate Senator Shenton for this. We do not need to reiterate the very good work that is done by the many organisations in the Island to do with drugs and alcohol. I was also fortunate enough to be able to go along to Silkworth to listen to the testimonials of the individuals who have been affected. What was striking is that drug and alcohol dependency and addiction can affect anybody in society, whether you are wealthy, whether you are not wealthy. It can even affect States Members. I think Senator Shenton has made a very good case for the social importance of keeping this funding in place. He also touched on the economic argument and this really is a win-win situation socially, because it makes sense, it is the right thing to do, it is in keeping with our Strategic Plan and our objectives for looking after members of society for having an inclusive society where we all do our part to look after each other, but more to the point, it makes economic sense. Now, our system is not perfect at all. We know that if we can stop one person through preventing them either becoming dependent in the first place, if we can make an early intervention before somebody hits rock bottom, or if we can take somebody who has hit rock bottom and turn them around, which these services do and do very well, that is money in the bank, it is money in our bank, it is taxpayers’ money that is being saved. If we can stop people ending up within the prison system and, incidentally, many alcoholics and drug addicts and even people with mental health issues do end up in our prison system, not because they are criminals; because there is nowhere else for them to go. We know that, I have experienced it first hand, that people are being sent into custody for a couple of weeks. Okay, it dries them out, it puts them in prison, but they have got no business being in prison. There should be a secure and compassionate unit where they can go to and be looked after. As an Island, we are not even at that stage yet. We do not have a sufficient amount of resources, so to be cutting funding at this stage is completely retrograde. We need to be moving in the other direction. So, Senator Shenton is quite correct here. We should be supporting him both because it makes social and moral sense, but also it makes economic sense. £100,000 is a small price to pay for the many more savings we can make by getting people back on to their feet, back into work, being productive, becoming taxpayers again, and saving money from the prison system and associated dependencies that police, et cetera, that we would otherwise be spending our money on.

1.6.3 Deputy A.E. Pryke of Trinity:

I will not comment on part 1 of the amendment, other than to say how important I see the role of the third sector. This department, my department, works with a great number of private and charitable sectors and we value each single one of them. I think with working together and with this post that the voluntary sector are going to employ, it can only give us ways of improving our relationship and also looking ahead of where Health and Social Services wish to be in the future. Turning to the second part of this amendment, I am pleased, so far, that Members have spoken on how they want to support the Alcohol and Drugs Service and it may be strange to Members that I would like Members to reject it. This amendment - and I am sorry to say, Senator - is based on incorrect information. I know the Senator has had information from the front line, but unfortunately that information given to him was not correct. The C.S.R. has not resulted in a 20 per cent reduction in funding for the Alcohol and Drugs Service. In fact, between 2010 and 2011, spending has increased by £210,000. It is correct that a vacant counsellor’s post was removed in 2011, but this was balanced out by additional funds made available to enable a consultant psychiatrist to support the service. This represented a net increase of budget of 50 per cent. The total budget of the service for 2011 is over £1.8 million. But this spending needs to be reviewed in light of other funds made available to support those who misuse substances, both through Health and Social Services and other States departments. For example, a needle exchange programme, a specialist alcohol worker, arrest referral officer, youth worker, the methadone programme and, very importantly, residential rehabilitation, such as Silkworth Lodge and Margaret House. Yes, I was at the Silkworth Lodge A.G.M. (Annual General Meeting) or open evening that they had last week, and I too am very impressed about the work that they do there. It is a good example of how Health and Social Services has service level agreements with sector providers. I am acutely aware of the problems associated with substance misuse. We know, for example, that alcohol represents an increasing threat to the health and wellbeing of Islanders, which does include our young people. We do drink more than we should. We also know that in addition to addressing problems that have already occurred and supporting people to manage their addictions that we must invest time, energy and resources into whole population preventative measures. It is just not one issue. We need to look at the affordability and availability of alcohol if we are to reduce the harm it causes. One other thing I would like to mention too, an important way forward to tackle this problem is to look at prevention and ways of education, as Deputy Fox quite rightly said. The way forward for that is to have an up-to-date alcohol strategy. I know it was promised back at the beginning of the year, but at the moment it is with the Economic Adviser to do a bit more work. In that proposed alcohol strategy we are looking at reducing high levels of alcohol consumed across the population, help those who wish to drink less, protect children from alcohol-related harm, but to achieve this we need to work across more States departments and charitable organisations, such as Silkworth Lodge. Those departments, such as Home Affairs, to look at the licensing law; Education, Sport and Culture to educate our young people on the effects of alcohol; and the Economic Development Department to look at the cost of alcohol. It is not just one issue for one department. Also, it is not mentioned too that we need to work more closely with the G.P.s. They are the important points of contact in our primary care setting. They are the first point of contact. I think, with the Alcohol and Drugs Service, they do good service, but we need to target the resources to where it is needed, where we can look at those areas of prevention and education. The £100,000 is not the answer to this problem.

[12:15]

The alcohol strategy, I hope, will be coming back towards the end of the year and with some real concrete information of how we can do it. This will be a strategy going forward from 2011 to 2016. It is an area that I am concerned about. As a way forward, that is the way that we should be going forward, is putting more money into prevention and education. As a department, we are committed to find our C.S.R. savings. As I said, I am sorry that the Senator was given the wrong information and I know the Service Director will be apologising for that. All I say is I urge Members to reject this proposition. Thank you.

1.6.4 Senator S.C. Ferguson:

I do wonder whether the Senator has spoken with the chairman of Silkworth as to the best way forward. He happens to be one of the class of people usually so reviled by Deputy Pitman and he does an incredible job for the charity in both money and time. In fact, Silkworth Lodge has a new detoxification unit which will be opening shortly. It is an organisation that has a proper follow-up. You do not just detox them and throw them out; you follow-up properly. I do not know that that always happens in the public sector. Certainly, Silkworth is not judgmental and it is one of the best alcohol and drug rehabilitation units in the whole of the British Isles. [Approbation] Now, from my experience as a Centenier, the problem does often go back to the family. Yes, education, prevention and so forth, but throwing money at problems is not the answer. We do need to work smarter. And apropos the price of alcohol, I do not think that using taxation for behavioural changes is appropriate. That way lies dictatorship. Thank you.

1.6.5 Deputy K.C. Lewis of St. Saviour:

Many years ago I had a friend who sadly succumbed to drink. We got him in the programme, he did very well, but sadly had a relapse. He was one of those people that we all walked past in the parade who was sleeping it off in the sun, but sadly he was not sleeping it off; he overdid it and had a heart attack and suddenly we had lost him. I had a lift yesterday - a lift in spirits, that is - from a friend who was going the same way, been through the programme and looked terrific. So, it does work eventually. It is an uphill struggle all the way, the programme, but it does work. The more help we can give them the better. I will support this amendment. Thank you.

1.6.6 Senator P.F.C. Ozouf:

I would like to echo the words of the Minister for Health and Social Services and indeed the remarks from Senator Shenton. This amendment, I think, was born out of somewhat a frustration that the Senator could not bring forward a proposition in relation to the third sector and we will come to that. Suffice it to say, I am sorry that he is not going to be here to continue on some of the work that he has done. He and Senator Perchard did start the long process of improving in the Health and Social Services Department, but I do not think that it is entirely fair for him to say that it is the suits in the C.S.R, or the third sector co-ordinator was another suit. We all care about these issues and you do need an appropriate balance of front line staff and management to organise. Also, you do not need to centralise everything in relation to every problem that exists in the world. That is not at the heart of the big society initiatives that are being now widely spoken about. So, there is no doubt and there is, I doubt, no Member of this Assembly that does not think that there is not a drug and alcohol problem in Jersey and it needs a whole range of initiatives in order to deal with that. I have visited the Alcohol and Drugs Service to see what they do. I visited Silkworth Lodge. I have also spoken to people who are involved in Alcoholics Anonymous and other organisations. I am afraid that £100,000, additional staff in the Alcohol and Drugs Service, is not going to solve the problem. As other speakers have already spoken about, we need a range of initiatives, in education, licensing, et cetera. The whole of the genesis of the Green Paper - the excellent Green Paper - on the future of healthcare is about moving services to community-based services. There are, I have already mentioned, 2 third-sector organisations that work in this particular area. Indeed, we need to build capacity in these organisations because often people who do have alcohol and drug issues, they do not necessarily want to go to a States of Jersey organised service; they want to go to … they regard some of these organisations as more anonymous. They regard them as better for their own needs in terms of visiting and that is certainly the experience I have seen from people that I understand and I know that have been through the Silkworth Lodge excellent detox arrangements. Also, the Minister for Health also spoke about the importance of G.P.s. G.P.s are at the real front line in terms of primary care and preventative medicine. I do not know how many G.P.s we have in the Island, I cannot remember, but if it is 100, or however many it is, they are the front line soldiers in terms of preventative care. They are the individuals that need to be equipped, educated, continue to be updated in terms of the best ways of dealing with drug and alcohol problems. That is an effective way and that is a way that is going to touch the hundreds, if not thousands, of people from all sorts of walks of life in all sorts of age groups that suffer from the affliction of alcoholism. These debates are always difficult because one is encouraged … I understand and sympathise with the remarks from Deputy Lewis. One is almost in a position that one is encouraged to vote in favour of the amendments almost as a symbolic gesture of support for the underlying problem. In elections, some people say that you want none of the above. Well, I want none of what I am being presented with. I do not think the solution is £100,000 for the Alcohol and Drugs Service. There has already been additional resources put in there, but we need to do other things in order to deal with the issues of drug and alcohol services. Third-sector organisations, strengthening and improving G.P. knowledge in the new ways that G.P.s are being co-ordinated in the Island and they do excellent work; that is the solution. A vote against this proposition is not a vote against understanding, recognising, and wanting to do something about these terrible issues that afflicts not only Jersey society, but others too. Alcohol and drugs wreck lives. We need to do something about it. But simply putting £100,000 out of a proposition which was brought out of frustration, as Senator Shenton’s report clearly does on another matter, is not the solution.

1.6.7 Deputy A.E. Jeune of St. Brelade:

I would just like support the basis of that that has been said by the Minister for Health and Social Services and Senator Ferguson. Silkworth Lodge, as so many others have said, does sterling work and we ought to fully support them. More so, the one thing Jersey seems to do extremely well is write reports and strategies. What I would like to see is action on the reports and strategies rather than more reports and strategies. However, this particular amendment I will not be supporting. Thank you.

1.6.8 Deputy T.M. Pitman:

Again, I have to say that alcohol issues with young people are a much bigger problem than drugs, so I fully support any initiatives to alleviate those problems and I will be supporting my good friend, Senator Shenton, most wholeheartedly. I think there are a few red herrings being set running here to try and distract from other Members supporting him. Jersey has got a major problem with alcohol and that is not to undermine the great work the people at Silkworth Lodge do. However, really, the more money we put into this area the more money we are going to save ultimately. I think the amendment is well merited and it is well deserving of support. I am not quite sure what the dig about the 1(1)(k)s was from Senator Ferguson, but the far right are quite funny sometimes, but who knows; perhaps there is a former mercenary somewhere who could put some money in then we will have even more.

1.6.9 Senator B.I. Le Marquand:

The issues raised in the area of drug and alcohol are of course very significant from the point of view of the Home Affairs Department. Frankly, we do not know the size of the current drug addiction problem in Jersey; although the figure of 800 is quoted, it is a quotation from a report that was produced quite a number of years ago. I, for one, believe very much that we need as a priority to update our assessment of the size of the problem. We need to see whether we are succeeding in certain areas or failing, so that we have better information. That, of course, is not the proposition. I find the issue in relation to problems related to the use of alcohol very frustrating. For the record, I am going to put on the record that I am not a teetotal person. There are those who think I am; I am not. I was in the past, but I have not been for many years. [Laughter] I choose to drink milk on election nights after drinking red wine when I know that the press are about to descend on me en masse. [Laughter] So that puts that particular record straight. More important, I find the whole area of trying to tackle this undoubted major problem of our society very frustrating. We do not seem to be able to co-ordinate our response to issues like this. Some want to put the emphasis upon law and order and enforcement. Indeed, we do need better enforcement and I have been working on that recently in terms of the existing licensing laws. Some want to see revisions to the licensing laws and I am frustrated by the delays in that area. Some want to see improved treatment programmes, whether that is Silkworth Lodge or the Alcohol and Drugs Service, or whether it is better use of G.P.s. Some want to see a better education programme. Some want to see increases in taxation and in price and perhaps trying to ensure that there are not cheap offers from supermarkets that cause problems. For the record, I want to see all of those, but we do need a concerted policy to tackle this issue. Now, it may be that a future alcohol strategy will help in that, but I am undoubtedly with Deputy Jeune on this; the strategies alone are not enough. We have to have action. I believe that the next Council of Ministers needs to identify key issues - this may well be one of those - and to set up a cross-ministry of working parties to deliver results, to have clear ideas approved by the States and then to get on and achieve some results. I am utterly frustrated by our inability historically, to achieve that. We must do better than in the past. Having said all that, although I am obviously very supportive of the whole area of better counselling, better treatment, et cetera, et cetera, the Minister for Health and Social Services has assured us today that we have already been receiving increased funding in this area of the order of £210,000. We cannot keep on throwing money at problems and in the light of her assurances to that effect, with some regret, I am not able to support this amendment.

1.6.10 Connétable A.S. Crowcroft of St. Helier:

The Business Plan is the only way the States Assembly can require a Minister to reprioritise his or her spending. Effectively, the debate so far, while it lets Deputy Southern down on the statistics he requires, it has by consensus already produced more spending on the Tourism Investment Fund and some security for the Prison? Me! No Way! initiative. So, so far so good. I am concerned here that because certain remarks made by the Council of Ministers we are not going to see extra funding going into the front line of dealing with what we all agree is an extremely serious problem that affects the Island. We have had a number of reasons why we should not be supporting this additional funding. We were told that the work should be done by the G.P.s. Well, I do not know if I am the only Member who has this problem, but I do not go and see my G.P. unless I am in a lot of pain because it is really expensive.

[12:30]

I suspect that members of the public have the same problem. We do not have the kind of access to G.P.s that some people have who pay less for that service. Equally, we were told by the Minister for Health that the money that could have been spent on a counsellor is being spent on a consultant psychiatrist. Well, I am no expert, but if I have a drink or a drugs problem I think I would rather talk to a counsellor, someone who works in the kind of centres we have been talking about, rather than being seen by presumably a much more highly-paid member of staff and probably for far less of their time. We are told that £100,000 is not the answer. We are told that the figures are wrong. I look forward to hearing from the proposer of this amendment exactly where these problems are because certainly I have not heard yet from the Council of Ministers where the mistakes are on these figures. There was a veiled remark from Senator Ferguson who said that she knows the chairman and the chairman, we do not think, agrees with this amendment, but it was not as specific as that. So, I am not hearing …

Senator S.C. Ferguson:

A correction; I did not say that. I asked if the Senator had discussed with the chairman of Silkworth what a practical way forward would be.

The Connétable of St. Helier:

I am grateful for the correction, but I still think there was an implication that the amendment was not getting the full backing of the staff at Silkworth. I would be surprised if there was anybody working with people who are addicted to drink or drugs who would not appreciate the kind of services that are detailed on the last page of the amendment: 80 to 100 more people with alcohol and drug-related problems to be treated. I mean, who is going to say no to that? An extra 30 detoxes a year, a quicker response time, more drug users getting clean. Certainly, from St. Helier’s point of view, less of the indirect results of drug addiction. We have had some truly awful examples of members of the public, including children, being pricked by needles left by drug users in St. Helier’s parks. So, I really would implore the Council of Ministers to see what this is. It is an attempt by the elected Members to ask the Minister for Health to put extra money into dealing with drink and drugs treatment. To be told that they are going to employ a co-ordinator for the third sector, whatever that is, as someone said on the radio this morning, that does not give me any reassurance. What reassures me is the knowledge that if this amendment is approved there will be more people at the front line dealing with people with these problems. As the proposer said, it is not just about Parade Gardens. I think Deputy Lewis mentioned Parade Gardens. I think that is the tip of the iceberg. What we are looking at are problems that are going right through our society and so I think it would be churlish of this House not to agree with the Senator that this extra funding should be found. There is no question that Treasury and Resources will find a post that they can reprioritise. If the Minister is struggling, can he ask me afterwards - I am not going to mention them in public - but I know a couple that if they were in my organisation they would certainly be being reprioritised and redirected. So, I urge Members to support this amendment. It is certainly sending out the message that this House cares about the people who are trapped in addiction and I think we should give it our support.

1.6.11 Senator J.L. Perchard:

I have a problem with the way that the Senator has brought this proposition to the States. There is no doubt in following up what the Constable of St. Helier has just said, I care about those with addiction and I know Members here would share my concern and would wish to ensure that the States does everything it can to assist people who have this unhealthy addiction on drugs and alcohol. I have a problem with the way the Senator has brought this proposition and I want to quote from his report. He says: “The Government wastes money on ill-conceived grants, useless agencies, over regulation, luxury appointments, that provide little return” and I agree with him. Had the Senator identified some of this wasted money and doubled it, identified 2 lots of this wasted money, and said: “Instead of wasting this money on ill-conceived grants, useless agencies, over regulation, and luxury appointments” and directed that money towards funding this proposition I would have supported it. But we must remember that this is the Business Plan debate and we have responsibilities, a financial discipline within which we have to work, and to vote or to just ignore the disciplines that we are imposing upon ourselves and to effectively create a shopping list is a dangerous precedent. Now, I hope that the new Council of Ministers recognise that this area needs to have the torch shone on it and action needs to be taken. But to randomly decide on £100,000 without consulting the Minister and the senior officers at the department as to whether that is even enough to help solve this problem or address this issue is strange. I do think it would be very unprofessional of us to just vote £100,000 because it is a nice to have. It is a nice to have, but we have a financial discipline and constraints in which we have to work and we have to identify the need for this and the need for the exact amount of funding and address the issue properly. I cannot support the Senator. I do understand the problem and I know Members will be torn on this, but I just remind Members that without identifying the source of funding it is simply not possible to deliver.

1.6.12 Deputy G.P. Southern:

What wonderful words: “Not possible to deliver.” We are the Government of this Island and if we decide it is possible to deliver we can deliver. I wonder what attitude the good Senator took this time last year and which way he voted on my amendment, which was to stop the redundancy process on one drugs and alcohol counsellor in the service? The results, as I said at the time, will not just be an increase in waiting time; it will be a reduction in the number of people who can be treated for drug and alcohol dependency. What we did last year is probably listed fairly accurately here, but instead of the way Senator Shenton has presented it, I will just do it the other way around. Last year we voted to stop funding for a drug and alcohol counsellor, so perhaps 80 to 100 less people were given treatment. Perhaps 30 less detoxes occurred. Response time was lengthened for some in treatment and therefore more dropouts occurred. The worst thing you can do is have a substantial time delay between somebody realising they have a problem and committing to treatment. If the first treatment is 3 weeks down the line it has already gone. That person has lapsed already and he is not in a fit state for treatment. That is often the case. Fewer drug users getting clean. More drug users using on sickness benefits. No families seen to support them through the process of helping their son or daughter get clean. That is what we did last year. We have a chance, and we should thank Senator Shenton, to put that right this year. It was a mistake last year, we should not have done it, and it would be a mistake this year not to vote for this amendment. Of course we must put this commitment in. The last page and a half of this document says it absolutely accurately. We have got a problem and it is no use us saying: “I am ignoring the problem. Let it go away.” It will not go away. We need to put this treatment in there. We made a mistake this time last year. We can put it right. I plead with Members to put this money back in and improve our Alcohol and Drugs Service so that we can treat and do something about the problem. Bleeding hearts are not enough. We need action; this is the action.

1.6.13 Deputy P.J. Rondel of St. John:

This is a no-brainer and we should be accepting it and moving forward. I can recall, and I still do every time I go to Bonne Nuit to the B.A.T.D. Club, and every time I get down, I always check the beach for needles because over the years … and it is a very small beach, children jump off the quay on to the sand. I have found quite a number of needles on the beach. If, by putting this in place, we can save injuries to young children and young people who are swimmers and the like, then it is money well spent. It is money that will add benefit and save money in the long run. To me, this is a no-brainer. We should be going down this road and clean up as many people as it is possible. I cannot understand why this has not been accepted. I am not saying more than that, but to me it is a no-brainer.

1.6.14 The Deputy of St. Ouen:

Just very briefly. We are all very keen to ensure and deal with some of the issues that face this Island, including drugs and alcohol. However, there are times where just using money alone to deal with a problem is not sufficient. As we all recognised, as much as Government and the departments and the services, the agencies are involved, equally parents need to take some responsibility and individuals, indeed, that make up our community. We need to see and expect improvements in this area, but as already individuals who have spoken about, this needs to be clearly demonstrated. We need to target our resources to the best place. Indeed, early intervention has been recognised to be the best approach in this matter. It is not dealing with the problem once it exists and it is impacting on everybody, although that is necessary at times. We need to concentrate our efforts on making sure that our young people and adults recognise that they need to take responsibility for their lives and that drinking alcohol in excess is bad, not only for themselves but the community at large. I do not believe this proposal and amendment delivers that particular approach and therefore I will not be supporting it.

1.6.15 Deputy T.A. Vallois of St. Saviour:

I will just be extremely brief. I would just like to point out also that it is a shame that Senator Shenton did not also look at the good work that the Youth Inquiry Service do in terms of helping young people with regards to alcohol and the street pastors that go out of an evening to help those who are drinking excessively. It is a shame that he could not look at putting £100,000 into that area as well as a proper prevention area instead of the after-cause effect. I do agree that the Alcohol and Drugs Service is important. I think we have to recognise now what we have in place in terms of medium-term financial plans and the central contingency as well. I believe, and I hope to believe, whoever the next Minister for Health and Social Services is, if they identify that there is a lot of pressure on this service and they cannot fund it from within their own budget then they would seek to produce a business case to the Department for Treasury in order to increase the funding for this area to help those people with regards to alcohol and drugs. I would hope that any Minister would do that if their budgets were pressured. Therefore, in my view, without seeing how this is identified as being specifically targeted and the mentions of wasting money and throwing money at things, which the States have been extremely good at over the last 10 years, I believe the appropriate way to do this would be to allow the next Minister for Health and Social Services, if there is pressure on the Alcohol and Drugs Service during 2012, to put pressure on the Treasury and present a business case to take the money out of the central contingency funding.

The Bailiff:

Does any other Member wish to speak? It is 12.45, if other Members wish to speak. Unless we are going to complete this particular amendment before lunch.

[12:45]

The adjournment is proposed. Those Members in favour of adjourning now, kindly show? Those against? The appel is called for on whether to adjourn at this stage.

POUR: 16	CONTRE: 27	ABSTAIN: 1
Senator T.J. Le Main	Senator T.A. Le Sueur	Senator B.E. Shenton
Senator A. Breckon	Senator P.F. Routier
Connétable of St. Ouen	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Connétable of Trinity	Senator F.E. Cohen
Connétable of St. Martin	Senator J.L. Perchard
Connétable of St. Lawrence	Senator S.C. Ferguson
Connétable of St. Mary	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)	Senator B.I. Le Marquand
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Senator F.du H. Le Gresley
Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)	Connétable of St. Saviour
Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)	Connétable of St. Clement
Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)	Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)
Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)	Deputy of St. Martin
Deputy of St. John	Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Deputy J.A. Martin (H)
Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)	Deputy of St. Ouen
	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy S. Pitman (H)
	Deputy I.J. Gorst (C)
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
	Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)
	Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)
	Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)
	Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)

1.6.16 Deputy E.J. Noel of St. Lawrence:

I will be brief. I would just like to remind Members that we have increased effectively the budget to this area of the department by some 15 per cent; that is £210,000 between 2010 and 2011. We have enhanced the skills within this area at the request of the department employing a consultant psychiatrist to broaden the skill base. The whole area of alcohol and drug dependency will not be tackled by one sector of our service; it is an Island-wide issue. I have a draft of the Preventing Harm Caused by Alcohol on my desk to review; that will be coming out shortly. I urge Members, this is not the time to support, although with good intentions, Senator Shenton.

The Bailiff:

If no other Member wishes to speak then I call on Senator Shenton to reply.

1.6.17 Senator B.E. Shenton:

Deputy Tadier reiterated how the drug and alcohol abuse problem affects families as well as the individual. As he said, it is a win-win amendment and it is an amendment where you can invest to save because there is a high cost in treating drug offenders and alcohol offenders if they end up at La Moye or elsewhere. It is a win-win amendment because it is an invest to save not only money, but also save lives. That is what the whole point of the amendment is. The Minister for Health, the Deputy of Trinity, admitted that a vacant counsellor’s post was removed and we are trying to get back more counsellors and more people out there on the front line. I was very concerned that the funding for this sector, and I was perhaps just as guilty of it when I was Minister for Health, was not increasing in line with the problem. The problem was increasing at a far greater rate than the resources we were willing to put into it. What we need to do is today is deal with the problem …

The Deputy of Trinity:

Can I just make a point of order?

The Bailiff:

Senator, you have been asked to give way to the Minister for Health and Social Services. Do you wish to give way?

Senator B.E. Shenton:

Not really, no.

The Bailiff:

It appears he does not want to.

Senator B.E. Shenton:

As the figures state, you know, 42 Islanders every year die from alcohol-related problems. Senator Ferguson mentioned Silkworth Lodge and the chairman of Silkworth Lodge. I am not quite sure what that had to do with this actual amendment itself; I am talking about the Alcohol and Drugs Unit. I am not talking about Silkworth Lodge. I know it is all part of the same problem in as much as how you deal with the problem and how you treat the problem, but I am dealing with the actual people that are out there meeting the alcoholics and the drug users on the street on a face-to-face basis. I have been down to Silkworth Lodge every year for the past few years and heard some of the harrowing tales and what can happen when the Government invests in treatment and looking at remedies for this terrible affliction that hits people. I thank Deputy Lewis also for his support. Senator Ozouf’s speech helped me understand why people turn to drink. [Laughter] It was a lot of words, but it promised very little. It was everything tomorrow, but what we are trying to do is deal with things today. I think the Assistant Minister, Deputy Jeune, said: “What we want is action not words.” Well, this proposition, this amendment, this £100,000 will be action, it will bring action. It is not just words. It is not: “Let us go off and write a strategy.” When I joined the States 6 years ago one of the first things that was going to come to the House was the transport strategy. I still really have not seen anything major with regards to that strategy, although it has been brought to the House. I do not think though anything has changed very considerably over those 6 years. We could all wait for an alcohol strategy, but I think the problem would be so great by then that we would have to spend significantly more money than we are looking to spend today to sort it out. I think Senator Le Marquand also said that what we need is action, what we need is to do something, and this is trying to do something. I think what was quite sad is when you go off as a Senator, and certainly a Senator with a reputation that perhaps I have, and you speak to the front line services, you can speak to the management, but they are quite nervous about talking to you because they do not want to admit to the people at the very top that they are short of money, that they could do with more resources. It was not just the front line staff that were saying: “We need more resources here” it was people further up the ladder as well, but of course they have to toe the line. So, this is a worry, but I am not sure what the solution to that would be. The Constable of St. Helier said that this was an opportunity to reprioritise our spending. I think that is exactly what we should be doing because what we are looking to do here is put £100,000 into the Alcohol and Drug Service. I was quite interested by the comments of the Council of Ministers because I made a, as I tend to do, snide aside about the increase in the Treasury budget. I sort of wrote it down just to see if it would gain any reaction and it was quite fortunate it did because I said that, you know, the Treasury Department’s budget increased by £827,000. So, the Council of Ministers came back and said: “Oh yes, but that is money well spent because £600,000 of that is the strengthening of the tax policy and collection and shareholding monitoring department.” Well, that is £600,000. [Interruption] [Laughter] Hopefully that is someone phoning Senator Perchard to tell him that he is going to vote the wrong way. [Laughter] The Council of Ministers, they are quite happy to spend an extra £600,000 strengthening tax policy, and also they are looking to spend another £200,000 to cover the transfer of the Director of International Tax and Properties Finance and the staff to the department. As the Minister for Treasury just said, well, that is an investment to get more money in. But the job of Government is to deal with the problems faced by society. It is not just there as a business to collect money. We seem to be happier to invest in people to bring money in than we do to deal with the problems out there on the street. It is all right to sort of say: “Well, 7,500 people with drink problems over here. You know, teenage girls drinking more than their U.K. counterparts.” I mean, we have all heard stories about Jersey Live and the problems up there and the way culture has changed and kids now they get alcohol at 14 and 15 and they go out for pre-drinks. You get 16 year-olds, 15 year-olds, that will not go out unless they have had a glass of vodka or something else beforehand and it is not cool to go out unless you are slightly merry. We have got to start dealing with the problems, not writing strategies and spending all our resources on collecting money. This amendment is linked in with the third-sector co-ordinator because some of the charities have said that this money is not well spent and they would rather the money spent on the front line, but I will cover that when I come to the actual amendment. You know, Deputy Reed said: “It is down to education.” Well, we have probably got the worst child drink problem now than we have ever had in the history of the Island. There are probably more underage drinkers now than ever before. So, what does that say about the success of the education policy? What does that say about the fact that we invested enough money in it? You know, maybe this House will vote against this. Maybe this House will think that we need another report and we can come back in 5 years. I mean, fortunately, I will not be here in 5 years, or even in a few months, but, you know, I think we need to deal with this now. This proposition comes through me, but it comes from the front line. What we are voting for here at the end of the day is 80 or 100 more people with alcohol and drug problems in treatment, an extra 30 detoxes a year, quicker response times to see clients resulting in fewer dropouts, more drug users getting clean, more drug users off sickness benefits and back in employment, and Senator Ferguson said that she felt that a lot of the problems started with the family, and this is the whole point. By voting this money today the Alcohol and Drug Unit can recommence seeing families and carers, and give them advice and support which they so desperately need. So I thank all Members and I ask for the appel. Thank you.

The Bailiff:

The appel is called for. I would invite Members to return to their seats. The vote is on paragraph 2 of the second amendment lodged by Senator Shenton, and I ask the Greffier to open the voting.

POUR: 20	CONTRE: 27	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator B.E. Shenton	Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Senator F.E. Cohen	Senator P.F. Routier
Senator A. Breckon	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Connétable of St. Helier	Senator J.L. Perchard
Connétable of St. Martin	Senator S.C. Ferguson
Deputy of St. Martin	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)	Senator B.I. Le Marquand
Deputy J.A. Martin (H)	Senator F.du H. Le Gresley
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Connétable of St. Ouen
Deputy of St. Peter	Connétable of Trinity
Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)	Connétable of St. Brelade
Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire (H)	Connétable of St. Saviour
Deputy S. Pitman (H)	Connétable of St. Clement
Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)	Connétable of St. Lawrence
Deputy of St. John	Connétable of St. Mary
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)
Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)	Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)	Deputy of St. Ouen
Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)	Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)
Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)
	Deputy I.J. Gorst (C)
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
	Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)
	Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)

The Bailiff:

Now, Senator Shenton, I noticed in the course of your summary that there were interferences in the public address system and also that with a sleight of hand that would befit a conjuror, you moved a mobile device from your inside pocket to your drawer, [Laughter] and I just wondered whether the 2 were connected and whether you would accept.

Senator B.E. Shenton:

I am happy for you to prove that the 2 were connected, Sir. However, I will pay a fine if you deem it appropriate. [Laughter]

The Bailiff:

I think your name is added to the list. [Laughter]

LUNCHEON ADJOURNMENT PROPOSED

The Bailiff:

The adjournment is proposed. The States now stand adjourned until 2.15 p.m.

LUNCHEON ADJOURNMENT

[14:15]

1.7 Draft Annual Business Plan 2012 (P.123/2011): sixth amendment (P.123/2011 Amd.(6))

The Bailiff:

Very well, so I think we come next to amendment number 6 lodged by Deputy Southern and, Deputy, I understand there are one or 2 aspects which you may wish not to proceed with, is that right? So perhaps before I ask the Greffier to read out the amendments, you could let us know?

Deputy G.P. Southern:

Yes indeed, Sir. If you just bear with me while I get my papers in order, just for a second? Yes, given the detailed comments that have been submitted by the Minister for Health and Social Services, on reconsideration I do not intend to bring (a), (b), (c), (d). I am satisfied that they have been fully explained in the comments. Equally (g) and (h) I see as now sufficiently satisfactory. (l) and (m) have been clearly explained and I am happy with them and (u) appears to be sufficiently progressed as to be not controversial.

The Bailiff:

Very well, so what I will do then, if you agree is, I will ask the Greffier to read out the amendment but omitting those paragraphs that you have said you no longer no longer wish to proceed with so Members will only be considering the remaining paragraphs, so Deputy will you read out the amendment on that basis?

Deputy G.P. Southern:

Indeed, Sir.

The Greffier of the States:

Page 2 paragraph (a) after the words “withdrawn from the consolidated fund in 2012” insert the words “except for the net revenue expenditure of the Health and Social Services Department shall be increased by the amount shown below to enable the cancellation of the draft C.S.R. savings and user pays proposals for 2012”. Parts (a), (b), (c) and (d) have been withdrawn. “(e) Review Occupational Therapy Services, less essential S.L.A. (Service Level Agreement) annual increases and other efficiency savings - £100,000; (f) Review process pathways in the hospital to improve efficiency - £175,000”. Paragraphs (g) and (h) have been withdrawn. “(i) Re-design of Respite Services - £65,000; (j) A. and E. appropriate use of service - £50,000; (k) Workforce efficiencies review - £50,000”. Paragraphs (l) and (m) have been withdrawn. “(n) Patient Transport Review P.T.S. (Patient Transfer Services) provision (user pays) - £46,000; (o) A proposal to move smoking cessation support services into a community setting (user pays) - £94,000; (p) Introduce an A. and E. charging mechanism (user pays) - £94,000; (q) Review the thresholds for travel to the U.K. for elective surgery (user pays) - £94,000; (r) Consider the re-introduction of prescription charges by H. and S.S. (Health and Social Services) (user pays) - £78,000; (s) Surgical specialities: non-urgent cosmetic procedures (user pays) - £32,000; (t) Income generation initiatives within Community and Social Services (user pays) - £31,000”, and part (u) has been withdrawn, “and the net revenue expenditure of the Treasury and Resources Department (Provision for Restructuring Costs) be reduced by an equivalent sum in 2012.”

1.7.1 Deputy G.P. Southern:

If I may, I apologise to a certain extent, for bringing a lengthy amendment to the Annual Business Plan, but as Members I think would appreciate as I go through this amendment, there are some very serious matters concerned, not just about the proposals but about the manner in which the proposals have been presented. In particular, that they have been presented without full scoping at the Annual Business Plan, effectively meaning that the House is being asked to vote for proposals which are very vague indeed and almost give carte blanche to the Minister to go ahead and do things without coming back to the House ... and without the House knowing exactly what it has voted for, and I think that is a very important principle. That when things come to the House they are capable of being thoroughly examined and the case has been well presented. So, I come to this because of my work as Chairman of the Health, Social Services and Housing Scrutiny Committee, but this does not come with the panel’s acceptance. Because of the timing, this had to be written over the holiday period and had to be lodged in time for the Annual Business Plan debate. So it has not gone specifically to the H.S.S.H. (Health, Social Services and Housing) Panel, although we are and will produce a fuller version of this amendment, making some different, though similar, recommendations in due course. The history, of course, is my experience with the 2011 Annual Business Plan, and on that occasion I spent some time examining it and the rationale that accompanied it, which explained why certain measures were being taken in last year’s Annual Business Plan, and by and large there were things like risk analysis, a cost benefit analysis, a thoroughly argued case for each of the proposals that were brought. Rather naively, this year I thought a similar case would have been brought. The fact is, it has not been brought in the 2012 process and my concern is that the process has been inadequate and has failed to deliver what this House should be seeing. The total savings involved are in 2 parts and if Members will turn to my amendment, page 8, you will see them listed there. Although the Annual Business Plan lists the items (a) to (u) as actions to be taken as part of the Annual Business Plan either as a savings measure or as a user pays measure, within the annex to the Annual Business Plan those savings are pro-rata’d to particular service deliveries. So, for example, hospital inpatient services has a total savings of £177,000 and user pays £74,000. Now, the mechanism by which inpatient service is saving that amount, or charging that amount, is not made clear and that is one of the issues. However, the total is of the order of £2 million. So, why has this not been accompanied by a detailed analysis of why these moves are proposed, what risks are involved and what the cost/benefit involved is? The fact is that during the 2011 process, individual heads of department within Health and Social Services did their own job and scoped the savings proposals. This laid a heavy burden on them and in 2012 it was decided that a separate team needed to be set up in order to manage the comprehensive savings review process properly. In June of this year my panel wrote to the Minister for Health and Social Services to say where is the justification for these processes? What we were told about the structure and the process was that: “£1.2 million from the restructuring fund will be used to staff the programme management office for the period of 2 years, September 2011 to September 2013. A recruitment process is in train for a senior H.R. manager, an H.R. officer, a senior management accountant, an informatics manager, and 3 project managers and an administrative assistant. Recruitment into these posts will be by secondment in the first instance.” This was in response to a letter in June of this year. A new management team consisting of 8 members was supposed to be managing the whole process and in June this year was not in place. This came as no shock to us. “The Head of Programmes post has now been appointed [this was in June this year] and a 2-year contract will commence on 1st September.” So the overall team leader has just started working. “Due to the volume and complexity of work, it is not possible for existing employees to take on these roles in addition to their day-to-day business, hence this secondment route for recruitment.” Now, I am waiting to hear from the Minister for Health and Social Services how many of those total 9 posts are in place, because without them this C.S.R. process is stuck. Back in January, February of this year that was highlighted ... if Members turn to page 6 of my report they will see a traffic light review back in February of the whole process. They will see that the status was amber for 2012/2013 and the overall risk status, capability, capacity to project manage and deliver savings within departments for 2012/2013 projects was also at amber. On the resources, there is a big red light. We have not got the resources and it says there: “Lack of resources in the project management office after the end of February, due to staff member leaving and a temporary resource returning to the U.K.” It stuck in February. We had decided to review the C.S.R. process and we had stopped other work to see how the process was going.

[14:30]

By February we knew they were in trouble. By June, when we wrote to the department, we suspected they were equally in trouble because the team which was organising the project was not in place. I ask the Minister to tell us how many of those bodies are in place now? What prospects are there for us receiving the full scoping documents and the risk analysis attached to all of these savings, or in particular to these user pays proposals? That is an essential piece of information. However, what it illustrates is the fact that the whole process has fallen off the rails. This was started back towards the end of last year and should have been delivering properly defined and resourced packages in time for the Annual Business Plan, so that we can vote on these proposals with understanding and knowledge. The fact is that we have not got that at all and despite 6 months trying to examine these proposals - what they would do, what the risk analysis was - we have not been able to do so because, simply, the resource has not been in place. So back in February it was recognised there was a lack of capacity within the project management office to deliver, lack of project management capability within the 2012/2013 projects, and timescales for approval of restructuring fund services could lose momentum in the C.S.R. delivery. We were told in July the intention is to have fully scoped and approved project initiation documents in place by the end of 2011. Just think on it. The Annual Business Plan, which is the template, which is the recipe for the coming year, comes before this House to be accepted by Members in this House and we are told that project implementation documents, i.e. the scoping, the risk, the benefit analysis, will be in place by the end of 2011. I ask Members whether that is satisfactory. Now, that gives me a problem with deciding what to do with the Annual Business Plan, because I believe it is a thoroughly - what is the word I am looking for - unsafe process for us to be voting on particular packages when what we know about them is next to nothing and it is like giving the Minister a carte blanche to go away and do what she, in this case, he or she, she likes. The way I look at it is if this were any other document but the Annual Business Plan, it would have been ripe for a reference back. Item after item, not scoped, not scoped. We have not worked it out yet. We will tell you in December, we will tell you in November. Now, I will go through the cases individually, but the principle is absolutely frightening. It should not be coming to this department with unscoped, undeveloped suggestions, proposals as to what we should be doing, and some of these proposals are highly risky indeed. So, at the time of writing this amendment, I decided to put the whole of the proposals into my amendment. As I have just done, I have resolved some of the issues because now, the comments that have been produced go some way to alleviating my misgivings about these proposals. The question is, what do you do about a set of proposals which are carte blanche, which are vague, which are fog in an Annual Business Plan? Not that you can argue against them and say: “Reject it, this is not safe.” You would say: “Well, I cannot say that because I do not know enough about it to know whether it is safe or not, and yet I am going to vote on it.” That cannot be a safe process. What can we do? Can we ask the Minister for Treasury and Resources to act under; is it Article 11(8) of the Public Finances Law? No we cannot, because all we can do under that is ask the Minister to spend some more. You cannot say: “Do not include this, cut something.” So we are in a position where we are voting ... so what this proposal does is say, take out of some of these proposals, user pays in particular, which are unscoped and contain risks and only put them back in, and here the Minister for Treasury and Resources has the capacity to alter spending at any time during the year between various heads of expenditure. So, take the money out of his pot now and when those are scoped bring them back to the House saying: “This is what we are proposing and it will produce this saving.” So we will transfer money out of Health and Social Services because they made the saving, or they are about to make the saving accepted by this House, and we will put it back in the Minister for Treasury and Resources’ pot. After extensive discussion with the Greffe, this is all you can do with an Annual Business Plan. You cannot reject it out-of-hand, but you can rely on the Minister for Treasury and Resources to transfer money between the various pots and, I hope, bring the proposals back to the States so that we can decide whether we want to take that particular cut, or that particular user pays, and whether that is an appropriate way to proceed. So in particular, and I am very cynical about some of these proposals, proposal (e) says: “Review occupational therapy services less essential S.L.A. annual increases and other efficiency savings.” Review occupational therapy services. Now, we saw the word review last year. Review physiotherapy services was the way it was described and it amounted to the loss of 3 posts and one of the sports therapists. And what happened to waiting lists for physiotherapy? Ordinary physiotherapy went up by a factor of 5, from one week to a 5 week wait. Sports therapy, in order to save a mere £18,000, sports therapy waiting list has gone from a month to 12 months. How do I know this? Because my wife has recurring tendonitis. It is a sports injury, and she wants to stay fit, and she wants to dance, and she wants to play her tennis and she has had to wait to get to see the sports therapist. She is now waiting for a scan, but it took 12 months. That is what we did last year and that was a review of physiotherapy services. So, when it says review occupational therapy services, I want to know exactly what is proposed. And what do we get? In the Minister’s comments we get: “Review occupational therapy services. There is currently a vacancy for an occupational therapy assistant in special needs, a 10 hour post, sounds fine. This might mean the outcome of a review is likely: “Oh, we have not reviewed it.” Because of this it is timely to review the provision of occupational therapy within the special needs service. The outcome of the review is likely to indicate, we know roughly, a slight increase in waiting time for delivery of occupational therapy. In my head the warning bells are already sounding. A slight increase, an increase in the workload for the 2 main grade occupational therapists within the service. Increasing workload, where is the scope, what sort of measure is it, what negotiations have taken place with those occupational therapists? Then later on there are some possible economies of scale to help respond to any impact of this decision. Turn the page, if Members will examine page 4 of the comments: “Other efficiency savings are still very much in the early stages of development and negotiations. Full scoping is planned and will be undertaken by resources in the Programme Management Office. This scoping will include a review of our current service level agreements ensuring value for money. The analysis will look to increased community options for respite [so it links to respite care] and reduce the current reliance on provision of costly residential respite care. This is in line with evidence-based practice.” However, the key is other efficiency savings. We are being asked to vote for other efficiency savings which are in the early stages of development and negotiations where full scoping is planned and I say when you have got that scoping document done come back to the House and say: “This is how we want to restructure our occupational therapy service” and we will decide if that is acceptable, but no one, no one can vote for this surely confidence that we know what is going to happen at all, and yet this is the Annual Business Plan which dictates what is going to happen next time. That is just one of the proposals. I think that is a carte blanche for the Minister to do what she likes and if it is ever raised about waiting lists for occupational therapy she will come back to us and say: “Oh, yes, but you voted for it in the Annual Business Plan.” How many times have we heard that? You voted for it in the Annual Business Plan. If we vote for that we vote completely blind with no information about what it means. Similarly on (f): “Review process pathways in the hospital to improve efficiency.” Where it says: “Procurement is under way to engage the necessary expertise and the resource within the Programme Management Office has now been identified to support this work.” So, we are going to do something to improve process pathways and we have identified somebody to do it. What expertise does that person have? Let us hear what you are going to do there and how it will be made to work. Now, we have already mentioned respite services linked to occupational therapy but here we have, and I always get very cagey around respite services because I know what a tremendous demand carers have to put up with in terms of caring for the people in their charge, and respite is a vital element. So, on redesign respite service, another one of those magic words, “redesign”; what does it mean? In the past it sometimes means cuts. So, I would like to hear some more from the Minister before I am very much older on redesigning the respite services. “Following the successful development of a broader range of respite services for adults and special needs which now include residential short breaks, professional sitting services, community outreach services and additional support for people with complex and challenging behaviour there is the potential now to reorganise and rationalise [oh, another magic word, rationalise usually means give less] the use of the available resources, this will maximise the move away from high level use of residential short breaks to increasing the opportunities for better use of professional sitting services and community outreach services.” The question I have to ask in examining this particular process is what consultation has gone on and what reaction has the Minister got from those who need respite services, those carers in society that desperately need respite services, what consultation has gone on and what acceptance of these changes has occurred?

[14:45]

Then we have got option (j): “Accident and Emergency appropriate use of service. This project is to consider the high numbers of people attending A. and E. who would be better treated in primary care. Benchmark data indicates an unusually high volume of A. and E. attendees for the size of the population. The structure of primary care provision in the Island may account for this, i.e. if you go to the doctor you have to pay for it. Introducing and implementing triage protocols to ensure patients are treated by the appropriate service should reduce costs and ensure services are targeted to deliver the most effective patient care.” Listen to the caveat though: “Considerable work is required to understand the impact of factors such as low income service users and understand how cultural behaviours come into play. Programme Management Office resources have now been allocated to support this project and an in-depth feasibility and scoping exercise will be undertaken.” No scoping documents, what are the risks? What are the dangers? If somebody arrives with their child with a headache and is sent away: “Go and see your doctor in the morning” and develops meningitis overnight is that a risk? Has it been considered, is that what we are talking about? “You are suitable to get treatment now, you go away, see your doctor in the morning, you will be fine.” No detail. Scoping will be provided eventually ... when? Not today. Unsatisfactory, unsafe. Now, we get on to real user pays proposals and here we have another principle. It is the principle of charging for services. “Charging for services has not been fully scoped and an in-depth feasibility study is required. Therefore we are unable to answer this question [that we asked back in June] at the present time. The H.S.S.D. (Health and Social Services Department) Charges Law is an enabling law and will not itself allow or disallow charging for specific services. If approved, it will allow charging for certain services which have prior approval by the States. Even if the law is approved by the States this year it will be unlikely that the first charges under this law will be made until 2013. Charging for A. and E. services may not itself be dependent on the H.S.S.D. Charges Law as full project scoping may reveal a model allowing a user pays model which falls outside the need for new legislation.” Charging requires a change in the law. That change in the law has not come before this House. If we accept user pays charges in the Annual Business Plan effectively we are saying we agree at the same time to a charges law. In principle and also in practice because outlined here are 7 areas in which we will be trying to introduce charging. So, in principle and in practice. The assumption that this House of course will accept a change to the law which allows H.S.S.D. to charge. So, not only unscoped projects but some projects requiring a change in the law which we are asked to accept now in blind faith because we will produce something later in the year, and then even worse there are savings here under 2012, but even if we accepted the law in 2012 it would not be operational until 2013. So, what are these savings in 2012? Where have they come from? I hope the Minister will supply a full answer as to how the savings from user pays are to be generated in 2012 because according to her own response to our questions it will be unlikely that the first charges under the law will be made until 2013. So, another great big hole in these user pays. We have got item (n): “Patient transport review for charges user pays, any forthcoming proposer will ensure that those in need are eligible for transport, will be provided with transport and those who cannot afford to pay will not be excluded on those grounds.” At what level? How much earnings are we talking about? How will that be administered? Charge some patients and not others? No clue. Not a clue. Is that the right level? No, but we are asked to accept it. Charge for patient transport from now on. Absolutely blind. Introduce an Accident and Emergency charging mechanism, user pays, and this one has already seen daylight in the round robin of what are we going to do, the Green Paper consultation where some doctors pointed out that it is not their role to charge some patients. Can you imagine you are in A. and E., rightly or wrongly, we have got that other, is it appropriate, but: “How much do you earn? We are going to charge you. We are not going to charge you.” What is going on there? “We are not going to treat you because you say you cannot afford to pay.” We cannot prove it. How long can that work? Doctors have pointed out that that is very difficult to make work and that doctors will not be able to do that and will probably refuse to do that. They will treat people just in case. But, we are told there are a number of charging mechanisms in other jurisdictions including Guernsey which will be researched for their suitability locally. So, again future research. Vote for this now, we will do some research and then we will do it. No need to come back to you. You have accepted it in the Annual Business Plan. An in-depth feasibility and scoping exercise will be undertaken. The principle of user pays charges for health and social services will be returning to States Assembly for their future consideration in the form of a new draft charges law which will be debated and the assumption here is: “And of course you are going to accept it because we told you about it in the Annual Business Plan and you voted for it.” “Review thresholds for travel to the U.K. for elective surgery.” Elective surgery meaning essential surgery but not urgent surgery, things that we send you away for. “Programme Management Officers have now been allocated to support this project and a comprehensive review with an impact assessment [wish I had seen one] will be undertaken before any proposals are put forward.” Again, totally blind. At what level? How are you going to charge? What is the impact assessment? We need to know now if we are going to vote for this. “Consider the reintroduction of prescription charges by H.S.S. A working party which includes representation for Social Security and Health and Social Services has been formed to look into that issue. The first meeting has taken place and project management and accountability has been considered.” But, not the level of prescription charge, not who will be exceptions, what about old people, what about children? No consideration. We are just going to charge and you accept this principle today, Members of the States. I suggest that we do not. “Work is well under way on surgical specialities, non-urgent cosmetic procedures [which ones?] work is well under way and recommendations will be considered in October 2011.” This one we can have back very quickly. Recommendations will be there in October. Bring it back to the House. Do not ask us to vote now for something 2 months down the road. Then: “Income generation initiatives within Community and Social Services. Support has already been given by central C.S.R. to undertake an in-depth analysis of where income could be generated or savings made within the Community and Social Services. This review will be completed before the end of September.” So, it is barely a breath away. A fortnight’s time we will have some information on that as well and perhaps then you might want to vote for it but I certainly do not want to vote for it now. It may well be that other Scrutiny Panels have examined in-depth their Minister’s proposals and found extensive cases, justification, for the proposals that are being put forward. My panel in this particular area with Health and Social Services has been unable to scrutinise what is being proposed because the case simply has not been made. All we can scrutinise is a set of statements saying: “This is where we can charge” and what we are doing is scrutinising a pair of crossed fingers because there is no risk assessment, there is no cost benefit analysis, no business case has been presented, there is no scoping and that is a thoroughly unsatisfactory and unsafe way to proceed. That is the system we have got but in this case Health and Social Services have failed to bring the proper case before this House and it would be very, very unsafe to vote for any of these user pays charges or savings in the hope, and it can only be that, that they will be delivered in a reasonable and safe way. That is the case for rejecting some of these proposals. With that I thank you.

The Bailiff:

Is the amendment seconded? [Seconded]

1.7.2 Deputy A.E. Jeune:

I rise very quickly after the proposer because he raised an interesting point and I would like the Minister for Health and Social Services if she is going to respond to the proposer’s request for an update on staffing in the P.M.O. (Project Management Office). Would she please confirm that these are in fact secondment appointments from within the States and if she cannot make that confirmation would she say whether there are any J categories involved and the duration of the contracts that have been awarded? I listened to the Deputy in giving his speech to his amendment but I was disappointed that he did not feel that by redesigning and rationalising you can expect to have savings as a result and with the current economic climate we should all be looking at ways of doing that.

1.7.3 Senator P.F. Routier:

To a certain extent I have some sympathy with Deputy Southern’s approach to this because certainly when I first read this it did ring alarm bells for me but I probably approached it in a slightly different way to him whereby I think ... I am not sure whether he has met with the Minister or Assistant Ministers or the department to talk it through or not, or if he is just relying on the written comments, which is the right thing to do because you need to see it in writing to know what the actual position is, but there were a number of matters which caused me to have concern and I took the trouble to go and meet the Minister and Assistant Minister and the head of the Social Services Department.

[15:00]

The Deputy when he was proposing his long list of amendments started off by saying well he is not going to progress with some of them now because he is now reassured by what he has seen written that he now feels that it is safe to progress with those. I think if he would have taken the opportunity to go and meet with the Minister and the Assistant Minister he may have gained further assurances on some of the others, as I have done. There are a couple which are obviously areas which I know a fair bit about with going into respite services and redesign of special residential services and I hopefully have gained reassurances from the Minister and the Assistant Minister and the head of the Social Services Department but those services, which I am aware of, they have explained them to me. I just really would like an explanation again today so that we have it on record what those do mean and if they have an effect on services which are provided by Mencap and Les Amis. I have had assurances in private but it would be useful to have that again. I recognise that every department is having to face going through savings and what I think the Health and Social Services Department have done, they have been responsible in trying to ...

The Bailiff:

Sorry, Deputy, if you leave we will become inquorate.

Senator P.F. Routier:

I am glad we have managed to keep the quorum. I believe they have acted responsibly in carrying out the wish of this House. This House has decided to make savings along the line and we need to do that. With regard to the various items which are being tried to put back into the budget I think I have gained sufficient reassurances, other than one which people might expect me to comment about is the prescription charges. We do not know how that is going to be progressed. I think that would need to be obviously agreed with the same process with Social Security if that was to be progressed, so that if Social Security were to be reintroducing prescription charges that would need to be carried out in the same manner as across the board so that patients are treated equally. I think we have to have some faith in the department and in the Minister that they are doing these things responsibly and I have gained reassurances and I hope the Minister will continue to give those reassurances to the House today.

1.7.4 The Deputy of Trinity:

First of all I would like to say I am grateful that Deputy Southern has deferred or withdrawn some of his amendments but I understand that each vote will be taken individually. I shall not go into great detail on each proposal and I think it is fair enough to say that that information is outlined in my comments, but I will set out upfront why this amendment should be rejected in its entirety. I will not repeat this argument as we move through each individual vote. In his written report Deputy Southern makes a number of valid points of which I fully agree. In particular, he refers to a lack of rigour in the C.S.R. and user pays proposals and this lack of rigour is self-evident and the reason for it is also self-evident; that it does take time to recruit the additional staff needed to drive forward any C.S.R. proposals. Such delays are not uncommon in new initiatives but that does not mean to say that we should stop doing them. Of course we should do it. These staff, which include project managers, H.R. specialists and a merchant accountant, are now recruited and one post is still to be advertised. To answer Deputy Jeune’s question, it is my understanding but I would need to check that, most of them have been seconded and we have one (j) cat on a 2 year contract. They have started to work, and I very much stress, alongside Health and Social Services professional staff. By that I mean our doctors, nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, et cetera, to put the flesh on the bones. They are all working together to test out the viability of our proposed savings and assess the potential risks associated with them but, as we know from our 2011 C.S.R. proposals, things over time do change and I bring as an example the closure of our hydrotherapy pool. A different management model was identified that allowed us to keep it open and that is the point of it. Once you get down into the right detail it could change slightly to benefit the patients. Our 2012 smoking cessation project was at the outset intended to be user pays, but as we subsequently developed different ways of using our resources we are now looking to deliver savings rather than passing on cost to the clients, which are also offering more client choice. This is good news as an example of how C.S.R. is working to save money while preserving services. These changes have happened because our experts, our service managers and clinicians, have identified viable, more effective ways forward and it is for them to decide that right route. It is not for me, even though I do come from a nursing background, it is not for me, it is for them, how they will see it working. If this Assembly rejects this proposition, which I hope it will, it will support those staff to continue to create positive change. It will also continue to hold myself as Minister and Health and Social Services staff to account for delivering savings and efficiencies on behalf of the taxpayer. To accept this amendment is wrong. It is throwing the baby out with the water. We say we do not have all the answers but that is no reason for putting on hold our savings proposals. It simply takes away the requirement that has been put on to us to ask critical questions that we must ask if we are to grow, move forward, and stop and ask are there other ways of doing things and if there are can they be more efficient? If they are not that is fine but those critical questions have to be asked. We do not know yet the full details of the white paper. That will come out later this year but we do know the direction of travel. We know that the public recognises that change is required and that different ways must be found to fund the gap between what is needed and what we can afford. Each and every one of our C.S. (Comprehensive Spending) proposals concurs with that direction of travel. Part (j) of this amendment ensuring that appropriate use of A. and E. services is supported by part (p), the potential introduction of A. and E. charging mechanism. It will ensure some appropriate use of primary and secondary services, while saving money, and resulting in better, more appropriate care for patients. It is patients that matter at the end of day. We are not here to take away that. It defies logic not to support Health and Social Services in delivering these proposals. How can it be reasonable not to hold us to account for reducing our energy savings? But also, the benefits of a joint air/ambulance service with Guernsey … or we are towards the end of negotiations, I think, with Care Service, with Guernsey, using some of our facilities. It is good practice to look at ways if we can share with other of the Channel Islands. I understand the fear associated with anything that is perceived as a cut to front line services but the simple fact is that some of our services do need to be modernised. If you preserve them in aspic they become outdated, outmoded and inefficient. When we moved to close the occupational workshop at Valerie Band House, the Deputy argued that it should be kept open yet experts in the field, both within Health and Social Services and the third sector, opposed its continuation. They recognised that while a change was difficult - any change is difficult - it was, in the longer term, better for the clients, supporting them to move from dependence to independence. Just to reiterate that, there are a couple of clients that I met from Valerie Band only last week up at my farm who have praised that, who have done that move from dependence to independence. People who choose to work in the caring professions hold the best interests of patients and clients at heart. They are the very clinicians and social care experts working to help shape our C.S.R. proposals. They will not drive through poor proposals. Why should they? We cannot do that. They will lobby and campaign for what is needed. Senator Routier, who is not in this House, I know he has met us, as he said, and with the third sector we very much support Mencap and Les Amis, and that is what I would suggest to anybody, including Deputy Southern: that my door is always open and if there are issues that need to be raised then please do let me know. We as States Members should trust our clinicians to change or veto these proposals because, if they do not like them, rest assured they will tell me so if they are not workable or if they carry a great risk. We should not impose a blanket cancellation. The user pays proposals will come back to this Assembly but is it like putting the cart before the horse? Until we know what they are we cannot bring them back. I urge you to reject this amendment and all its component parts and as we move forward through the individual votes I urge you to bear in mind the commitment that my staff has in doing the right thing for our Island.

1.7.5 Senator S.C. Ferguson:

I am sorry the Minister has already spoken because I was going to ask … I cannot find it in the Business Plan or the annex or anywhere … where does the contract for the Lean Services Consultancy fit in and how much is that going to cost? While I have not had time to look into the details of the plan, I have also had intimations that the various proposals in the KPMG plan and the Business Plan have not been scoped and costed and they are just estimates. I really am concerned about all this and I look forward to hearing, perhaps, some answers to my queries and the rest of the debate.

1.7.6 Senator A. Breckon:

I was a member of Health Committee many years ago with the former Connétable of St. Saviour, Jack Roche, and I remember at the time we had done some budget exercises where the officers were asked to produce the same budget less 5 per cent, 10 per cent and 15 per cent. I notice Deputy Duhamel’s ears have pricked up so maybe he remembers similar exercises with other committees. When some of the information was presented to the committee of the day, within about 5 minutes we thought: “What are we doing sitting here discussing this stuff?” It was shroud-waving straight away, it was about elderly services and closing a ward, it was nothing to do with how many computers we had or how many reports we had or consultants or experts or whatever else. It is amazing how some of these big budget - Health included, Home Affairs have done it, the Minister for Treasury has done it - reports have been prepared by people we have never heard of about subjects we do not know much about, and apparently some of them did not either but we did not find out until we paid them, and all this stuff can be, sort of, magicked up.

[15:15]

Then what we have got here, and this is what concerns me, is we have got some very emotive issues. If you think, and I must declare an interest here, I am a former smoker, I have not smoked for 12 years and I did not get any help through the Health Services but it was difficult to pack in, and if anybody decides to do that then perhaps, if cost is an issue, if you need to pay the same price to get the medication to help to get you off it or you keep smoking, then sometimes it is not really an option; you just keep smoking, or some people do both. If we remove what is a subsidy to get people off say, for example, smoking cigarettes or cigars or a pipe, whatever, then there is going to be a cost to the Health system so we are taking away something but then we will bear the cost of that because it is proven that there are health issues associated with that. The other thing that concerns me, if we are going to start charging for various things, how many people will be involved in deciding whether or not somebody pays? In some of these it is a few thousand pounds, is the cost of implementing that and doing it equal to what we might get? I am not sure about some of these things as well, so it does concern me: if we are going to reintroduce prescription charges, where does that sit with Social Security, how can Health do it if Social Security do not? Is it going to apply to pensioners? Who are we going to target here, are we going to target people who cannot afford to pay for some of these things? We had this before, I think it was about the hydro pool and other things. Now, we have had numerous debates - and I am looking at Deputy Southern here - about school milk, but we have got big budgets and these are small numbers, even within Health’s budget. So I am sure the work has been done to prioritise, but if I wanted to divert attention if you flag up the emotive issues, then that does that quite nicely so the consultants still get their money, the reports still get done and there are still the funds to do these other things that we do not know about and I am sure will appear. I am pleased that Deputy Southern has gone through the various items he had because I was not sure whether I could support them all and I am not sure how he is going to ask for votes on this, whether it is going to be en bloc or he is going to …

The Bailiff:

I think he has indicated individually.

Senator A. Breckon:

Individually. Thank you, Sir. But, as I say, I think there is some merit in that because I am uncomfortable with some of these things because when we talk about user pays are the users vulnerable people? I am not sure. As Deputy Southern said, when you look at the Health headings in the Business Plan, they are short titles but big numbers, and if you talk about some of the elderly services or clinical services, there are many millions of pounds under there and I am sure that things could have perhaps been done - and, as I say, the Scrutiny Panel have not been able to examine it in detail - in perhaps another way. It is a shame that, although I appreciate the process that we get down to this detail, I can understand exactly why Deputy Southern is doing this and I will look at each one in turn when they come forward and decide accordingly. But I would ask Members to give them careful consideration because there are some emotive issues there and it could well be after a decision is made, because people will not perhaps be aware of the implications of some of this, so it will happen for the next year, and we have seen it with, I think, supplies of oxygen and other things where there was a different charging thing, and then people come forward and say: “Well, hang on, we never used to do this” or: “We never used to do that” and they were vulnerable people who were surviving at home with their life-saving equipment and supply of services. So I would ask Members to bear that in mind when we do go through this and hopefully vote accordingly and do not just vote against it because it is Deputy Southern.

1.7.7 Senator P.F.C. Ozouf:

This year’s Business Plan has been challenging for all departments. All departments have had to come forward because of the request to deal with the deficit with proposals for savings. The culture has changed over the last 18 months to 2 years and I would like to commend all Ministers and their staff across the whole of the public sector for coming forward with proposals to save money and to do things more efficiently. Real progress is being made and I am confident that the progress that has been started with the Comprehensive Spending Review is going to now irreversibly be changed in terms of delivering services more efficiently. The challenge for the Minister for Health and Social Services is perhaps a particularly special one: health departments across the world, faced with ageing societies, new medicines, the costs of healthcare rising, increasing drug costs, we are seeing costs in terms of health rising. In Jersey, that has been made even more difficult because of, frankly, a lack of progress over a number of years in reforming and modernising the Health Service. The progress has been started by Senator Perchard, it has to be said, and continued by the current Minister with a Green Paper, and now detailed proposals are being worked on in terms of a White Paper for reforming and modernising our healthcare services. But Health cannot simply continue to ask for more money in all areas simply to solve every single problem. Health is not immune from needing to deliver services more efficiently and more productively, and that they have done. On the one side - and we are going to be going on to debate these later on when we deal with the paragraph (a), as amended, as the Assembly wishes - we are going to be putting, and are putting, more money in Health in terms of the areas where they need to. In fact, Health is the major recipient of most of the growth areas. But they have had to come forward with proposals for savings and it is true that that has been a difficult cultural shift. The new Chief Executive and the Managing Director of the hospital are changing the culture within Health. They are requiring detailed business cases. They are also having to identify areas of saving. Deputy Southern is remaining unconvinced in terms of the ability for the Health and Social Services Department to make what we now have before us, which is about £909,000 worth of savings and I would say that while there is work to be done on some of the detail of these individual savings components, if the Assembly simply releases Health from the requirement to make these savings, there will be no motivation to do that. We need to keep Health on the path of making efficiencies and savings. I am confident, with the good work that is being done by Health in working up all of their savings proposals, they can and will deliver the efficiencies that are being put forward and we should not criticise, we should not in any way be negative towards the Minister for Health and Social Services and her department in relation to their ongoing work in delivering the savings. There are going to be some savings across all departments that are going to be difficult and more challenging to deliver than others, and that is absolutely clear, and some departments will have come forward with savings and will find other ways of delivering those savings in individual terms and that is, indeed, what the Health and Social Services Department has had a track record of doing in the last 12 months. It is difficult, as I have said in an earlier amendment, to deal with individual areas and to simply cherry-pick them and say: “That is an issue which we have support for in terms of different areas of Health and therefore we must not cut the budget.” That is just unrealistic; we need to ask Health on the one side to deliver healthcare services more efficiently across the board and we need, at the same time, to recognise that in other areas they need new money. I have not heard, really, many convincing arguments for not going with the savings targets that Health have put forward; in fact, as a result of Deputy Southern’s amendment, there is a good endeavour, a piece of work that has been carried out because we have an up-to-date assessment of where we are with the individual savings and Health has had to publish how they are going to deliver these individual areas and we are more informed in terms of where we are and where Health is as a result of Deputy Southern’s amendment. In that way, I thank him for doing some of the work that has been an important part of the ongoing oversight of the C.S.R., which is to ensure that all the individual savings proposals are, effectively, scored in terms of their delivery on an ongoing basis. I think we have to treat the package of remaining cuts as a whole, I think that we should be voting against all of the proposals by Deputy Southern to not remove funding, we need to encourage the Health and Social Services Department to continue on their path of streamlining healthcare and give them all the support we can in the delivery of their White Paper, which is going to be challenging, it is going to require more money but it is going to also require Health to improve their efficiency on an ongoing basis. I urge Members to reject all of the proposals brought forward by Deputy Southern and to wish the Minister for Health and Social Services and her department well in their endeavours to save money.

1.7.8 Senator F. du H. Le Gresley:

I really only wanted to pick up on the item - I am sorry, I have to put my glasses on - item (r): “Consider the reintroduction of prescription charges, £78,000.” If we are ever to have joined-up government, surely we should be seeing a similar C.S.R. proposal in the Social Security proposals, but it is not there, it is absent. I do not see, and I think other Members have mentioned this, how we can vote today to approve that Health and Social Services go off and introduce prescription charges on a user pays basis while in the general practice and the wider world prescription charges will remain. I do feel that on that particular one we cannot support it because it is something that is still under discussion, it is not in the Social Security C.S.R. savings proposals for next year and I believe that - and I think Senator Routier has spoken, and we know he knows a lot about changing prescription charges - it requires a proposition although, at the very least, a ministerial decision from the Minister for Social Security to introduce prescription charges, so I think we are jumping the gun a little bit on this one and I could not support that particular saving.

1.7.9 Deputy E.J. Noel:

I would just like to pick up a couple of points that have been made by previous speakers. Senator Ferguson mentioned our amendment (f) which is to review the process of pathways in hospitals to improve efficiency. Simply put, this is about introducing “Lean” throughout Health and Social Services. Lean does what it says on the tin: it is a methodology for reviewing services to remove unnecessary waste, and Lean has been used in many U.K. hospitals and has proven to deliver patient benefits while ensuring value for money. The department is already engaged in procuring the expertise needed to train the staff to carry out the Lean principles. I cannot give the cost of that to the Senator, because it would identify an individual’s salary effectively, but what I can give her is assurances that the savings would be net of all costs to provide that training. That, I hope, will address the queries of the good Senator. Senator Beckon mentioned about the introduction of prescription charges, and we are working along with our colleagues at Social Security to review the possibility of introducing prescription charges for hospital prescriptions. Any reintroduction of charges would have to be weighted alongside our long-term strategy direction, and that is going to be outlined in the forthcoming White Paper. On to Senator Le Gresley’s comment; Social Security do not have to put in the reintroduction of Scrutiny charges as a C.S.R. proposal, this is funded out of the Health Insurance Fund and, as such, would not be a revenue saving. So hopefully that helps you there, Senator. Senator Breckon also mentioned about oxygen and the use of subsidised products, and that has been a very good example of what has come out of the C.S.R. process, is that we have changed the way we get access to our clients of those subsidised products, and that has happened quite recently. In the end, that has resulted in a cheaper way of doing it for us and it is a better service for the client users, they have more choices in locations where they can get their subsidised product and they have a 7-day-a-week service. So I really would like just to recap on the words of my Minister, Deputy Pryke, that the services that we provide should not be: “Set in aspic.” We have to evolve as Health and Social Services best practice evolves and we have to keep up with that.

[15:30]

Part of the C.S.R. process is part of that route to providing better services at greater efficiency, and I urge Members to reject these proposals.

Senator S.C. Ferguson:

A point of clarification, Sir? Would the Assistant Minister … the “Lean Services” is a contract, it is not a salary, and it is taxpayers’ money. Would he please say how much it will cost?

Deputy A.E. Jeune:

Sir, can I ask another point of …?

The Bailiff:

One moment. Let us see if that clarification can be given.

Deputy E.J. Noel:

I will have to take advice on whether or not I can give that information out. I was under the impression that it was a service contract, so I am happy to provide that information but I need to check with my officers first.

The Bailiff:

Is it clarification you seek, Deputy Jeune?

Deputy A.E. Jeune:

Yes, Sir. Could Deputy Noel please advise, when he stated prescription charges in the hospital, is he referring to prescriptions as an inpatient or an outpatient or both?

Deputy E.J. Noel:

Possibly both; it may be it does need to be scoped.

1.7.10 Deputy M. Tadier:

I have been following the debate with interest. Generally, I am supportive of Deputy Southern’s proposal here because I think when we make cuts we make them at our peril and we have to be conscious of the unintended consequences of some of the things we are putting through. I have always maintained in the past that I am not somebody who will always vote against cuts, whatever they are, I think that there are definitely genuine efficiency savings that can be made and I think, for example, the hospital is a very good example of that. I do not profess to be an expert in the hospital but I know there are Members in the Assembly who have spoken on the issue. There are also members of the public who are well versed with what the issues are. Quite a common theme that I have found when I speak to people on the doorstep or at Parish surgeries is that the service that the hospital provides at the front line is excellent, the dedication of the staff is also excellent [Approbation] it is hopefully what we would expect, but it is always a pleasant surprise when we come into either direct contact or indirect contact with the staff to remember that. I do think that there is some justification for supporting things like part (d) or rather not supporting the removal of part (d) for the rationalisation of management posts because it does seem to me that, if there is efficiency to be had at the General Hospital and throughout the Health and Social Services Department, it is to do with perhaps over-administration and over-management in certain areas. That said, I am very wary when I see that we are making cuts, for example at the front line, and one example of that is Accident and Emergency. We know, of course, there are issues with Accident and Emergency not being used appropriately. It is also interesting to read that in the Green Paper which is coming forward they are talking about charging for Accident and Emergency, et cetera, and this is all interlinked. I am very wary to go down that route because certainly Accident and Emergency is not being used appropriately but that is because many members of our society, whether they are from Jersey or they are from elsewhere, simply cannot afford to go to the doctor, we know that certain cultures have a culture of going to the hospital for general needs anyway, and I am worried that if we go down that route of putting cuts in here, asking people to pay to use the Accident and Emergency if it is not appropriate, that we are going to be forcing the problem elsewhere. So I think we do have to be very mindful what we are voting for in the long run when it comes to cuts because sometimes there will be genuine efficiency savings which will be intertwined and interlinked with non-genuine efficiency savings, which will affect people but they will not immediately be recognised. So I am happy to support the general thrust of Deputy Southern’s amendment here but I do think it was necessary to qualify my support in that way.

The Bailiff:

Does any other Member wish to speak? Then I call upon Deputy Southern to reply.

1.7.11 Deputy G.P. Southern:

Where shall I start? Let us start with the response of the Deputy of Trinity who is, after all, the Minister for Health and Social Services. She suggested that somehow this was putting the cart before the horse. Rather the opposite: it is the Minister for Health and Social Services who has put the cart before the horse. The fact is she has failed to produce any evidence that the proposals that she has come forward with are scoped and viable and doable and safe. No business case, no risk assessment anywhere in this, just a bland statement: “These proposals will be scoped sometimes by September, sometimes by October, by the end of the year.” Where in that is a scrutiny process? We have tried for the last 6 months to examine them and we have not had anything worth examining; it is like knitting with fog. The reality is that if these are implemented, neither Scrutiny will be able to say: “Good idea, bad idea” or: “Have you worked on that, that looks a bit dodgy?” because they will be simply put into place. Nor will any Member of this House be able to say: “Hang on, I did not realise you meant that when you said changing respite services, rationalising respite services and I have just had 6 people on my phone, it has been red hot, saying ‘I have lost my service, where is my respite? It has gone.’” You do not get that chance. It will not come back to the House, the next time we will see the Minister for Health and Social Services she will be coming with an in-principle decision to apply charges and then, later on in the year, charges for this, that and the other, and she will be starting off: “Here is the result of the Annual Business Plan.” All of the speakers, including the Minister, have failed to note what I have been saying. I am neither for nor against any of the these proposals, except the ones I can judge and I have got enough information on, but that is about half of them, the rest simply have not got the evidence, not got the weight to be able to judge them and, as a matter of governance and effective use of this Chamber, I am ashamed that those have been brought because I cannot possibly vote for them because there is no detail there, I will be voting totally blind. If anybody in this House, including the Minister for Treasury and Resources, who seemed perfectly content with these proposals, can put their hand on their heart and say: “I am confident that what we are doing is right because I have seen the evidence” – and there is a word that has been missing from this debate – then I would be very surprised indeed. Indeed, if it were the other way round and the Minister for Treasury and Resources was examining a set of spending proposals by Health and Social Services, he would be thumping the desk saying: “Where is the detail? Why is this justified? Where is the business case? Where is the risk analysis?” But no, these are cuts, these are user pays, so they are all right then, you do not have to produce any evidence, just pick a figure out the air and say: “We will save so much by that.” It is government by magic, by invention. Roald Dahl would be impressed by the fiction that is contained in this section of the Annual Business Plan because it does not make any sense whatsoever. To come to this House and say: “Later on in the year we are bringing you a change of law, substantial change of law, to allow us to charge for this, that and the other, in principle and then in practice” we would be saying: “Very good. When you do that you can make the case, but do not come to us saying: ‘You have already voted for this in the Annual Business Plan.’” Because we will have done in principle and in practice. We have been warned. The Minister in her response added not one iota of additional detail to what we have got here. We are asked by Senator Routier to have some faith in the Minister. Where have I heard that before? Time and again in this Chamber over the past 9 years. We have changed to a ministerial system and we are still being asked not to look for evidence but to have faith in the Minister. I am sorry, but that is a joke and that is a recipe for bad governance. When I respond to words like “redesign” and “restructure” the key is not: “I do not want to restructure things, I do not want to redesign things and have it done more efficiently” the question is: “And where is the detail? Where is the how are you going to do this?” Until you see the how, you cannot judge it. The overriding principle that is behind this is that if we vote for these proposals, unamended, we will not see them again except in a ministerial order. We will be able to do nothing about them, whether we consider them right or wrong, because it will have been accepted in the Annual Business Plan and you cannot go back and unpick the Annual Business Plan, it is written in stone. If you do accept some of the amendments, what it will mean is that the Minister for Treasury and Resources, when he has seen the case and accepts that it is doable, it is sensible and it is the right way forward, you can transfer money between his pot and the Health and Social Services pot and say: “The savings will be made there” and he is motivated because it will put money back in his pot because the savings will be going through. It also gives this House a chance to say: “Ah, that is what it means, and at this level those charges are reasonable and acceptable, perfectly okay.” If we do not accept the amendments, we will never see them again and we will be able to do nothing about it, we may as well pack up and go home now if that is the case. Deputy Noel gave it all away when asked the question: “Is this inpatients or outpatients being charged for prescriptions?” and he said: “It could be either, it has not been scoped.” That applies to every one of these unscoped proposals, it could be anything, it has not been scoped, so vote with the Minister for Health and Social Services if you like, but bear in mind that you are voting blind and it could mean anything and you will never have the chance to do anything about it at all. Thank you. I would like the proposals taken individually, Sir, and I would like the appel on each one.

The Bailiff:

Very well, then. The appel is called for in relation to each subparagraph of the amendments lodged by Deputy Southern. I invite Members to return to their seats. The first vote will therefore be on paragraph (e): review occupational therapy service less essential increases and other efficiency savings - £100,000.

POUR: 13	CONTRE: 31	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator B.E. Shenton	Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Senator A. Breckon	Senator P.F. Routier
Connétable of St. Helier	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)	Senator T.J. Le Main
Deputy J.A. Martin (H)	Senator F.E. Cohen
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Senator S.C. Ferguson
Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire (H)	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Deputy S. Pitman (H)	Senator B.I. Le Marquand
Deputy of St. John	Senator F.du H. Le Gresley
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Connétable of St. Ouen
Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)	Connétable of Trinity
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)	Connétable of St. Brelade
Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)	Connétable of St. Saviour
	Connétable of St. Clement
	Connétable of St. Lawrence
	Connétable of St. Mary
	Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)
	Deputy of St. Martin
	Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
	Deputy of St. Ouen
	Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)
	Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)
	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)
	Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
	Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)
	Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)
	Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)

The Bailiff:

Very well, then. The Greffier will then reset the machine and we will move on to (f), which is: review process pathways in the hospital to improve efficiency.

POUR: 9	CONTRE: 36	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator B.E. Shenton	Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Senator A. Breckon	Senator P.F. Routier
Deputy of St. Martin	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Senator T.J. Le Main
Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire (H)	Senator F.E. Cohen
Deputy S. Pitman (H)	Senator S.C. Ferguson
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)	Senator B.I. Le Marquand
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)	Senator F.du H. Le Gresley
	Connétable of St. Ouen
	Connétable of St. Helier
	Connétable of Trinity
	Connétable of St. Brelade
	Connétable of St. Saviour
	Connétable of St. Clement
	Connétable of St. Lawrence
	Connétable of St. Mary
	Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)
	Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)
	Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
	Deputy J.A. Martin (H)
	Deputy of St. Ouen
	Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)
	Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)
	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)
	Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)
	Deputy I.J. Gorst (C)
	Deputy of St. John
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
	Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)
	Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)
	Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)
	Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)

The Bailiff:

Then the next one to be voted on is subparagraph (i) redesign of respite services, and the Greffier will open the voting.

[15:45]

POUR: 19	CONTRE: 25	ABSTAIN: 1
Senator T.J. Le Main	Senator T.A. Le Sueur	Senator P.F. Routier
Senator B.E. Shenton	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Senator A. Breckon	Senator F.E. Cohen
Connétable of St. Helier	Senator S.C. Ferguson
Deputy of St. Martin	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)	Senator B.I. Le Marquand
Deputy J.A. Martin (H)	Senator F.du H. Le Gresley
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Connétable of St. Ouen
Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)	Connétable of Trinity
Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire (H)	Connétable of St. Brelade
Deputy S. Pitman (H)	Connétable of St. Saviour
Deputy of St. John	Connétable of St. Clement
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Connétable of St. Lawrence
Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)	Connétable of St. Mary
Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)	Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)	Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)	Deputy of St. Ouen
Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)	Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)
Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)
	Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)
	Deputy I.J. Gorst (C)
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)

The Bailiff:

Very well. Then we move next to (j) A. and E. appropriate use of service, and the Greffier will open the voting.

POUR: 12	CONTRE: 33	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator B.E. Shenton	Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Senator A. Breckon	Senator P.F. Routier
Senator B.I. Le Marquand	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Connétable of St. Helier	Senator T.J. Le Main
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Senator F.E. Cohen
Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire (H)	Senator S.C. Ferguson
Deputy S. Pitman (H)	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Senator F.du H. Le Gresley
Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)	Connétable of St. Ouen
Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)	Connétable of Trinity
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)	Connétable of St. Brelade
Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)	Connétable of St. Saviour
	Connétable of St. Clement
	Connétable of St. Lawrence
	Connétable of St. Mary
	Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)
	Deputy of St. Martin
	Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)
	Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
	Deputy J.A. Martin (H)
	Deputy of St. Ouen
	Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)
	Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)
	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)
	Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)
	Deputy I.J. Gorst (C)
	Deputy of St. John
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
	Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)
	Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)

The Bailiff:

Very well. Then we move next to subparagraph (k) which is workforce efficiencies review, and the Greffier will open the voting.

POUR: 9	CONTRE: 35	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator B.E. Shenton	Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Senator A. Breckon	Senator P.F. Routier
Deputy of St. Martin	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Senator T.J. Le Main
Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire (H)	Senator F.E. Cohen
Deputy S. Pitman (H)	Senator S.C. Ferguson
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)	Senator B.I. Le Marquand
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)	Senator F.du H. Le Gresley
	Connétable of St. Ouen
	Connétable of St. Helier
	Connétable of Trinity
	Connétable of St. Brelade
	Connétable of St. Saviour
	Connétable of St. Clement
	Connétable of St. Lawrence
	Connétable of St. Mary
	Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)
	Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)
	Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
	Deputy J.A. Martin (H)
	Deputy of St. Ouen
	Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)
	Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)
	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)
	Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)
	Deputy I.J. Gorst (C)
	Deputy of St. John
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
	Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)
	Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)
	Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)

The Bailiff:

(l) and (m) have been withdrawn, so we move next to (n) which is patient transport review P.T.S. provision (user pays), and the Greffier will open the voting.

POUR: 17	CONTRE: 28	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator B.E. Shenton	Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Senator A. Breckon	Senator P.F. Routier
Senator F.du H. Le Gresley	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Connétable of St. Helier	Senator T.J. Le Main
Connétable of St. Lawrence	Senator F.E. Cohen
Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)	Senator S.C. Ferguson
Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Deputy J.A. Martin (H)	Senator B.I. Le Marquand
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Connétable of St. Ouen
Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire (H)	Connétable of Trinity
Deputy S. Pitman (H)	Connétable of St. Brelade
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Connétable of St. Saviour
Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)	Connétable of St. Clement
Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)	Connétable of St. Mary
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)	Deputy of St. Martin
Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)	Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)	Deputy of St. Ouen
	Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)
	Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)
	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)
	Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)
	Deputy I.J. Gorst (C)
	Deputy of St. John
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
	Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)

The Bailiff:

So we move next then to (o) the proposal to move smoking cessation support services into a community setting (user pays), and the Greffier will open the voting.

POUR: 8	CONTRE: 37	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator B.E. Shenton	Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Senator A. Breckon	Senator P.F. Routier
Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Senator T.J. Le Main
Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire (H)	Senator F.E. Cohen
Deputy S. Pitman (H)	Senator S.C. Ferguson
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)	Senator B.I. Le Marquand
	Senator F.du H. Le Gresley
	Connétable of St. Ouen
	Connétable of St. Helier
	Connétable of Trinity
	Connétable of St. Brelade
	Connétable of St. Saviour
	Connétable of St. Clement
	Connétable of St. Lawrence
	Connétable of St. Mary
	Deputy of St. Martin
	Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)
	Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
	Deputy J.A. Martin (H)
	Deputy of St. Ouen
	Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)
	Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)
	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)
	Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)
	Deputy I.J. Gorst (C)
	Deputy of St. John
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
	Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)
	Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)
	Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)
	Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)

The Bailiff:

Then we come next to (p) introduce an A. and E. charging mechanism (user pays), and the Greffier will open the voting.

POUR: 14	CONTRE: 31	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator B.E. Shenton	Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Senator A. Breckon	Senator P.F. Routier
Senator B.I. Le Marquand	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Senator F.du H. Le Gresley	Senator T.J. Le Main
Connétable of St. Helier	Senator F.E. Cohen
Connétable of St. Lawrence	Senator S.C. Ferguson
Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Deputy J.A. Martin (H)	Connétable of St. Ouen
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Connétable of Trinity
Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire (H)	Connétable of St. Brelade
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Connétable of St. Saviour
Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)	Connétable of St. Clement
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)	Connétable of St. Mary
Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)	Deputy of St. Martin
	Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)
	Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
	Deputy of St. Ouen
	Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)
	Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)
	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)
	Deputy S. Pitman (H)
	Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)
	Deputy I.J. Gorst (C)
	Deputy of St. John
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
	Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)
	Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)
	Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)

The Bailiff:

Then we come next to (q) review the thresholds for travel to the U.K. for elective surgery (user pays), and the Greffier will open the voting.

POUR: 11	CONTRE: 34	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator B.E. Shenton	Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Senator A. Breckon	Senator P.F. Routier
Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Deputy of St. Martin	Senator T.J. Le Main
Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)	Senator F.E. Cohen
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Senator S.C. Ferguson
Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire (H)	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Deputy S. Pitman (H)	Senator B.I. Le Marquand
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Senator F.du H. Le Gresley
Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)	Connétable of St. Ouen
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)	Connétable of St. Helier
	Connétable of Trinity
	Connétable of St. Brelade
	Connétable of St. Saviour
	Connétable of St. Clement
	Connétable of St. Lawrence
	Connétable of St. Mary
	Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
	Deputy J.A. Martin (H)
	Deputy of St. Ouen
	Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)
	Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)
	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)
	Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)
	Deputy I.J. Gorst (C)
	Deputy of St. John
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
	Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)
	Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)
	Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)

The Bailiff:

We move next to subparagraph (r) consider the reintroduction of prescription charges by H. and S.S. (user pays), and the Greffier will open the voting.

POUR: 17	CONTRE: 26	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator P.F. Routier	Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Senator B.E. Shenton	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Senator A. Breckon	Senator T.J. Le Main
Senator B.I. Le Marquand	Senator F.E. Cohen
Senator F.du H. Le Gresley	Senator S.C. Ferguson
Connétable of Trinity	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)	Connétable of St. Ouen
Deputy of St. Martin	Connétable of St. Helier
Deputy J.A. Martin (H)	Connétable of St. Brelade
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Connétable of St. Saviour
Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire (H)	Connétable of St. Clement
Deputy S. Pitman (H)	Connétable of St. Lawrence
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)
Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)	Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)	Deputy of St. Ouen
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)	Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)
Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)	Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)
	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)
	Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)
	Deputy I.J. Gorst (C)
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
	Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)
	Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)

The Bailiff:

Then we move next to subparagraph (s) surgical specialities, non-urgent cosmetic procedures (user pays), and the Greffier will open the voting.

POUR: 8	CONTRE: 36	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator B.E. Shenton	Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)	Senator P.F. Routier
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire (H)	Senator T.J. Le Main
Deputy S. Pitman (H)	Senator F.E. Cohen
Deputy of St. John	Senator A. Breckon
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Senator S.C. Ferguson
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
	Senator B.I. Le Marquand
	Senator F.du H. Le Gresley
	Connétable of St. Ouen
	Connétable of St. Helier
	Connétable of Trinity
	Connétable of St. Brelade
	Connétable of St. Saviour
	Connétable of St. Clement
	Connétable of St. Lawrence
	Deputy of St. Martin
	Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)
	Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
	Deputy J.A. Martin (H)
	Deputy of St. Ouen
	Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)
	Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)
	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)
	Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)
	Deputy I.J. Gorst (C)
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
	Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)
	Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)
	Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)
	Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)

The Bailiff:

Then we move to subparagraph (t) finally, which is income generation initiatives within community and Social Services (user pays), and the Greffier will open the voting.

POUR: 12	CONTRE: 33	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator B.E. Shenton	Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Senator A. Breckon	Senator P.F. Routier
Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)	Senator T.J. Le Main
Deputy J.A. Martin (H)	Senator F.E. Cohen
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Senator S.C. Ferguson
Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire (H)	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Deputy S. Pitman (H)	Senator B.I. Le Marquand
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Senator F.du H. Le Gresley
Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)	Connétable of St. Ouen
Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)	Connétable of St. Helier
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)	Connétable of Trinity
	Connétable of St. Brelade
	Connétable of St. Saviour
	Connétable of St. Clement
	Connétable of St. Lawrence
	Connétable of St. Mary
	Deputy of St. Martin
	Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
	Deputy of St. Ouen
	Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)
	Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)
	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)
	Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)
	Deputy I.J. Gorst (C)
	Deputy of St. John
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
	Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)
	Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)
	Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)

1.8 Draft Annual Business Plan 2012 (P.123/2011): eleventh amendment (P.123/2011 Amd.(11))

The Bailiff:

Very well, that completes the vote on Deputy Southern’s amendment. So we come next to amendment 11 lodged by Deputy Higgins, and I will ask the Greffier to read the amendment

The Greffier of the States:

Page 2 paragraph (a), after the words “withdrawn from the consolidated fund in 2012” insert the words “except that the net revenue expenditure of the Home Affairs Department shall be increased by £39,000 in order to cancel the proposed C.S.R. saving ‘Jersey Field Squadron - Military Liaison Officer staff reduction’ and the total net revenue of the Treasury and Resources Department (Provision for Central Reserve) shall be reduced by £39,000 for 2012”.

1.8.1 Deputy M.R. Higgins:

As anyone who knows me well and is aware of my politics, it is basically pretty much in the centre. As an economist I fall within the Keynesian Camp, on social issues I am slightly to the left but on defence or military matters, I am firmly to the right of centre. I am also a staunch supporter of all 3 of our armed forces, army, navy and air force, having had relatives who have served in all 3 services, and I admire our servicemen doing their duty at home and particularly overseas in Afghanistan and in other areas where active service operations are being conducted. It therefore grieves me to have to bring this amendment to the States and make some of the written comments I have made and some of the oral comments I shall make this afternoon. But I am angered by what I believe is a false economy and a cynical manipulation of the Comprehensive Spending Review. Now, I fully supported the C.S.R. from its inception because I believe we need to constantly review States spending to ensure that money raised from taxpayers is spent wisely and is not wasted and that we think outside our departmental silos. I will return to this point later but let me first of all discuss the role and contribution to Jersey of having a Military Liaison Officer. The post of Military Liaison Officer is little known to most States Members and Islanders, it was established formally in 1998 and, with the advent of ministerial government, became a standalone position within the Home Affairs Department before becoming fully absorbed into the Jersey Field Squadron in 2008. The Military Liaison Officer acts as a vital link between military units visiting the Island and the Island authorities and community groups with whom they interact. His tasks are many and varied. He has, for example, arranged for the use of accommodation and facilities in the Island by regular, territorial or reserve military units who are holding camps in the Island. He has arranged for community projects to be undertaken by visiting military units such as establishing safe cliff pathways for walkers, constructing new facilities at Durrell and various scout facilities around the Island, and also things such as the helicopter lift of the gun barrels for the Channel Island Occupation Society from below cliffs so that they can be restored in gun battery positions. He has also organised air experience flying for cadet forces in the Island and support for the Liberation Day celebrations, the Battle of Flowers, and the Jersey International Air Display. He has also arranged pre-deployment camps and post-deployment relaxation for military units. During the tenure of Mr. Ian Robinson, who I consider to be a very dynamic and active Military Liaison Officer, some 10,000 bed nights of accommodation were provided in one year alone and the military forces who came to the Island made their direct and indirect financial contribution to the Island economy, estimated to be in the region of some £1 million, in addition to the community work they undertook and the goodwill they generated. In addition to this, many of the visiting military personnel who came to the Island on duty also subsequently returned later with their families as tourists, thus further contributing to the Island’s economy. Now, while it is recognised that in recent years less military personnel a year have visited the Island partly as a result of defence cuts but largely, in my opinion, due to the lack of interest or dynamism on the part of the Jersey Field Squadron, who absorbed the post with the result that less money has been spent in the Island. That said, the post still generates considerably more money than the £39,000 that the Minister for Home Affairs is trying to save by eliminating the post. It is, therefore, in my opinion, a false economy and the money and the post should be retained. I do believe, however, that the post should be removed from the Jersey Field Squadron and re-established as a standalone position within the Home Affairs Department with a direct reporting line to the Minister, and that a new dynamic Military Liaison Officer should be appointed. I also believe that the transfer of this post to the Jersey Field Squadron some 3 years ago and its subsequent sacrifice as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review was a cynical manipulation of the C.S.R. process: you acquire a post and then dispose of it as a saving. I also happen to believe that this unit has underperformed since it was formed and that genuine savings under the C.S.R. could have been made by eliminating the unit’s administration or quartermaster positions, or the very generous housing subsidies given to permanent military or territorial army staff. In answer to a written question that I gave to the Minister this week, we were told that £190,000 approximately has been paid to lease one property for the T.A. (Territorial Army) between 2001 and 2010 and almost £500,000 has been paid in maintenance costs on 4 other States-owned properties that is used as married quarters for people involved with the T.A. in the same period. So although I am a supporter of the armed forces, I am also not blind to its failings and I have always believed in being even-handed; I will give praise and credit where it is due and criticism where it is warranted. The Jersey Field Squadron, in my opinion, with the notable exception of the soldiers who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, has underperformed since it was formed. It has massed through administrative means its actual numbers and it has been just as economical with the answers that are contained in the comments paper from the Council of Ministers. If you look at appendix A and you see the list of units that have visited the Island, I happen to know for a fact that some of these units that came here had next to no contact with the T.A. If you just look at the very last one, on 6th to 9th September, the R.A.F. (Royal Air Force) Squadronaires, the T.A. played no role in that, neither did the Military Liaison Officer, they parked their truck at the T.A. headquarters, that is what it amounted to. We are also being told of some of the other activities: 948 Air Cadets, band performances done by the T.A. Island Military Liaison Officer, not so. It was done by the Local Air Training Squadron and it was done though the Battle of Flowers. I wonder how many … when I get time, I will have a look at these later … but what I am trying to say is that these are visiting military units, they are claiming credit for doing all these things and saying that they are still carrying on performing that function that was once done by a very active Military Liaison Officer. That is not true, the post has been absorbed into a position and, despite what the Minister says in the comments paper, there is no way that they have the time or the inclination to carry out the full function of this post. I believe that if the post was re-established as a standalone position and an active person was recruited, it would generate 10 or 20 times more than the actual cost of the post and, therefore, I believe that the post should be reinstated and the changes made. I would also like to say whoever produced this paper should also be shot - this is the comments paper - quite simply, some of the information contained in it should never be put in the public.

[16:00]

The Bailiff:

Is the amendment seconded? [Seconded] I had seen Deputy Hilton first.

1.8.2 Deputy J.A. Hilton:

This is a genuine financial saving which has become possible because of the retirement of the Military Liaison Officer. The essential core activities of that role are being dealt with by an existing officer who is now working additional hours. The change in structure has occurred with no real effect in arrangements for visiting army groups, as is shown by the comments. The role in the past has grown by taking on other functions which are not core functions and can be dealt with in other ways. There are very strong support groups in Jersey in existence in relation to the armed forces with a great fund of goodwill and I have no doubt that the side of the area of growth can be covered by these. This is exactly the sort of saving which departments should be finding, I would therefore ask that you do not support this amendment.

1.8.3 Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

I am going to be supporting the amendment because I do think that the Deputy is right to raise this issue. I also would say - I know we are looking to cut down on long speeches, I would not want this interpreted as an election speech - I certainly am concerned about the information that was put into the comments from the Council of Ministers; that level of detail about the types of units that it gives I think is just absolutely wholly irresponsible, that kind of information at that level of detail is asking for trouble. When I was in the Royal Marines, shortly after leaving, 11 of my friends were killed by the I.R.A. (Irish Republican Army) and my experience and my friends’ experiences were certainly borne out by the fact that you just do not let this kind of information out into the public domain. Issues in relation to international terrorism are certainly on the front burner but we should not forget that there are certain elements within our own historic geography that remain very active and I think that this level of comment from the Council of Ministers needs to be reviewed and it was wholly irresponsible.

1.8.4 Senator S.C. Ferguson:

The servicemen come in and assist at events such as the air display or wherever they are asked to and then they come back on holiday bringing their families. I had dinner with some of them last week. They come over on visits and they work on public projects. Yes, as the Assistant Minister said, a lot of this is due to the very active recently-retired Military Liaison Officer, but there is no reason why this cannot continue. I really feel that the work that has been done by this particular gentleman … people will have noticed that there was a small aircraft carrier last year at the air display, that was the retirement present for our recently-retired Military Liaison Officer, he asked for that. With an active Military Liaison Officer we get a lot of help with projects in the Island, we get a lot of visitors and I rather think that, really, the Tourism Department should also be involved with this, not just Home Affairs. But I will support this amendment.

1.8.5 Deputy S. Power:

I had the privilege of meeting the former Military Liaison Officer twice over this issue and, in actual fact, he came to see me because he had such strong views on this and I did not realise, I have to admit in my naiveté, the value of this role and I was grateful that he was able to sit down with me and explain it to me. If one does a simple calculation on the information provided by the Council of Ministers on the appendix on the back of their comments, you will total up 356 people visited, but if you average it out at about a week, it is less than 3,000 bed nights, whereas when Mr. Robinson was in office, it was over 10,000, and I have very good reason to believe him because there was a lot of activity then. The liaison that must exist between this Island, its history and our armed forces is important to be preserved and I think in this particular situation a figure in the region of £39,000 is something that I think we should seriously reconsider. For that reason, and again I express my earlier naiveté at this, I think that Deputy Higgins’ amendment should be supported and I will be supporting it.

1.8.6 Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré of St. Lawrence:

Very quickly, to endorse exactly what Deputy Power says, equally, when I first met Mr. Robinson, I had not realised the value of the military visits that came across. The only reason I thought I would just also comment and add my support to the amendment is that I had not realised the influence, I think it was HMS Ocean when it came through - I have to say I do remember driving down the hill, looking out the bay and nearly having a heart attack at what was parked out there at the time - but if you value that in monetary terms, that far outweighs the costs we are talking about. I certainly think, in terms of the visitor days and things like that that have been put to you previously, the benefit to the Island of having a dedicated role seems to far outweigh the potential cost-saving coming out of this. I think we should be supporting this amendment.

1.8.7 Senator T.A. Le Sueur:

I am surprised that Deputy Le Claire should complain about being given too much detail in the comment; normally States Members complain they do not get enough information and in this case Ministers have tried to be helpful to explain the variety of activities being performed by military units during our current year. Of course, this relates primarily to army units, although it does also have one reference to Royal Marines, and another Brittany Breeze, another is Squadronaires, but of course we should not forget the tremendous contribution provided by the Royal Navy in terms of the Island Boat Show and there are a variety of activities in which we benefit from good contacts with the U.K. Armed Forces. There is no suggestion that the absence of a Military Liaison Officer will suddenly mean that no army units, no naval units and no aircraft units will come to the Island any more; they will continue to come here, they will continue to do the valuable work that they do for the community and in their own training and all that will happen is that co-ordination will be done through the Field Squadron rather than through an arm’s length individual. So this seems to be coming out of all proportion to a situation where, certainly, I very much value the contribution made by the military units, both socially and economically. There is a suggestion that we saw fewer units this year than we did in previous years, and that is undoubtedly the case, and the Council of Ministers’ comments, if Members read that far down the page, highlight that, because for every unit that visits there is at least one that wants to come here which has to pull out because of the cuts in the M.O.D. (Ministry of Defence) funding, so it is not because of a lack of a Military Liaison Officer that we are not getting visits, it is because it is the lack of funding at the M.O.D. level. So there have been, I think, a few misapprehensions about this and misconceptions about this amendment, I hope I have put some of them, at least, right.

1.8.8 Senator B.I. Le Marquand:

I do need to correct some misunderstandings here. Firstly, the full-time officer retired in November of last year so we have been functioning this year under the new arrangements and the purpose of indicating the number of visiting military units and the length of time was to indicate that we are still functioning very effectively. My arithmetic, multiplying the number of days minus one times the number of people, is obviously different to that of Deputy Power because I came up with a figure of 3,918. The fact is that the number of visiting units has been decreasing in any eventuality and that is because of financial cuts, the money is not available from the M.O.D. for these purposes. When we realised in the Home Affairs Department that this particular officer was going to leave, in fact the most recent one left to take up another post within the public sector, there was a proper assessment of the various different functions which were being completed as to the extent that they could be fulfilled, as they are at the moment, by another existing officer who works additional hours for this purpose. This was the assessment - I will go through it very quickly because it is very detailed - but here are the different functions. Firstly, the main function of assisting military units who were thinking about coming to the Island. That function included Royal Navy units, historically. We are not able to assist with that, but that function has in fact been taken up instead by the Harbour Office, so they are fulfilling that part of the functionality. We are able to respond to inquiries that come from different units if there has been a reduction in the capacity, if it appears that the person involved is not able to be proactive in seeking to go out and to find people. But we are responding, there is no loss of service in terms of those who are making inquiries. The second area is in relation to identifying and evaluating suitable local work projects that could be completed. Members of this Assembly may wish to look at the second item on the schedule at the back of the comments, or the appendix, which were 7th June to 26th June this year, 55 officers who came over from a particular Royal Engineer squadron and, indeed, did exactly this kind of functionality. So it happened this year. The difference in function is that the individual officer who was doing this does not now go out and do the additional recce, the reconnoitring, of the site, he identifies sites, he has a list of potential sites, but he does not do an initial recce. In my view, people coming want to do that themselves, in any eventuality, so I do not see there is any substantial loss in service. The third area, which was encouraging and assisting military bands, display teams, et cetera, to come over, that is happening just as it happened before. The fourth area, liaising with States departments and voluntary and private organisations prior to military visits, et cetera, that is happening just as before. The fifth area, advising the Lieutenant Governor on the suitability and merit of proposed military applications, I think that is for people who are going to receive recognition of long service; that is happening just as before. The next area, which is acting as a point of contact for initial inquiries concerning careers in the armed forces, that is not happening in the same way because we do not have an I.M.L.O. (Island Military Liaison Officer) that is not happening in the same way. What happens instead is people are given contact details to make contact in the U.K., which they would have had to have done in any eventuality. As far as recruitment to the squadron itself, that is still done locally. So there is a reduction of service, but it is of a minor matter. The next area of fostering and maintaining a good working relationship with the media by arranging press releases and briefings, that still occurs except that if there is a sensitive area, the particular staff member, because of his other functions, cannot do that and the function has to be done through Home Affairs. The areas where the previous role of the I.M.L.O., as he was doing it, is not happening. Firstly, in relation to assisting the Emergency Planning Officer, but, in fact, the other officer who is doing the functions is already there at the meeting, so we had 2 people and now we have one, so there is no real change there. But in addition to the areas which were in the job description of previous Military Liaison Officers, there were areas and functions which were being performed which were not in the job description, there was not a fulltime post and therefore the person went out and found other worthy things to do, but those were not part of his core functions, and so I would very strongly argue that we do not need to re-establish a fulltime post to do things that they should not have been doing in the first place.

[16:15]

Those were worthy events, they were things like organising Liberation Day, Armed Forces Day, involvement with the boat show and the air show, but those are not essential functions. As my Assistant Minister said, there is a great number of people, a great fund of goodwill in this Island towards the armed forces, towards the support of the armed forces, retired people and so on and so forth. Frankly, in the climate we find ourselves in where the Island has reduced financial resources, we must be using these kinds of people, their willingness to do things in order to fulfil these other functions. So I have gone through this in a great deal of detail and this was properly thought though. I am surprised that Deputy Higgins is alleging some sort of massive conspiracy, I do not think he is alleging that of the Minister for Home Affairs, I think he is alleging it of the T.A., but I do not quite know how he has worked that one out because the change had happened before I even arrived as Minister and I think it is very unfortunate that he says those words. The fact is this: that we have set up a different arrangement, it seems to have worked very well this year. If we found it was not working adequately then we would go to another arrangement but we would not seek to employ another fulltime person, even if we did change the arrangement again, because there is not a full-time post here in the current climate. As my able Deputy said, this is a genuine savings, this is exactly the sort of thing we should be looking at to find savings for, we are able to fulfil the core functions effectively in this cheaper way, and that is exactly what good management should be doing.

1.8.9 Deputy M. Tadier:

We have heard the official version of events from the Senator, the Minister for Home Affairs, as we often do, and it has been interesting to listen to those who have spoken in favour of Deputy Higgins’ proposition, including the Deputy himself, because … I do not know if I need to declare an interest, but I suspect it is the same person that Deputy Power has spoken to that I have spoken to, because he is one of our parishioners, he lives in Les Quennevais, and he is well-placed to advise us on these issues. It is not an issue that I would naturally normally take an interest in but because this person has been in that very job himself, he has been at the coalface and he knows the individuals involved and my colleague, Deputy Power, would have had the same experience. Obviously, Deputy Higgins not only knows the individual involved but he has got a whole wealth of experience so, while it is very easy for the Minister to paint a picture that everything is fine and this is an efficiency saving which will genuinely save us £39,000 a year, our position I think, and it is the correct position, is that this is a complete false economy. I think there is a case to be had, and it should be the case, that this should be a single job for one person to focus their main energy on, the trouble is as soon as you start giving it to another person who has also got lots of other jobs to do for whom it is not a priority, then the revenue that you are going to get back from that investment simply will not happen. It is because we are getting less business, it is because the M.O.D. are making these cuts because business is less likely to come to Jersey, that is exactly why we need to reinstate this post; it is a basic principle of marketing that during a recession, during a downturn, that is exactly when you have get out there and get the marketing yourself. This is exactly the way you do it: you reinstate that job. Before, this individual and the individuals that have been in the post before, they were experienced people with military experience but also who had a knack for dealing with people, they were tactile, if that is the right expression, and they were able to drum up business for Jersey. Senator Ferguson’s idea is quite interesting. It could well be that Tourism should be funding this more, maybe this post should sit with Tourism, but I think what is essential is that whoever does this post in the future, hopefully when we do reinstate it, should be somebody with military experience but who also knows the Island and has a passion for inviting military visitors to the Island because we know in the long run it will produce revenues and, of course, they come back with their families for holidays as civilians. So I think this is something that we can support; it is a false economy, I would suggest, if we do not do that.

The Bailiff:

Does any other Member wish to speak? Very well, I call upon Deputy Higgins to reply.

1.8.10 Deputy M.R. Higgins:

I think we need to get things in a sense of proportion. We have been looking at over 3 years £65 million of cuts and we are talking about one post of £39,000 per annum, a post that if conducted in a proper manner will generate considerably, may 10 times, 20 times more money than it is costing. What is the point of a Comprehensive Spending Review if it is just about cutting? Surely you should be looking at about how you can generate additional money through facilities for the Island. I do not think there is a Constable in this House that has not had visiting military units go into Parish and do good work for the benefit of the community. Despite what the Minister says, I had held Senator Le Marquand in high regard but, unfortunately, he is starting to adopt the spin of some of his colleagues, because this post is definitely diminishing in terms of what it is doing at the present time and it will become extinct because, as Deputy Tadier has said, if it is a secondary duty and you have got more important priorities … and the T.A., by the way, has to have a more important priority, and that is to establish the numbers that it should have had from the very beginning and that it has never had. So if those officers are doing a correct job, they will not be doing this one at all. We need to re-establish this post either within Home Affairs or Tourism and get the full benefits that accrue from it. The Chief Minister cannot win, effectively, he has given us information, he has given us too much information. There are certain types of information, Chief Minister, with certain …

The Bailiff:

Through the Chair.

Deputy M.R. Higgins:

Sorry, Sir. There are certain activities or certain units which are not publicised and for the Ministers and the department to do what they have done is absolutely totally irresponsible. So yes, it is nice to know that we have visiting units, but there are some things you do not say. I would just also like again to pay tribute to Ian Robinson, the former Military Liaison Officer, there is no doubt that the Island owes him a great service, and I would reiterate what Senator Ferguson said: H.M.S. Ocean was down to him. He was also made, for his services to the armed forces, an honorary lieutenant commander in the Royal Naval Reserve. The HMS Ocean was, as Senator Ferguson said, a reward for his efforts. We had been trying to get an aircraft carrier to the Island for over 10 years and it just happened that one was available and the Admiral approved it for Jersey. So once again, I would just like to say that, if this cut goes through, I think you will see next to no military personnel, there will be next to no goodwill coming in and a possible income generator will be lost. So I would urge Members to support my amendment but reject what the Minister is proposing.

The Bailiff:

Very well. Then the appel is called for in relation to the amendment of Deputy Higgins. I invite Members to return to their seats and the Greffier will open the voting.

POUR: 13	CONTRE: 28	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator S.C. Ferguson	Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Deputy of St. Martin	Senator P.F. Routier
Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Senator T.J. Le Main
Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire (H)	Senator B.E. Shenton
Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré (L)	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)	Senator B.I. Le Marquand
Deputy S. Pitman (H)	Senator F.du H. Le Gresley
Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)	Connétable of St. Ouen
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Connétable of St. Helier
Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)	Connétable of Trinity
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)	Connétable of St. Brelade
Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)	Connétable of St. Saviour
	Connétable of St. Clement
	Connétable of St. Lawrence
	Connétable of St. Mary
	Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)
	Deputy J.B. Fox (H)
	Deputy of St. Ouen
	Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)
	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy I.J. Gorst (C)
	Deputy of St. John
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
	Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)
	Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)

The Bailiff:

Very well then, so that concludes that amendment. My understanding, Deputy Southern, is that your next one is withdrawn following the earlier debate, that is the Prison! Me! No Way!! one.

Deputy G.P. Southern:

It is the Prison! Me! No Way!! part 1 and 2.

The Bailiff:

Yes. Thank you very much. The same for you, Senator Le Gresley. Thank you.

1.9 Draft Annual Business Plan 2012 (P.123/2011): second amendment (P.123/2011 Amd.(2)) - paragraph 1

The Bailiff:

So we then come to the second amendment, paragraph 1, lodged by Senator Shenton, and I will ask the Greffier to read the amendment.

The Greffier of the States:

The second amendment, part 1 page 2 paragraph 8, after the words “withdrawn from the consolidated fund in 2012” insert the words “except that the net revenue expenditure of the Treasury and Resources Department shall be decreased by £120,000.”

1.9.1 Senator B.E. Shenton:

I do not plan to speak for too long on this. I did offer to withdraw this amendment if the Minister for Treasury and Resources gave an undertaking to bring the new policy of the appointment of a third-sector co-ordinator back to the States Assembly as a standalone proposition so that the Assembly could decide on whether this was a good policy or not but, unfortunately, he would prefer to use under-spends to push forward with this policy that has not been formally passed or adopted by the States Assembly. This is really where my concern lies because the first I knew about this third-sector co-ordinator was from one of the Minister for Treasury’s prolific tweets where he tweeted that: “There would be exciting news for the charity sector tomorrow” this is few weeks ago. When I looked at the Business Plan I found that there was no funding allocated for this movement, even though it was going to cost £120,000. This is at a time when are meant to be saving as much money as possible, and I was told that I could not do an amendment specifically on the third-sector co-ordinator because, apart from being mentioned in a narrative to the Business Plan, it was not in the Business Plan. So what this proposition seeks to do is withdraw £120,000 from the Minister’s own budget and, if he wants to refill that hole, he can use the under-spends that he has set aside to set up a third-sector charity co-ordinator, because that was the only way round it. But it does worry me the fact that the Ministers can use under-spends for basically whatever they wish. If the Council of Ministers decided that they were so important that they all deserved ministerial limousines and they had sufficient under-spends to carry that out – and I can see a couple of Ministers going: “Now, that is a good idea, I had not thought of that” – they could just go ahead and do it, they would not have to come back to the States Assembly, they could just use the under-spends, it would not have to be part of the Annual Business Plan, it could just be done. So I think this is quite a dangerous precedent that we are setting here. If there is a need for a third-sector charity co-ordinator, and I personally do not think there is, I think a number of the large charities also do not think that there is a need for this person to sit behind a desk and co-ordinate – I am not sure what he is going to co-ordinate but he will co-ordinate –then they should really bring it forward as a standalone proposition. But what they should not do is use the underspend money, because underspend money is money that has been approved by this Assembly for a different use; it was approved in a previous business plan for a totally different purpose. So they cannot turn round and say: “Well, we have saved money here and there” and yet they can just spend it wherever they want on the under-spends. I would like the Minister for Treasury to explain why he will not bring this back as a standalone proposition, given that it is a new policy, how he expects us to just rubberstamp something that we have such little information on and what controls he plans to put on under-spends in the future, because I have grave concerns about this whole Business Plan process. I think Deputy Southern used the phrase: “Knitting with fog” or something along those lines, and the Business Plan is a little bit like that. You could replace it with a slideshow as long as we filled the Chamber with dry ice before we started showing anything. The actual detail is not there, the Ministers have too much power to spend on whatever they want, they call savings – and this is something the P.A.C. (Public Accounts Committee) will take up – £65 million in savings, most of the saving is just alternative revenue streams. It is just hitting the taxpayer in the pocket. So I would like an explanation and I would like ultimately for the Minister, when he is doing new policies, when he is doing something that is outside the Business Plan, when he is bringing forward something that no one has ever agreed on, to respect this Chamber and bring it as a standalone proposition as any Back-Bencher or any other Member would be forced to do. Once again, I have not prepared anyone to second this proposition, so I hope someone will.

The Bailiff:

Is the amendment seconded? [Seconded] Senator Ozouf?

1.9.2 Senator P.F.C. Ozouf:

As Senator Shenton has explained, he has brought this proposition to cut the Treasury and Resources budget because of the third-sector co-ordinator, and I will make some comments, of course, about that in a few moments, because he is suggesting that the Assembly should accept this amendment and that I should then go and revisit the issue of the third-sector co-ordinator. I guess, before I address the issue of the third-sector co-ordinator, I do need to robustly defend my own department’s budget.

[16:30]

I think this is the only amendment which seeks to cut a department’s budget over and above that which is in the C.S.R. and, as Minister for Treasury, I am more than happy to be part of a co-operative team of Ministers working together to deliver C.S.R. and I think the Treasury has led by example and is delivering many savings, both within our own department of Treasury and Resources, but we are also facilitating and working with departments to deliver savings across the board in terms of procurement, H.R. and the other areas that are currently with Treasury and Resources. We are delivering millions of pounds worth of savings; more than that, I need to say to the staff at the Treasury that I am proud of them and I am proud of the extent to which they work for the benefit of departments and the public. Under the leadership of the new Treasurer, I can say that motivation is high in the Treasury and many people within the Treasury go beyond the call of duty to work for the benefit of taxpayers and services across the States. Senator Shenton in his report criticises a number of the improvements that have been made in the Treasury budget. He criticises the strengthening of the Tax Policy Team. He criticises the fact that we have been trying to maximise income for the States in terms of policy and in terms of collection. He is a businessman and I would have imagined him to be placing some degree of importance on the income line. That is not just raising taxes, but that is finding ways of collecting more tax where we can within the rules that are permissible and ensuring that our tax collection system collects the tax that is due, maximising income for the benefit of the services which he... almost in a chameleon way, one minute he is wanting to cut expenditure, in other areas he is wanting to increase spending. But we can only increase spending if we have the income. It is important that the States had an improved Tax Policy Unit to deal with maximising income collection, but also defending the important issues of Zero/Ten and other areas, of which there has been an enormous amount of work. The States also has hundreds of millions of pounds in utility investments and we have to be, in the Treasury, a good shareholder, but we also have to maximise dividend yields. I want to see, and have been putting in place arrangements, for strengthening the relationship between the Treasury and the utilities and encouraging utilities to work, but also work for the benefit of the Island community: working with Jersey Telecom to realise their ambition of a fibre-optic cable rollout, those things do not happen by accident, they happen by hard work between the Treasury and the utilities and particularly in relation to the board of J.T. (Jersey Telecom). Those are the issues that we are working on and those are the reasons why the investments in Treasury have been necessary and they are bearing fruit. The main issue before us is the issue of the third sector and I am going to defend the decision for awarding money for the development individual for the third sector.

The Bailiff:

Senator, if I may, I propose that you do not go into this in detail, it is not a debate about that; it is, of course, the background to it and you may deal briefly with it, but it is not a debate about whether ultimately it is a good thing or not because it is not before the Assembly. [Approbation] What the proposer is saying is that he does not like the way it happened outside the process and therefore he wants to, in effect, reduce your budget by the equivalent amount. But this is not a debate about the merits or otherwise of the third co-ordinator.

Senator P.F.C. Ozouf:

Well, Sir, I understand that but he is suggesting that effectively, in accepting the amendment, I can revisit that decision and effectively delete it.

The Bailiff:

Yes. He has said that and you certainly can talk as to the practical difficulties that may give rise to but he did not go into great detail about the merits of the appointment or not, this is not a debate about that. [Approbation] So concentrate, if you wish, on what difficulty it would place you in if the amendment was passed, if that is what you wish to say.

Senator P.F.C. Ozouf:

Well, frankly, is it not the case that if I preface my remarks by saying that if the budget is reduced by £100,000 or by £120,000, I will have to cut the third-sector co-ordinator post, and am I not able to put forward the arguments as to the reason of why that is a very unwise thing to do?

The Bailiff:

In moderation, yes. [Laughter]

Senator P.F.C. Ozouf:

In moderation, Sir. Well, I am clear to Members in my submission that if the budget is cut then the third-sector co-coordinator will go. That is the clear message from the States and that is the clear issue. I will not dwell on this in great detail, but the issue has been raised politically and I think that I must address it, albeit extremely briefly. I do understand the Senator has received representations from supporters and indeed from detractors of the decision and I want to say that, of course, we understand that there are differences between all sectors, and the third sector is no different. I think that there has been a long overdue lack of recognition for the third sector and that is the reason why we have been doing the work with putting in place the development officer, which has come from the sector, requested from the sector, and we have responded. I want to be clear, because there are a number of, I think, fairly unkind remarks that have been said by the Senator in his remarks about this whole issue, is that this money is effectively some imposition of States control on the sector; it is exactly the opposite, it is designed to recognise the important contribution of the sector and to assist them and to grow capacity, to grow Jersey’s “big little society” as it has been dubbed. It is designed to assist, to recognise and to support and grow the third sector in a way that we do not. We spend tens of millions of pounds, rightly so, for the for-profit sector, and we do not do enough in order to assist and understand the needs of the third sector. There are challenges ahead, there is going to be the requirement of a Charities Commission, there is a need to build expertise, whether it is in H.R. or marketing or I.T., particularly with the small charities sector, and this is the post that is going to facilitate that. I can say that, while the Senator does not agree with it, I have got strong support from ministerial colleagues on it and I hope that they, albeit briefly, will rise to support the decision that was brought to the Council of Ministers and is at the heart of the policy of the current Council of Ministers, and I hope the future Council of Ministers that will recognise the very valuable work that goes on in the charitable and not-for-profit sector which, in my view, has been long undervalued and perhaps under-recognised by the States Assembly. I am happy to give the full speech to Members that I prepared in relation to the third sector, that is a paraphrased version of it, perhaps I will send it later on the new media networks, as we all know exist; I will send it on email. But certainly I care passionately about this, I know other Ministers do and I know that other States Members do and I hope that Members will … effectively, this is a vote to delete the third-sector co-ordinator, and I hope States Members will comprehensively and resoundingly send the message that we support it and we want to see it and we want to see increased capacity and we want to see a bigger, more supportive more recognised third sector in the future.

1.9.3 Senator S.C. Ferguson:

Just another facet of ministerial government: setting up a new policy without coming to the States first. It is another example, I regret to say, of Ministers ignoring the Assembly, a Minister is making policy on the hoof and disregarding the necessity of coming to the States. The Minister for Treasury mentioned strengthening the Tax Policy Team, well, that was just moving the International Tax Adviser from the Chief Minister’s Department to Treasury and Resources, which has been slipped through as a service transfer. If you look on the relevant pages 27 in the Business Plan and the Treasury and Resources page in the annex, you can see it all there. I am told that the third-sector co-ordinator was wished on the third sector. It is possibly one of the Minister for Treasury’s flashes of inspiration but I suggest that the Association of Jersey Charities are the best people who should be organising this and I look forward to reading the unexpurgated speech on the Minister’s blog.

1.9.4 Connétable P.F.M. Hanning of St. Saviour:

I am aware of the guidance you gave to the Minister about focusing on this amendment but I feel I must say that, as the proposer has highlighted in his report, he says that a large number of territories expressed their opposition. I was at the meeting when this was announced at the Bridge. There were a large number of charities there, and it was very clear that a few very professionally-run charities were quite happy to operate without the co-ordinator. The vast majority of those attending the meeting and the workshop were asked about their reaction and they were very clear that they wanted this help. So I am afraid the proposer is not giving a clear result as to what the picture is. A lot of the small charities are struggling to exist with volunteers short of time and short of money. They need all the help they can get and, if this co-ordinator can help in some way, then I believe we ought to give them that assistance. Please do not be swayed by the fact that one or 2 of the major charities can cope perfectly well without. The small ones need this assistance.

1.9.5 Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier:

I agree with everything the Minister for Treasury and Resources said, but the whole point is, as Senator Ferguson said, this could easily have been achieved by sitting down with the Association of Jersey Charities, which has a framework, which has a lot of enthusiasm, and where there will now be a massive salary discrepancy, I should add, opening up if this goes ahead. It could have been achieved that way; there was the drive, the enthusiasm, the need, and this seems to be some kind of add-on, which has not been organisationally thought through.

1.9.6 Deputy A.K.F. Green of St. Helier:

I would just like to pick up on a couple of points; I think the Constable of St. Saviour has covered the fact that many of the small charities do want this co-ordinator. I wondered if Senator Shenton could, when he sums up, explain to me, I think the co-ordinator is receiving about £40,000 a year, how the cut of £120,000 fits into that, I am not sure about that. But I would also like to pick up on the Association of Jersey Charities because I was heavily involved in a review before, and the Association of Jersey Charities made it quite clear, while they were supportive of the proposal, they did not want to be involved in any way in running it because they saw their role as giving out and allocating appropriately the lottery money.

The Bailiff:

Deputy Tadier, do you still wish to speak?

1.9.7 Deputy M. Tadier:

Yes, thank you. I am sorry, I misjudged, I thought the booming Deputy Le Hérissier would go on a little longer than he did. It seems to me that Senator Ozouf has missed the point here yet again and also it seems that he may be inadvertently misleading the House because what Senator Shenton is asking for, and I think what many Members are uncomfortable with, and would also like to see happen, is for a proper debate to happen around the issue of whether or not we should be engaging a third-sector co-ordinator, whether or not that person should be paid £120,000 per year ongoing ... sorry, whether £120,000 should be allocated for that purpose, and also generally the debate about the third-sector, which need to happen. What is curious is that Senator Ozouf had to stop himself, or rather you, Sir, the Chair, had to intervene to stop Senator Ozouf giving a full debate about the merits of having a third-sector co-ordinator when in fact this is exactly what the debate is asking for. Senator Shenton wants this debate to happen; Senator Ozouf seems to want to be able to give that debate, this is not the right context for it in the Annual Business Plan, so we are all in agreement I think. Both Senators agree that is the correct way forward and that is the correct process to engage in. The other point is that Senator Ozouf said something quite revelatory, which said that this has the strong support from his Council of Minister colleagues, as if that makes everything all right. So it does not matter what the rest of the States thinks, it does not matter about the supremacy of the States, which does not exist now since 2005, it is all about Ministers making decisions and changing the decisions that the House has made as they see fit. As Senator Shenton has said also about deciding how they want to use overspends for things that are fundamental policy direction shifts. It is not the place to talk about it, but simply to mention very quickly, we have to be very cautious about the relationship we have with the third sector going into the future because, as we know, during a recession, the temptation from a government is to over-burden the third sector; to want to rely on the third sector and charities even more so, because the income that we have is less and less, so therefore, if somebody can do it for free or cheaper, then that is really good. But of course we fail to understand sometimes that the charitable sector themselves will be affected by the recession, and this has been shown already in the U.K., there have been various studies, because people do not have the same money to donate to those charities to take on the staff, whether they are voluntary or whether they are paid often, and similarly people do not have the same time to give to charities because they are having to work more in order to put food on their tables to maintain the same standard of living.

[16:45]

So we have to be cautious and I think the right place for the debate as to whether this post and this funding should be given or withheld is outside of the Business Plan. I think Senator Ozouf quite rightly wanted to try and do that, but it is not the place to do it here and that is why we need to back Senator Shenton on this. It is simply not correct to paint those who would support this proposition as not being in favour; simply we have not been given the facts and I think we do need those facts before we can commit to this extra spending. It is perhaps ironic that we are trying to cut down on spending and on this occasion Senator Ozouf is trying to defend the budget, which has been allocated.

1.9.8 Deputy A.E. Jeune:

Just very briefly, I was extremely unhappy when this was first announced that we were to have this co-ordinator at what I felt was quite a high cost. So I had email exchanges with the Minister for Treasury and Resources and it became quite clear that this amount of money was not just about salary, it was to pay for office space and other issues. The third sector do work very hard, we do need to give them some support. This is restricted in its time, it is not completely open, and I think it will need to be evaluated and further decisions made. So, following my email exchanges with the Minister, I felt quite comfortable with it. Thank you.

1.9.9 Deputy I.J. Gorst of St. Clement:

Bearing in mind your ruling, I shall be careful. However, no doubt you will have to pull me up. [Laughter]

The Bailiff:

You mean not that careful.

Deputy I.J. Gorst:

No. Sir, I must speak quite strongly against this amendment. I am surprised at the Senator, because more often than not, when he is speaking, he hits the nail on the head. In this instance, I feel that he has rather hit his thumb than the nail. Government in no way has all the answers and can provide all the solutions to the problems that any community finds itself in. The third sector in many cases is best placed, is already working, and is helping members of our community in many, many ways, in a far better way than we in Government could ever hope to. I have a vision of a day when we ... we are already perhaps further advanced than many communities, but I have a vision when we as a Government work much more closely, where we work hand in glove, where there is not perhaps some of the dysfunctionality that we find in certain areas of our interaction with the third sector, and the reason that I overwhelmingly support the creation of the third-sector forum, this co-ordinator will help in that establishment, is because I believe that we, each one of us in our community, need a strong third-sector forum to enhance the governance, the service provision, the fundraising ability, the communication, of all that work in that sector. That third-sector forum will sit perfectly alongside a new Charities Commission. I know many Members might not like me to talk about that, they think a Charities Commission is bureaucratic. It will not need to be bureaucratic if we have a strong third-sector forum, which is run by the third sector, for the third sector, to the advantage of every member of our community. Alongside that forum, alongside that Commission, there will also be a new Charities Law, which is shortly I believe to be lodged before this Assembly. It is in the start of the realisation of this vision of that change, where we work much more closely with all these organisations, where we work together with them, and we are not rubbing up against them, in a more positive way, that I fully support the allocation of this amount of money and I ask that Members do not remove it from the Minister for Treasury and Resources’ budget because it would stop this good and absolutely necessary work. I do not agree with Deputy Tadier, we should not be cautious, in fact we should be working much more, and in a much more positive way, to deal with all the issues that he has addressed. So I think other Members have addressed those issues, which perhaps were more negative in this regard. I ask Members to reject this amendment and to vote for a positive future, a positive interaction, between Government and the third sector for the benefit of each Member of our community.

1.9.10 Senator B.I. Le Marquand:

The excellent speech just made by Deputy Gorst unfortunately has taken away most of my fire power, because he has in fact said many of the things that I was about to say. I say this of course purely to work against any suggestion that there might be any loss of money in the Minister for Treasury and Resources’ Department, which might lead to not being able to go ahead with the current plans for a co-ordinator, and I will be brief in relation to this. I also am very supportive of the principle of better communications, of better working together of the public sector and the private sector. The fact is that unless we are going to get into a cycle of ever-increasing tax increases, we are going to have to find other ways of providing services, and I passionately believe that one of the most effective ways is by working with the third sector. Government can no longer continue to say that it can do everything, indeed I think Government historically in Jersey has very often attempted to do far too many things, which it should not have been doing. So this is absolutely right that this money be preserved for this purpose. I passionately believe that and add my support to the Minister for Treasury and Resources on that aspect. But I did want to say other things because it seems to me that again and again in this Assembly issues are arising as to what is the ambit of the discretion of Ministers, and it is not satisfactory that we keep on having these debates, we need to clarify what that is effectively. The fact is that the process in relation to Business Plan, which we are doing this week, is a long, drawn-out process. When I was Judicial Greffier I used to start work on it in February of a year for the following year; it is a very long drawn-out process and it is very difficult to predict in advance changes, which may take place, and that has historically been one of the problems with the public sector, it has not been able to react to needs that may arise, to changes that may arise, during the cycle. It is just not satisfactory to have to wait on for the next financial year to start doing something, which needs to be done. But we do need to clarify this issue of boundaries. There are differing views; we do not seem to have clarity as to when Ministers should bring policy documents to the States or when they should just lodge them; whether Ministers should make decisions of this kind of nature, or whether they need to come to the States. It is not satisfactory that we have disagreement on this; we need to have clarity in relation to when should Ministers bring things to the States and when is it properly within their ambit. I do not think that the Minister for Treasury and Resources is being fairly criticised in this matter, I think it is quite right and proper that he go ahead in the way that he has done.

1.9.11 Deputy J.A. Martin of St. Helier:

I will be brief. I fully endorse everything that Deputy Gorst has said and I listened to what Senator Le Marquand said and when is it right. Senator Ferguson is always going to micromanage it, and then this is: “How dare you do this behind our back?” Unfortunately, we do need this co-ordinator, we have some superb charities out there and we have some who are not as good as they used to be and their business plans are very, let us say cumbersome, and they are duplicated. Deputy Le Hérissier is again questioning this; he knows there is a problem with 3 very good charities who will not work together, who provide very similar things to people in the community, but to get them around a table, we are having a lot of trouble. So it is the way forward, the Green Paper at Health, anyone will tell you that we need ... if we do not work more closely with the third sector, but we cannot have a third sector who does not have a good business plan. Every time they are falling foul, every time they are not looking at their budget or they are not producing good business plans, they come back to a nice soft Senator or Deputy and say: “We cannot balance the books this year, our backs are against the wall and this charity is going to fold”, and who steps in, the States, but not looking at the real problem. This is what this co-ordinator will do; this is what the job is there for. We want to use more of the good work that is done out there and some of them need more help. So I do not really know where Senator Shenton is coming from, he wanted to obviously get some money for his other proposition, which was lost. To Deputy Green, that is a 3-year budget, not for one year, it is a 3-year budget. So I really think it is a no-brainer. I mean, when do you micromanage down to this co-ordinator’s position? Not in this House I would not have thought. So I urge people not to support the Senator; it is a step too far and we need this work doing. Thank you.

1.9.12 Senator P.F. Routier:

I was fortunate to attend a British-Irish Council meeting on social inclusion, which focused on the third sector, and what came away from that meeting was vital importance to have a well co-ordinated third sector, and I believe that the decision to have a third-sector co-ordinator is the right decision, it is a good decision. I think what is obviously causing problems for people is the process of making that decision; that seems to be what I think people have come unstuck on, because I think we all feel that we want to be involved in perhaps supporting charities and supporting voluntary organisations, we all feel we have a share of it, so we would like to have perhaps had the opportunity to have made the decision to have gone ahead with having this third-sector co-ordinator. So I think really that is probably our stumbling block with this really, we are just tripping over the decision-making process as [Interruption] ... twice in a day, Sir, Senator Perchard’s phone goes off.

The Bailiff:

I think the rules provide you will be fined double. [Laughter]

Senator P.F. Routier:

That has thrown me now completely, but it is a better ring tone I think than this morning’s. But certainly I think, as Senator Le Marquand highlighted, is that we do struggle with where the decision is made for progressing things. I think deep down we all believe that we want to support the third sector; it is just how that decision was made. So I will not be supporting this amendment but I think we need to focus on how we do make decisions in the future.

1.9.13 Deputy J.B. Fox:

This is always a very difficult one because what my concern is, when I am listening to the debate, is the creeping disease, and I will explain a bit further. It was not that long ago that we were sat down in a Town Hall with all the charities when we were told that they had to conform to the latest anti-terrorism money-laundering, et cetera, which creates in effect additional responsibilities, responsible for different work, et cetera. I knew at that point that somewhere along the line someone was going to come up with: “We will give you a hand and we will give you support and we will part-finance it/finance it, et cetera.” Then it went away, we did not hear any more. I do not recall any other meetings of all the States Members, it is a normal thing that we have, of having pre-meetings to have a better understanding before it comes to the States. I think it would have been helpful if this discussion had not occurred during a budget debate, but that it occurred before. One of the problems with volunteers is that they are hard-pressed, many of them are front line in their various respective professions, businesses, et cetera, but they give of their time, of which we are eternally grateful for, and a lot of them will be accountants and people like that, that we need, and we need their support to be able to run.

[17:00]

The thing that worries me is when this has not been understood and it is discussed fully, and therefore I understand where Senator Shenton is coming from. But, on the other hand, the Minister for Treasury and Resources is recognising that the time has come to such that these little charities especially cannot cope with all the additional pressures that have been put on them, and usually what happens is that if you over-burden your volunteers you end up with them leaving the organisation and all the support that they give, which again is not a good thing. It is nice to know though that the Minister for Treasury and Resources had some spare cash to be able to bring this to the fore, it is just a pity he did not tell anybody that he had it in the first place, because there might have been other things that we could find ways of doing. But the other thing that also bothers me, it is a bit like the States, if you start paying for services, someone else along the line will say: “Well he is getting it, why can I not have it?” You end up that things become less voluntary and the honorariums and then top-up supports and various other things come. That is what concerns me for the future. This Island has worked extremely well on its voluntary sector, its third sector, call it what you like. I hope it does not turn the other way. From my previous life, we used to have the Honorary Police do it for free, they now have better police cars than what the States Police have, they have uniforms, et cetera; that is how things can change. I am not saying it is not necessary; there are all sorts of rules and regulations now, but my concern is that it can go the other way, so please. Minister for Treasury and Resources, when you are wanting to do things like this, I will not be around, but for the future States at least have these pre-meetings, we can iron out all these at discussion prior to a States, and then hopefully that will make a good decision, or maybe even a better decision, and we certainly will not be spending time having this here now. I am not sure if he is listening to me, but, no, he is not. No Minister for Treasury and Resources, thank you.

1.9.14 Deputy A.T. Dupre of St. Clement:

Before I came into the States, I have been involved with quite a few different charities and I was lucky enough to attend the meeting where this decision to have a third-sector co-ordinator was made. I know, and I appreciate that these charities will really appreciate our help with them because they are all very hard-pressed and it will make a huge difference to them. Thank you.

1.9.15 Senator F. du H. Le Gresley:

I fear that you did not want us to go into this sort of debate and you warned the Minister for Treasury and Resources, but unfortunately, as they say, we are where we are and therefore I wish to talk about the third-sector co-ordinator in very brief terms. But what I wanted to say is that there is a history to where the decision was arrived at by the Minister for Treasury and Resources and I am really rising to defend his decision because it has been a long time in the making. There is a Social Policy Steering Group, which works with the Chief Minister, and there is also a third-sector group that advises the Social Policy Steering Group, and I was on that group prior to joining the States. That group was charged to look at the issues of care in the community, particularly relative to an ageing population, and we did organise a meeting of charities involved in the provision of healthcare, such as Meals on Wheels, Family Nursing, et cetera, and what did transpire from that meeting we had with these charities was there was a lot of duplication, there was lack of management skills within the organisations, and that some sort of better co-ordination was very much required, but the charities themselves, other than the very big charities who had paid professionals, were not able to organise themselves to be better co-ordinated. We now know of course, and we have known this for years really, that we do need to deliver more care in the community and this is part of the Minister for Health and Social Services’ new policy, which we will be debating at some stage, that we have to look after more people in the community because our hospital cannot cope and that is the way forward. So we need to involve charities and this is a step towards that, so I think the Minister was correct to allocate some money for this service. Deputy Green is also correct when he said that the Association of Jersey Charities did not want to take this role on, and I know that for a fact. I was Chair of the Association for 3 years, I think it was 2003 to 2006, and this started to come through in those days, and I remember that it was the Director of Family Nursing and Home Care who wanted to set up better co-ordination between the charities involved in health particularly, and there were various meetings and a report was produced. A lot of work has been going on in the background, which leads us to where we are today, where we have a decision made by the Minister for Treasury and Resources back in July that he would fund such a post for 3 years plus the costs of office or whatever. I think then in summary I would say that Senator Shenton is wrong to be tackling this particular piece of funding by way of reducing the budget of Treasury and Resources and I would urge Ministers to reject his proposition.

The Bailiff:

Does any other Member wish to speak? Very well ...

Senator P.F.C. Ozouf:

May I just correct one thing that Senator Ferguson said in her remarks; she said that: “I think that the tax policy increase was due to a transfer from the Chief Minister’s Department to the Treasury Department.” The Business Plan I think in the annex for Treasury indicates that is not the case; we increased the budget for tax policy units as a standalone issue in order to improve our handling of tax policy matters, Zero/Ten, et cetera, it is new money for a new ... not a transfer. I thought that was important to correct.

The Bailiff:

Are there others who wanted to speak? Yes, the Deputy of Trinity.

1.9.16 The Deputy of Trinity:

I thought you had me on the list that was provided.

The Bailiff:

No, I am afraid not. The Deputy of Trinity.

The Deputy of Trinity:

Obviously not; I am stuck around the corner, Sir. I shall be brief because a lot has been said. I am amazed that Senator Shenton has brought this proposition because I think it should be the other way around, he should be supporting the Minister for Treasury and Resources in doing this transfer of money. The charitable sector, the Island could not survive without the charitable sector, and this goes a small way of helping them to do what is right for Jersey. We should be praising them, we should be encouraging them, for all the work that they do, mostly on a voluntary basis, and I am just amazed that he can even think that it will get anywhere. If the Minister for Treasury and Resources had not brought it and got going with it, we still might be talking about it and having no action.

Senator S.C. Ferguson:

Can I just put a postscript to what the Minister for Treasury and Resources said; on page 112 of the Business Plan annex it says: “Director of International Tax and Team: £175,000 departmental transfer.”

1.9.17 Deputy G.P. Southern:

I suppose my starting point is I have not heard anybody explain exactly what the co-ordinator is going to do and that leaves me at somewhat of a quandary because it is one thing, and it is almost déjà vu, it is the previous debate that we had. Where are the terms of reference? Where is any scoping document there to say the co-ordinator will do this? But I want to point out before I do that, while obviously we do need to deliver more services in the community, we cannot be solely reliant on the charitable or voluntary sector to do that. There is a core minimum that we as a Government need to do, and still deliver it in the community, we just need to adopt a different approach so that it is not centralised, it is out in the community. An over-reliance on the voluntary sector of the private sector, we have to be careful about. But all the faults that we have been hearing about: the third sector cannot get themselves organised and they cannot produce a decent business plan or a service level agreement, it is not all their fault. Three instances have come to my notice over the past year where what we are talking about is Government not getting its act together and sorting out what it wants delivering and how it is going to deliver, and a simple example of that is the arrival, where we grant aid to a particular body, the arrival of that grant and when it appears and what negotiation has taken place over how much is going to be awarded on the basis of which the charitable organisation can then usually fundraise from private sector and fundraise from the public. So we get a 2 or 3 factor multiplier in what we are delivering, so if we set up, let us say, £50,000 to deliver something, and on top of that we raise £50,000 from, let us say, one of the private-sector banks, which has a charitable institution, and then perhaps £30,000 from the public, from collections, et cetera. Then you have 2.6 times your initial investment. That must be made to happen and it must be made to happen efficiently. Now, what has come to my notice is that, for example, this time last year, a bit later, November last year, we heard that the Bridge did not know what its 2011 budget was going to be, who is coming, who is paying what, et cetera. It was only at the last minute that the budget was decided. I heard earlier in the year, when consulting charitable organisations, third-sector deliverers, what was happening for them. Brook in July was saying: “Do not know what my 2011 budget is, nobody has told me, I am operating on a string and a prayer and I hope something is coming and I hope it is what I expect, because nobody has told me.” Then we had the issue today of Prison! Me! No Way!! which only this week is receiving a 2011 £10,000 cheque from the Education Department, and that is going to be delivered this week. Well, hey, it is the middle of September and that is 2011 money. Who is not efficient? Who is not getting their organisation together? Why, sometimes, it is the States itself. So, if the job description for this co-ordinator says, not only organising the third sector, the voluntary sector, but banging heads together and making sure there are clear channels of communication between departments and third-sector deliverers, then that is all to the good. But, if not, then it ought to be, and I have not been told that is part of the job. The second thing that must happen - and we will return to this one later in the day - or tomorrow, is that we must have 3 or 4-year planning. If that grant is going to be given, then if it is not there for 3 years minimum, then it is very difficult to fundraise on the back of it, because, as soon as it goes again, 2 years down the line, you have a charity there with a commitment and no funding to do it. That cannot be allowed to happen; you have to be able to ... it is one of the mistakes that the U.K. has made time and time again; new initiatives, new money, that then peter out after 2 years and things go wrong. So 3-year forward planning, essential if we are going to do it on any long-term basis, and if we are going to be more than ever reliant on third-sector deliverers then we have to make sure that is in place, so a 3-year budget and clear communication channels in order to negotiate that budget and agree that budget in a timely manner, are key elements if we are going to use the third sector to deliver effectively and efficiently.

The Bailiff:

Does any other Member wish to speak? Very well, then I call upon Senator Shenton to reply.

1.9.18 Senator B.E. Shenton:

I do not think there can be many debates where so many speakers miss the point. I think it would be particularly relevant for those Members that are going to be in the Chamber this time next year to realise what the Business Plan process is all about and what this means. The Minister for Treasury and Resources speaks about big society and I think he gets it mixed up with big government sometimes, but there we go. But ultimately what he has admitted is, if I cut his budget by £120,000 through this amendment, he can refill it through under-spends.

[17:15]

If we cut any Minister’s budget by any sum, ultimately it can be refilled through under-spends. There is a lack of control over the use of under-spends. Under-spends have resulted from money that we as an Assembly have allocated to do something completely different with. So that was the first point. I have, as Chairman of the P.A.C. asked the Comptroller and Auditor General to look at the controls on under-spends, because I do not think under-spends should be used for new policy issues. It also puts the balance of power very firmly with the Executive. Deputy Higgins brought a proposition to increase the funding to deal with the T.A. Unit. If Deputy Higgins had been on the Executive he could have probably negotiated that, without even coming to the States Assembly, over a gin and tonic somewhere. Under-spends would have been used, or some other mechanism well within the Public Finances Law, to fund that position. So my advice to anyone standing for election who wants to have influence on how money is spent is to try and get yourself a position on the Executive, because you have much more power as a Minister over how money is spent. You certainly have a lot more power than the States Assembly does over how money is spent. In fact the States Assembly has very little power, almost bordering on no power at all, as to how money is spent. I think where people miss the point, for example the Constable of St. Saviour spoke and said that this is a vital role that we must have for the future, and yet we are using under-spends, so there is no long-term funding in place, there is no policy for long-term funding. We have 3 years of under-spends. If it is not working you cannot alter it next year, it will not be in next year’s Business Plan, or the year after’s Business Plan. It is being decided using under-spends, it is outside the Business Plan process in many ways. So where is this power of the States Assembly? Where is the power of this Chamber? Why am I giving up politics? It is because ministerial government does not give power to the majority of States Members; it gives the power to a minority, the control of which the electorate has none. Deputy Green also spoke, and also the Minister for Health and Social Services, about how important this role was. Well, if it is so important, put it in the Business Plan, fund it properly going forward, or, if you cherish the States and cherish the States as the ultimate decider of how money is spent, bring a standalone proposition, shout it from the rooftops, of how important this is. Because it is very sketchy what we have at the moment: “They are going to co-ordinate.” I mean what does that mean? They are going to co-ordinate. I saw the draft job description, woolly to the extreme. It’s a good sound bite: “We need it, the charities need it”, and so on and so forth. But why not fund it properly? Why fund it through under-spends? I mean Deputy Gorst is an accountant and yet he stood up and said: “It is all right to spend money allocated for something else on this if you can justify it to the Council of Ministers. Forget the States Assembly, justify it to the Council of Ministers and you can spend your money on this.” So that is why it has been brought to the Assembly, because I am not quite sure how many characters you have on a Tweet, I think it is 140, if we are going to set policy based on 140 characters [Laughter], and I do not even think he used all the characters, it is quite ridiculous. Senator Le Gresley, who is not here to defend himself, [Laughter] stood up to defend the decision of the Minister for Treasury and Resources. He stood up and that was his exact words: “I stand up to defend his decision.” That is the whole point. The appointment and the policy of a third-sector co-ordinator is not the policy of the States Assembly, it is the decision of the Minister for Treasury and Resources. Now we are going to go through this Business Plan debate and we will set figures for each ministry to spend. We have no power as to how they spend that money. Once the Minister has allocated the budget he can spend it within reason wherever he wants. The more woolly the Strategic Plan, the wider his remit. Because we do not have collective responsibility, he cannot be called to account within the Council of Ministers, and because the Assistant Minister relationship does not work as envisaged by Clothier as being a sort of almost like a team approach to ministerial government, there is very little in the way of checks and balances. I am not saying that a third-sector co-ordinator is wrong; I do not know enough about it to say that. I am saying, do not do the disservice to this Chamber and start funding new policy initiatives to under-spend. I know I am going to lose this vote but I would hope that all those that are in the Chamber next year realise that the Annual Business Plan process is flawed and much work needs to be done to make it watertight and bring the power back to the States Assembly and take it away from the Ministers. I ask for the appel.

The Bailiff:

The appel is asked for then in relation to paragraph 1 of the second amendment lodged by Senator Shenton. I invite Members to return to their seats and the Greffier will open the voting.

POUR: 18	CONTRE: 26	ABSTAIN: 0
Senator T.J. Le Main	Senator T.A. Le Sueur
Senator B.E. Shenton	Senator P.F. Routier
Senator A. Breckon	Senator P.F.C. Ozouf
Senator S.C. Ferguson	Senator F.E. Cohen
Connétable of St. Helier	Senator A.J.H. Maclean
Connétable of St. Lawrence	Senator B.I. Le Marquand
Deputy R.C. Duhamel (S)	Senator F.du H. Le Gresley
Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier (S)	Connétable of St. Ouen
Deputy J.B. Fox (H)	Connétable of Trinity
Deputy G.P. Southern (H)	Connétable of St. Brelade
Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire (H)	Connétable of St. Saviour
Deputy S.S.P.A. Power (B)	Connétable of St. Clement
Deputy S. Pitman (H)	Connétable of St. Mary
Deputy of St. John	Deputy of St. Martin
Deputy M. Tadier (B)	Deputy J.A. Martin (H)
Deputy T.M. Pitman (H)	Deputy of St. Ouen
Deputy T.A. Vallois (S)	Deputy J.A. Hilton (H)
Deputy M.R. Higgins (H)	Deputy of Trinity
	Deputy K.C. Lewis (S)
	Deputy I.J. Gorst (C)
	Deputy A.E. Jeune (B)
	Deputy A.T. Dupré (C)
	Deputy E.J. Noel (L)
	Deputy A.K.F. Green (H)
	Deputy D.J. De Sousa (H)
	Deputy J.M. Maçon (S)

The Bailiff:

If I can just inform Members that a report has been lodged, R.112 States of Jersey Complaints Board - Findings: Complaint against the decision of the Minister for Planning and Environment regarding the property known as Transvaal, Grouville. Now, Members, it is 5.25 p.m. We would now move on to the Amendment ...

Deputy G.P. Southern:

Can I propose the adjournment please?

The Bailiff:

Deputy Southern, yes. It does seem wrong to ask Deputy Southern to start now, he will not finish. The adjournment is proposed, so the Assembly will reconvene at 9.30 a.m. tomorrow morning.

ADJOURNMENT

[17:24]