A Week in Politics

Deputy Sean Power’s success in defeating ministerial plans for almost 10% increases in duty on fuel and tobacco and 6.2% on alcohol was a plot twist worthy of a Raymond Chandler story or an M. Night Shyamalan movie.

Not even the hero of the story, Deputy Power, expected it – he said immediately after the debate that he thought he’d only get 20 votes.

The rest of the Budget had a few bumps and turns too: Senator Terry Le Main lost his proposal for an annual road tax despite a historically brilliant opening speech (in which he told Members not to bother asking him questions about it, because he wouldn’t answer them), and Senator Alan Breckon lost the other amendment for an increase in company registration fees because ministers accused him of not backing up his argument with any figures after they refused to give him the figures in the first place.

There was an odd spectrum to the result of the vote on Deputy Power’s amendment: conservatives like Senators Jim Perchard and Sarah Ferguson lined up with left-leaning Members like Deputies Geoff Southern and Shona Pitman – which would tend to lead towards the odd notion that the Council of Ministers found themselves in the centre-ground of Island politics, and in doing so lost a key vote.

But the vote that decided the main proposition 28-23 against ministers ended up not being about left and right – it’s interesting to note that bigger duty increases were agreed pretty much on the nod by Guernsey’s States in the same week – but about how it was presented.

The argument put forward by the Council of Ministers was that having added spending for green initiatives and more nurses to the Business Plan, Members basically had to support the proposals. No choice, end of argument, that’s it.

And most bizarrely, that theory was based on the claim that a £4.25m deficit – the value of the proposed duty rises – was just unthinkable, which is a tough argument to make when the Budget you’re backing already has a £60m deficit in it.

But when Deputy Power pulled a rabbit out of his hat in the closing argument, producing a set of emails in which his late offer to break the vote into three and offer a halfway-house rise on each was rejected by Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf, Members cracked, handing Senator Ozouf a debut Budget experience that he will want to forget.

Despite the fact that the problems he got into over the Power amendment were to some extent of his own making, it was hard not to feel some sympathy for the Treasury Minister. He looked genuinely stunned by the result of the vote (clearly entering stage two of States sittings, described here last week) and his closing speech had a ring of logic to it.

The States cannot keep spending more and more while refusing to countenance tax increases, he said. And he’s right, they can’t. I mean, if you tried that approach to your Christmas shopping you’d get arrested.

There’s a £50m structural deficit looming, a State pension fund that is expected to dry up in just over 25 years, a creaking and neglected States infrastructure, an apparent funding crisis at Health – when the results of the tax review come in next year or the year after, States Members are going to be looking at a much bigger and more unpopular set of tax rises than an extra 30p on a packet of cigarettes and a pint of beer. And when that happens, they’re probably going to have to approve them.

But at least Senator Ozouf knows that he’s not the only minister who had a bad week. Because it turns out that it’s not just local architects and the not-in-my-backyard brigade that aren’t huge fans of Environment Minister Freddie Cohen – the Royal Court have overturned the Planning permission that he gave to Dandara’s huge Westmount Quarry development.

‘Not merely mistaken but also unreasonable’ was the judgment of the court on the Senator’s decision to approve the scheme, which he did despite officer advice that he should wait until some of the creases were ironed out.

That’s a tad more than just a hiccup, but fortunately for the Senator (and your humble political correspondent) there’s six weeks until the next States sitting so he’s got some time to try and put this mess back together before the inevitable rough time he’s going to get from his colleagues over this.