Who holds the power in Jersey?

From the States Employment Board to the Jersey Development Company, from the incorporation of the ports to Digital Jersey, and from the CI Competition Regulatory Authority to Jersey Finance, big decisions about the Island’s direction, often involving large amounts of public money, are now effectively being made daily by men and women who have not needed to take the trouble of facing the electorate.

Many of the new bodies which have drained power from the States Assembly operate in the realms of the economy, with a particular emphasis on job creation – issues whose current pre-eminence makes it all the easier to justify such devolution of responsibility in the name of efficiency and progress.

Small wonder, then, that one of the leading lights of the movement, Economic Development Minister Alan Maclean, came in for something of a rough ride last week when he faced sceptical backbenchers at a scrutiny hearing into his department’s latest initiative, an Enterprise Strategy, not yet published, which will bring together under one umbrella various initiatives already in train with the aim of creating 1,000 jobs at the ‘high-value’ end of the economy, at least 250 of them for immigrants.

It sounds a sensible enough objective in the current circumstances, and a clearer framework for the relationship between the funds and quangos which have proliferated in recent years to the bewilderment of many will certainly be welcome.

Nevertheless, the scrutiny process raised two crucial questions which must not be brushed aside. One relates to what more the States could and should do for those already here for whom ‘high-value’ jobs will not be a realistic ambition. The other draws attention to the further pressure which will be placed on the Island’s creaking infrastructure by the newcomers and their dependents.

The business-minded politicians who have been at the heart of the Island’s administration for almost two decades have thus far largely won the population debate by avoiding having one. The more decision-making power they devolve to the unelected, the more vital it becomes that the States Assembly as a whole should reassert its supremacy when this issue of central importance to Jersey’s future quality of life finally comes to the floor of the House in the form of a proposed interim population policy early next year.