A ‘CONSCIOUS decision’ is being made by the government not to publish minutes of Scientific and Technical Advisory Cell meetings in a timely fashion, a States backbencher has claimed.
St John Constable Andy Jehan said that, in theory, minutes were approved at every meeting and could therefore be published around two weeks after being signed. The last minutes published are from a meeting held on 25 October.
Mr Jehan warned that the government risked losing the trust and support of the public if it failed to provide information outlining the basis for their decisions taken in response to the outbreak of Covid.
STAC provide health, scientific and technical advice to the government and 999 service commanders during emergencies. They have met on a frequent basis throughout the pandemic. Issues discussed usually include hospital capacity, travel, schools and testing.
‘In the last STAC minutes [from the end of October] there were four people in hospital and 326 people with Covid. There is no mention of the Omicron variant in those minutes, so we have really come a long way since then,’ said Mr Jehan.
‘If the government wants to take people along with them in their decisions, then it needs to be open and transparent in how they have been arrived at.
‘I do not know about other politicians,but from my perspective I have been getting more queries about why certain measures have been put in place and why others have not been put in place. But I do not know any of the answers because there is no information or data available.’
Mr Jehan said he had so far not been given a reasonable explanation as to why minutes were not being published more quickly.
‘We were told that the [STAC] chairman was busy, then we were told the chairman would be changing, then they said they were not getting any support from the States Greffe and then they said they did have the support of the Greffe.
‘They are making a conscious decision not to publish them because at the end of each meeting they approve the previous meeting’s minutes. So they should be able to publish minutes within two weeks.
‘In my experience, if you are going through any change or any kind of big event you need to be completely open and transparent. It is not a problem if you get things wrong because you can say, “We took this decision based on this information and now we have this new information we have changed our minds”. No one is going to get upset about that – not many people anyway.
‘It is difficult to tell the public to stick with it if you don’t tell people the reasons for making decisions,’ he said.
A government spokesperson said: ‘STAC minutes are published as soon as practical, whilst upholding the safe space for members to debate live issues. The chair of STAC determines when minutes can be published and is currently considering the next batch.’
