A PRO-ASSISTED dying campaigner and former director of the Jersey Royal Company is to stand for election in St Saviour.
Tom Binet will seek one of the five Deputy seats on offer in the parish when Islanders go to the polls on 22 June.
Mr Binet chairs the End of Life Choices Jersey group, which campaigned for the Island to legalise assisted dying.
He said: ‘I was chairman of the Jersey Schizophrenia Fellowship for a number of years, and recently co-founded – and currently chair – the charity Focus on Mental Illness.
‘I chair the campaign group, End of Life Choices Jersey, which played a significant role in the recent decision by the States Assembly to approve the principle of an assisted dying law. For several years I have also been an associate member of the Friends of our New Hospital Group, and also served for four years on the Employment Forum.
‘I believe my knowledge and experience in all the above would play a valuable part in sorting out the many problems that await the next States Assembly in these increasingly uncertain times.’
Mr Binet said that among his core aims would be to ‘bring the new hospital project under proper control, both physically and financially’, to accelerate the release of States-owned sites for development, to ease the housing crisis and to see the reintroduction of the Islandwide mandate of Senator.
This year’s election is the first to be contested under newly agreed reforms which scrapped the Senatorial seats and will see 37 Deputies elected in new constituencies alongside the 12 parish Constables.
Mr Binet is the fifth to declare for St Saviour after Jersey Alliance candidate Mary O’Keeffe, Jersey Liberal Conservatives’ Malcolm Ferey, Progress Party candidate Sophie Walton and independent Jonathan Channing.
