Public apology is needed after a distortion of facts

IT IS difficult to understand how someone can write to your newspaper and express forceful opinions on such a serious matter as wholesale changes to the make-up of the States, which have just been approved, and distort the facts so alarmingly as your correspondent Joy Grigg has done (JEP letters 7 May).

In her letter headed ‘I won’t vote under the revised electoral system’ she states that Deputy Russell Labey ‘rushed through the vote on electoral reform in a most underhand way’ by having the subject debated ‘before Christmas and at the height of the pandemic, when I could not hug my children and the last thing on the worried public’s mind was politics’.

Warming to this theme of under-handedness, she claims that there was hardly any discussion or comment in the media and that the general public did not have a say in the matter. ‘Surely such a momentous decision should have necessitated more thorough debate,’ she declares.

I can only conclude from this that she was either out of the Island for most of this time or was in such a permanent state of sleepiness that she did not notice that the question of electoral reform in Jersey began 21 years ago with the setting up of the Clothier Panel.

This panel consisted of a prominent Island businessman, John Henwood; the late Colin Powell, the Island’s highly qualified economic adviser and an expert on European affairs; two lawyers with a specialist knowledge of the history of Jersey’s constitution and our relationship with the UK; two knights of the realm; and a representative of the Island’s farming community, Ann Perchard. The chairman was Sir Cecil Clothier, a respected English judge and England’s first ombudsman.

They met for over 200 hours, heard 132 witnesses and read 161 written submissions. All of which were made public. They visited the Isle of Man and Guernsey to properly understand their systems of government. In Jersey they held a public meeting at the Town Hall which attracted a huge audience; they advertised extensively for evidence and sampled public opinion through a Mori poll. In their report they stated that they did all this ‘in an attempt to be sure that we knew what the people of Jersey wanted’.

The Clothier Panel concluded that Jersey’s system of government was not fit for purpose and recommended that the parish system of voting be replaced with bigger districts and said that the Senators should be removed. Last year, Deputy Russell Labey took a proposition to the States to agree in principle to carry out the wishes of the people. Earlier this year, after another debate, they approved the legislation to do this.

For anyone to suggest that all this was achieved by underhand methods is quite outrageous and your correspondent Joy Grigg should publicly apologise to Deputy Labey for this ill-informed slur.