By Ted Vibert
Some Members of the States of Jersey have a reputation for going backwards and trying to alter decisions that were made by the Assembly several years ago. Occasionally, this serves a useful purpose by putting right something that turned out, in practice, to be manifestly wrong.
To have another debate to reverse a States decision that has been discussed up hill and down dale by the Assembly, as well as being dealt with by various panels of inquiry and decisions made and acted upon, just on the whim of States Members who didn’t like the original decision, seems to me to be an extraordinary waste of valuable States time.
It also leads to a never-ending merry-go-round of debate and indecision which does nothing to improve the plight of Islanders with serious health needs or aid young people into affordable homes, two of our most urgent social problems.
I am referring to a proposition that will come before the States yet again for debate in mid-January calling for the return of the Senators and the Island-wide vote, which is being proposed by two former Senators, now Deputies – Ian Gorst and Lyndon Farnham.
Readers may recall that the general election held last year was run on totally new guidelines which divided the Island into nine new super-constituencies to elect 37 Deputies, therefore eliminating the eight Senators.
According to both Deputies Gorst and Farnham, the reason they want to see a return of the Senators is ‘in response to a very clear message that we received during the general election campaign from our electorate in St Mary, St Ouen and St Peter. We were repeatedly told by voters that they were unhappy at the loss of the Senators and wished to see their return at the next election.’
Deputy Gorst added: ‘Indeed, in my 17 years as a States Member, which has taken me through six elections, I have never known any single issue to be raised with such frequency when talking to voters on the doorstep. I understand that this was reflected in most, if not all, of the other electoral districts.’
There’s no doubt that combining parishes together as a way of balancing up the numbers was not universally popular but when I read their explanations for bringing this matter to the States over the loss of the Senators yet again, I had a mental picture of them each facing their voters on their home doorsteps in St Peter, St Ouen and St Mary to plead for their vote.
According to them, the main and great concern their voters reported to them was not that they, as senior politicians holding key ministerial responsibilities on the Council of Ministers, had done far too little if anything to help young people buy an affordable home. Or why did they approve of bringing Charlie Parker to Jersey? Or, please explain to me why you have kept supporting the plan to build a new hospital on top of a hill at an eye-watering cost and keep on making decisions about this which has resulted in the taxpayer losing over £80 million so far.
No, none of that, apparently, was raised. What they complained about so persistently, vociferously and clearly was BRING BACK OUR SENATORS AND THE ISLAND-WIDE VOTE and it was so overwhelming that they felt duty-bound to bring the matter back to the States to redebate it.
Anyone who believes that scenario would also believe that Little Red Riding Hood was the love child of Robin Hood and Maid Marion and her descendants were still living in a tree house in Sherwood Forest with their grandmother who has a wolf-like appearance.
If there was so much concern among their electors about this, I wonder why Deputies Gorst and Farnham came third and last in their election, gaining only 44% of the vote between them, meaning that 56% of their registered voters did not support their plan to return the Senators.
Their vote was just enough to get them elected but hardly a confirmation about the alleged deep concern their constituents felt about not being able to vote for a Senator.
They will get no comfort either from the recently released results of the Jersey Opinion and Lifestyle Survey conducted under the auspices of Statistics Jersey. One of the questions asked was: Reasons for not voting?
Bottom of 11 reasons listed, at a minuscule 3%, was ‘loss of the Island-wide Senator vote’. In other words, the views of both Deputies that the Island is outraged by not being able to vote for a Senator is a myth.
It is a pity that neither Deputy bothered to explain to anyone who expressed opposition to the new electoral set-up, that fundamental to any democracy, it is essential that everyone’s vote has an equal value. This could not be achieved all the while we had Deputies elected on a parish basis, Senators on an Island vote and Constables on a parish basis. They make decisions based on the results of votes in the House that affect all Islanders, where each elected member has the same-value vote, despite some Members being elected with over 12,000 votes and others with 350 votes. This situation makes our States Assembly nothing more than a Mickey Mouse outfit by any modern democratic standard.
We were then the only parliament in the world with three different types of membership. Back then, a Senator elected from an Island-wide pool of over 60,000 voters and a Deputy of St Mary elected by 1,200 voters had exactly the same influence when decisions were made by votes in the States. How could that be called democratic?
The changes were made so that this undemocratic situation was mainly equalised by creating similar-size electorates and removing Senators, although some method has still to be found to overcome the Constables inequality.
If anyone has any doubt about whether or not Senators should be returned to the States I advise them to read the report of the Review Panel on the Machinery of Government in Jersey of December 2000 (the Clothier Report).
It was chaired by Sir Cecil Clothier, a UK High Court judge and Britain’s first Ombudsman and was, probably, the most intellectual, knowledgeable and astute group of local people ever assembled before or since to advise us on a political matter.
This panel heard 132 witnesses and received 161 written submissions and met for over 200 hours. At the end of their work they reported that their findings were ‘our distillation from that large body of evidence of what machinery of government will be best for Jersey in the foreseeable future’.
Their judgment about the role of Senators in the States read: ‘The very title of Senator is inappropriate, suggesting as it does some kind of revising or upper house, as is found in many other jurisdictions.
‘We received no convincing evidence that there was a significant difference between the nature and content of the Senators’ role and that of the Deputies… We found the distinction between Senators and Deputies less than plausible and in practice there is little difference in the contributions to debate of either category of representative. Nor can the Senators do anything which the Deputies cannot also do. They have no special privileges.’
And they recommended the abolition of the Senator category in the States.
And that should be the end of the matter and the States should get on with solving some of our serious social problems.
