By Ted Vibert
THE public tender to gain approval for the shipping ferry contract to provide sea links between Jersey, Guernsey and the UK mainland as well as France has been a hot topic of conversation in political circles this week – and with good reason.
It’s been an unholy mess, which my fellow columnist Ben Shenton described as a “debacle where no lessons have been learnt”.
The lessons “that should have been learnt” that Ben Shenton was referring and described as “the bus tender faff-up” was back in 2002, when a number of politicians, including the Constable of St Helier, Simon Crowcroft, were unhappy about a number of elements of the Island bus service, provided at the time by the JMT (Jersey Motor Transport), a company that had been wholly owned by the Lewis family since 1966 and they operated a fleet of cream and green buses throughout the Island.
There was no covered bus station as there is today and their whole operation, including their offices and workshops, were on the Weighbridge site, where the Royal Yacht hotel is today.
The whole area where the petanque field is now located was open land, where buses were parked in neat rows showing their route numbers and times of departure. It was all very pleasant in the summer months but totally inadequate in the winter.
At that time, back in 2002, I had just won a Senatorial election and had been approached by a member of the Lewis family, who had many complaints about how the States department responsible for organising a competitive tender into the bus service was acting, especially actions being taken by political members of that committee.
I carried out an investigation and this highlighted that the JMT were being totally disadvantaged by some of the actions being taken by some members of that committee who were openly expressing their dislike for the Jersey company. The French Connex company was awarded the contract and the business was taken away from the Jersey company as a result of their machinations.
The senior Senator in the House at the time was Ben Shenton’s dad, the late Senator Dick Shenton, and he was as shocked as I was at the way this tender had been handled and the unfair treatment handed out to the Lewis family. Dick and I shared a common view that unfairness by any States department towards any member of the public should be hunted down and exposed.
He fully supported me when I put down 14 questions I wanted to ask the president of the committee responsible (they have since changed the Standing Orders and a member can’t do that any more). I recall being summoned to the then Bailiff to his private office to be told that he would not permit me to ask “all those questions”.
When I asked what rule existed that forbade my asking as many relative questions on the bus tendering process as I wished, I was told that it was within the rules. I answered: “Then, sir, I will be asking all of them”. And I did.
The result of this was quite dramatic. At the end of my questions and the answers, the lunch interval occurred and, during the break, the committee president called his committee to an emergency meeting and, on returning to the House after lunch, declared that they were all resigning.
Senator Dick also supported me when I called for a full public inquiry into the whole bus tendering fiasco. Public servants and politicians involved wanted it to be an internal inquiry but we persuaded the States that only a full public inquiry, where witnesses would be under oath and where the inquiry would have the legal right to subpoena witnesses and documents, would satisfy the public.
This public inquiry was duly held and their report confirmed how unfairly the Lewis family had been treated by both politicians and public servants. Their report also confirmed the public allegation I had made that Connex had been wrongfully paid £115,000 of taxpayers’ money for no reason and the inquiry ordered that Connex return this money to the States.
It is clear that no lessons were learned from that flawed bus tendering process of the early 2000s and attempts by Jersey and Guernsey to agree on a tendering process for a joint Channel Islands shipping service for passengers and freight is deeply flawed and will only see a result when some humble pie is eaten by one side – and that seems unlikely.
The current situation highlights that the whole process was flawed from the very start. The tendering process depends on a number of elements for it to be run successfully. The most important element necessary is that the process is squeaky clean and free of any conflict of interest.
In the old days in Jersey, when contracts were awarded by various government departments say, for a building, all quotes were based on a final dateline that was strictly observed and kept in their sealed envelopes which were not opened until the committee meeting called to approve the winner. Details of each quotation were always then announced in the States.
But the most important element of fairness rests with those making the decision – in this case the States of Guernsey and the States of Jersey.
If either of those making the necessary choice has a conflict of interest, their decisions can only be described as “tainted”. And herein lies the problem
The States of Guernsey has a big financial interest in ensuring the future of Condor, one of the approved contestants in this struggle, having loaned it a considerable sum of taxpayers’ money, £26 million, to purchase their new ship to prevent “an undisclosed potential emergency” occurring last year. Condor is now part of Brittany Ferries, a very successful French ferry company operating 10 cruise ferries with an average size of 20,000 tons at speeds of 20-25 knots linking the UK with France, Ireland and Spain.
The trouble is that Guernsey is one of the two decision-makers in awarding this contract. For anyone to suggest that there is no conflict of interest in that situation simply doesn’t understand the legality of what is happening.
What is extraordinary is that Jersey allowed this flawed tender process to go on for months without realising that it would end up one way – with Guernsey voting to approve the contract for Condor and protect their tax-payers’ money and ensure that the Island’s investment wouldn’t go down the pan. Who could blame them?
Improve the tasteof Jersey Royal
I see that big efforts will be made to re-vitalise the appeal of the Jersey Royal potato and that a goodly sum is to be spent on advertising and marketing. I hope that this will be beneficial. But I fear that there is one ingredient missing from the mix that is the reason why our famous spud has lost its appeal – it has lost its famous Jersey Royal taste. I’ve always considered myself a lover of the Jersey Royal and, when I worked in London, I couldn’t wait for March and April to come around to enjoy plain boiled Jersey Royal potatoes with a sprig of mint and a lump of the Jersey butter my Mum used to send me. A simply unique, gorgeous, mouth-watering taste and well worth paying the higher price for.
But in the last few years I’ve noticed that much of their flavour has gone. Last year, I couldn’t find one supplier with decent tasting Royals and it was so disappointing. It seems to me that the Jersey Royal Company would be far better advised to establish why they don’t taste like days gone by and try to get them back to their old quality. That will re-invigorate their market.
Why not run a small test zone – plant a small area and grow them under the plastic as we do now; also grow another area without plastic and fertilise with vraic; and grow one area without any of that and then run a public taste test without telling people how each group was grown and see if the public note any difference.
