THE SCRUTINY SYSTEM HAS JUST BEEN BLOWN APART

I was the first chairman of Scrutiny when it was introduced six years ago. It was called “shadow scrutiny” at the time and it was to enable the system to settle in before Ministerial government

I remember Frank Walker being very annoyed that the States had voted me in as the first chairman.  He made a speech in the States when he warned us that Scrutiny should not be seen as “opposition” but as a “critical friend”

 

I saw Scrutiny in a different light.  To me our job was to appoint experts to help us provide an evidence based report on the subject under review.  When we looked at the incinerator, we appointed two experts to advise us-a University professor whose expertise was waste incineration and an acknowledged UK expert on re-cycling. 

Our final report showed that the island only needed an incinerator that could handle 50,000 tons a year, recycling should be at 50% and it should be re-sited somewhere else other than Bellozanne Valley but not at La Collette

During the hearings, we were treated with absolute contempt by Ozouf, who was president of Planning and Environment and who constantly gave us wrong figures and simply wouldn’t answer questions put to him.  His officers were just as bad, especially John Richardson, who has since been promoted to acting head of the whole of Jersey’s public service.  When our report was published, our findings were totally ignored by the States.

The same happened with our deliberations on zero- ten.  Much to Walkers, fury, we appointed Mr. Richard Murphy as our advisor and a local accountant who claimed to be an expert on international taxation whom the Council had asked us to appoint to counter Mr. Murphy’s views.

Before we did this, Walker tried to get the States to veto our appointment of expert advisors and I rigorously resisted this interference.  If the executive can dictate who Scrutiny advisors should be, the independence of Scrutiny would be seriously threatened.  I made a statement in the States to that effect and Walker reluctantly withdrew.  It is a matter of public record that Mr. Murphy publicly humiliated Walker, le Sueur and Ozouf and, after examining the Code of Conduct of the EU Council on Taxation, we concluded that there was no way that zero-ten would get their approval.  Our report was ignored and we all know now the mess we are in as a result of that decision.

The fact is that Scrutiny costs the taxpayer over £1.5 million.  It involves a lot of work and dedication by the scrutiny officers and those Stats members who sit on the panels.  The facts are that over the last year the number of States members prepared to sit on a scrutiny panel has dropped alarmingly as each report is totally ignored by the Council.  Scrutiny is clearly a waste of everyone’s time and a gross waste of tax-payers money if it is to be treated in this way, it may as well be scrapped as a complete waste of time.

Then we had the remarkable case of Senator Ben Shenton, in one of his rare appearances in the States, protesting that Deputy Mike Higgins should not chair a scrutiny panel looking into the financial affairs at the airport.  His argument, backed up by that “let them eat cake” right wing monster Senator Sarah Ferguson, was that because Deputy Higgins was the organiser of the annual air display he has a conflict of interest.

In fact Mike Higgins would know more about the operation of Jersey Airport than anyone in the States.  It is clear that what the Ozouf party want is that people with knowledge of the subject under review should not sit on a Scrutiny Panel  The last thing they want is for the truth to come out.

The latest resignations from Scrutiny by Deputies Le Herissier, Tadier, Pitman and Wimberley are the death knell of Scrutiny.  Serve the Ozouf Party right.