ExCo Report
29 October 2009
With the General Election now only just over a week away, this was the last Executive Council of the present Council.
There were quite a number of matters arising from our previous meeting. I reported on the situation with regard to Ascension Island which has been in the international news lately. The Councillors there are facing the problem of having far less revenue than anticipated due to a long running dispute with the Ministry of Defence. I stressed that a great deal is being done by the politicians and officers both on Ascension and in London to resolve the situation. I realise that most people here might have mixed feelings about a number of Saints returning from Ascension – it would be wonderful to have families re-united, but set against that it could well stretch our fragile economy. Please rest assured that this matter is being carefully watched and I know that your Council, whoever is elected, will argue very strongly that what happens on Ascension is “exogenous” being external and outside of our control. In the past the UK has agreed to help us in such circumstances and I see no reason why that should change.
I also reported that I had arranged with the Chamber of Commerce to meet with them to discuss the vexed issue of Terminal Handling Charges. Councillors were also keen that I should meet with the smaller merchants who may not be members of the Chamber. I agreed to do just that and will send out invitations shortly.
We also discussed some of the misunderstandings that seemed to have arisen from my reporting on our Management Accounts at the last meeting. There had been at least two comments in the press clearly thinking that a surplus of cash is the same as a profit. That is not the case, the fact that we may have £638,000 more at present than we had planned means that we simply have not spent as much as we thought we would. As usual there is work behind schedule and therefore not yet paid for. That £638,000 is in no sense extra money. If we were to use it outside of the existing budget then we would almost certainly be in deficit at the end of the financial year next March, and we simply cannot do that as it is the route to disaster.
In the course of our discussion on finance I stressed to the Elected Members that the distinction that is sometimes made between “Government” and “Councillors” can be very misleading when it comes to money. It is Legislative Council that approves our annual budget and that budget dictates what can be spent and where it can be spent over the coming year. Officers only have the power to spend what Councillors approve and exceptions to that original approval still require their own approval through the Special Warrant system, that are now carefully monitored by EXCO and LEGCO.
Concern had been expressed at the last meeting over the reliability of the X-Ray machine at the hospital and I had undertaken to look in to the issue. I read Councillors a detailed response from the Director of Health that indicated quite clearly that the less than perfect output from the X-Ray process was due to a number of factors. Some of those factors we will be able to deal with, others must await a more modern machine. Councillors suggested that we investigate the possibility of using a digital machine so that a very clear image can be transmitted over the internet. The Acting Chief Secretary agreed to look into this idea.
The main item for discussion was a presentation made by the Attorney General with regard to the impact of the new Constitution on the structure of government committees after the election. This was a subject discussed at the last EXCO and officers have done a great deal of work to simplify and clarify what is a complex subject. It has also been discussed at a meeting of Heads of Departments.
I was asked right at the start why we need to change our existing structure. The answer is that we don’t have to change anything at all - what we now have in our new Constitution is flexible enough to provide a wide range of options. One of those is to leave things as they are – so this is not an enforced change. However this is one of those parts of the Constitution that gives far more power to Councillors as it enables us to have political oversight over the whole range of government activities. Until now the five committees have covered only Health, Social Services, Public Works, Education and ANRD. But now our politicians’ portfolios will be able to include the Economy, Internal Security, Employment, Sea and Air Access, Tourism, Leisure and International matters among many others.
This transfer of power, and therefore responsibility, should be apparent from the earliest days of our next Council. That is because what this new Constitution does is to devolve a significant amount of oversight from the Governor and the Officers to the Elected Members. That is a fundamental shift towards even more democracy. We are still some way from Ministerial Government, but this is certainly a move towards it.
I am sure you are all aware of the obvious benefits of the non-elected Members of both EXCO and LEGCO no longer having a vote, and of the fact that the Governor will actually have to follow the advice of EXCO in all but a few areas of government. However this expansion of Councillors’ involvement to include virtually all areas of the public service is a major step and makes next weeks’ election all the more important.
Under Any Other Business we heard that although we may feel very happy about the RMS now being the responsibility of this government and not of DfID, that pleasure will actually have cost us £177,000 over the last three years. That means that our small reserves have reduced by that amount. So, as the reserves belong to the island, the ship has actually cost every Saint working on this Island over £70 over the last 3 years, whether you have used the ship or not. That is because just as we are able to keep any gains made on running the RMS, so we must suffer any losses.
I have heard folk say that the RMS is not a business, but a service, and I believe that it is actually both, because as long as we have to suffer any loss it may make, we must treat it as a business in order to make sure it does not become an impossible burden on our budget. I have also heard folk say that the RMS does not need all the complexity of administration that surrounds it. I have some sympathy for that view and I can only agree that the management structure does look very intricate. I am sure that this is an issue that new Councillors will want to address and it must be a subject for us in the DAPM negotiations with DFID in February. I am therefore asking Matt Young, the Finance Director of SHL and Kedell Worboys, who is also a Director, to visit us in the New Year in order to provide us with detail on this issue. I will also be asking them to speak and answer questions at a public meeting so that all will be able to have their say and hopefully get an answer. The visit should prove to be a healthy review of the management of our ship as well as a clear demonstration of our determination to be as open as we can in government.
Having now chaired 38 EXCOs I was able to thank the Members sincerely for their hard work and hard debate over the last two years. The meeting closed at 12.30 pm.
Andrew Gurr
Governor
27th October 2009