From Deputy Patrick Ryan, chairman,
Corporate Services Scrutiny panel.
FOLLOWING the States decision to pass the principles of the regulations limiting election expenditure on the morning of 17 July, as proposed by the Privileges and Procedures Committee, the Corporate Services Scrutiny panel unanimously decided to ‘pull’ the law in to scrutiny in order to examine the details of the articles for fitness and purpose.

On the morning of 18 July we reversed that decision. Your readers are entitled to know (a) why it was ‘pulled’ in the first place and (b) why we changed our minds.

This legislation was lodged on 30 May 2008. With a minimum six-week lodging period, the earliest it could be debated was this week.

A core responsibility of Scrutiny, as so often pointed out by the Privileges and Procedures Committee itself and so many other States Members, and also written into the Scrutiny Codes, is legislative scrutiny.

Once the debate started, it very rapidly became clear that there exist large gaps, inconsistencies and huge problems of practicality in the way that the regulations would be policed.

If ever there was a piece of legislation that needed the benefit of careful scrutiny, this is it.
The problems include:
• The complete absence of special conditions for disabled candidates to allow them a higher limit and the postal distribution of manifestos because clearly they may not be able to canvass on foot as prospective Deputies.

• The glaring anomaly of a prospective Deputy candidate standing first as a Senator, concentrating all his allowed expenditure on the parish he intends to stand in later (circa £8,000), and then, having failed to be elected as a Senator, spending another tranche of money on the same parish in the Deputy election.

• As already mentioned, it is clear that with a little imagination a coach and horses can be driven through the regulations if one has the inclination, with little realistic chance of a successful prosecution.

These are the principal reasons why my panel decided to pull in the law for scrutiny and produce a report, but I feel sure that many others would have surfaced.

As per our usual style, it would have been thorough, focused and yet produced with the very minimum of delay.

We had already made contingency plans to divert officer time, and it goes without saying that my panel were not looking forward to giving up a large part of their summer holiday but were prepared to do so, particularly as there appeared to be a majority of States Members in favour of a Scrutiny report.

Initially the Attorney General gave the imp-ression (perhaps unintentionally) that he would consider prosecuting retrospectively if the regulations were passed by the States in September after our report was presented, so that excessive candidate spending in advance of this year’s elections would still be caught.

Later that day he corrected that impression by saying that he would not after all consider retrospective prosecution.

It became clearer to me that our decision of six hours earlier to scrutinise clearly flawed legislation meant that it would not be possible for the States to pass regulations to limit election expenditure in time for this year’s Senator and Constable elections (although still possible for the Deputy elections).

The Corporate Services panel had no wish to stand in the way of the States making a decision in time for this year’s elections, so after a further panel meeting I informed the Assembly that we wished to reverse the earlier decision — but my panel members and I did so under substantial protest.

Privileges and Procedures have known about the wishes of States Members to bring this to debate for at least three years.

To lodge it on the last possible date before the summer recess in the knowledge that legislative scrutiny on the detail would be impossible before this year’s elections is astonishing, and a clear abuse of the scrutiny process — and this from a committee that is supposed to be the ‘referee’ of our political system.
Morier House,
Halkett Place,
St Helier.