From David Eves.
LISTEN to these words spoken by Senator Stuart Syvret:

‘The findings of the Howard League for Penal Reform endorse and agree with everything that people like Simon Bellwood and I were saying last year.

‘It is very noticeable that they choose to include the legal opinion which was prepared by the Howard League for Penal Reform last year, which said that the Grand Prix system and similar policies were illegal and unlawful.

‘I spent a great part of last year speaking to children, former residents in their twenties, and never had any doubt about what I had been told.

‘If this were not on the eve of an election, the Council of Ministers would have to resign. They are the first ever jurisdiction in the history of western de-mocracy that has sack-ed a Health and Social Services Minister for telling the truth.’

So said Senator Syv-ret in your article entitled ‘Behind the walls at Greenfields’ (JEP, 19 November). Indeed, this message is so compelling that it should really have featured in the JEP as a front-page headline.

Senator Syvret was not sacked for supposed bad language or the like on the internet. He was sacked for his genuine and real concern about disgraceful, illegal and unlawful conduct in our society in Jersey.

The fact remains that the big-gest mistake the government made, a government epitomised by a culture of ‘set up’, ‘stitch up’ and ‘cover up’, was to make Senator Syvret president of the Health Committee, and consequently the Health Minister, in the first place.

Without the access to information which his position gave him, the outrageous scandals of Haut de la Garenne and the remand centre at Greenfields would almost certainly never have been brought to the public’s attention in the first place.
61 La Collette Flats,
Green Street,
St Helier.