SO what goes on in Privileges and Procedures Committee meetings?

Me, I don’t know – although they sit mostly in public, it’s been a while since I dragged myself down there.

You might think that the States committee with responsibility for reform and parliamentary standards would be more fun, but I struggle to think of much that the last one achieved beyond limiting campaign spending.

Nothing on Freedom of Information legislation, and nothing on compositional reform except a few debates that still give me nightmares.

Maybe it’s the name – successive committees have given the States a bad name when it comes to dynamism, decisiveness and gravitas. And that’s a pretty tall order in itself.
If all that sounds a bit harsh on the current committee, who by the look of the minutes of their meetings have been a bit quicker on the uptake, then I’m sorry.

But if they can’t even get the States Members they are supposed to be investigating and disciplining – in last week’s case, Senators Stuart Syvret and Jim Perchard – to turn up and take it seriously, then they’re in trouble.

Enter Deputy Phil Rondel. The plumber from St John is this week asking the States to back a review of the States Members’ code of conduct, with a view to adding teeth, claws, fines and possibly suspensions to their currently fairly empty arsenal.

This could make Privileges meetings a bit sexier, and might prompt more people to take it seriously. I might even go myself.

The minutes of the Privileges meetings, by the way, suggest that they have not just settled on a path for compositional reform, but also sorted out an appeals system for Freedom of Information requests.

The composition reform proposal, by the way, is for 53 Members on a four-year term, comprising 12 Constables and 41 Members elected in ‘super-constituencies’.

Considering how the last few Privileges committees have struggled to progress anything, the question has to be asked: Why is this one being so quiet about the work they have already done?

You’d think they’d be shouting it from the rooftops…

Of all the lessons learned from Liberation Day, the smallest and least significant must be this: if you want a full house of States Members, with no one off sick and no one away from the Island, it’s dead easy.

Don’t hold any debates, don’t ask any questions, and make sure only one person gets to speak.

Saturday’s Liberation Day States sitting was the first in a fair old while that every Member managed not only to attend, but attend on time.

Even the chronic latecomers, who I’m still too wrapped up in patriotic fervour and goodwill to name. But why would that be? Why this sitting in particular?

Maybe it’s because they don’t really like debates, questions or speeches. Maybe they just don’t have anything to do on Saturday mornings. Or perhaps the secret is that it was only 15 minutes long?

What should be one of the final stages of the fallout from what Senator Perchard did or didn’t say to Senator Syvret should be straightened out this week.

Namely this, following the promotion of Deputy Anne Pryke from Assistant Environment Minister to Health Minister, Senator Freddie Cohen is in need of a new lieutenant.

The word is that long-time environmental campaigner Deputy Rob Duhamel is in the frame for the position of Assistant Environment Minister. If the rumours are right – and they frequently are not – then it is, the first genuine nod to a ‘broad church’ of political opinion and hue by the new Council of Ministers.

That’s not to say that the ministers and their assistants all sing from the same hymn sheet – they’re a mix of those on the right (Senators Le Sueur, Ozouf and Maclean), and some from the middle (Senator Le Marquand and Deputy Gorst).

But in States terms, Deputy Duhamel is out of the left field. He has been talking – sometimes at great length – about green issues since he was first elected to the States in 1993, when they were neither fashionable nor mainstream.

And it’s a nice idea that someone who used to be a prominent voice from the Scrutiny side could have a voice on the executive.