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CHAIRMEN'S COMMITTEE
Meeting of Chairmen held on 2nd November 2007 Meeting Number 64
Present Deputy S C Ferguson, President Deputy R C Duhamel
Deputy G P Southern (Item only)
Deputy A Breckon
Deputy J G Reed
Deputy P J D Ryan
Deputy D.W. Mezbourian
Apologies Deputy R.G. Le Herissier, Vice President
In attendance Mrs. K. Tremellen-Frost, Scrutiny Manager
Mrs. E. Kingston-Walsh, Scrutiny Officer
Ref Back | Agenda matter | Action |
1. | Minutes The Committee requested that the Minutes of the 5th October 2007 be amended as follows: - Item 2: Panel Reports: Health, Social Services and Housing Panel: resignation of Senator Shenton. The Senator had resigned from all Scrutiny Sub-Panels in which he was involved. Item 2 Panel Reports PAC: The Chairman of the Education and Home Affairs Scrutiny Panel had asked the Chairman of that Committee when the PAC's meeting with the Education Department would be held. Item 7 Scrutiny of the States Business Plan: The Chairman of the Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel had not declined a request to forward records of meetings held between the Corporate Services Panel, Chief Minister and Minister for Treasury and Resources but commented that as the meetings were held in private session, the Minutes were equally recorded as such. The Minutes of the 9th October 2007 were approved as a true record of the meeting but not signed. The Minutes of the 17th October 2007 were approved as a true record of the meeting until the arrival of Deputy G.P. Southern during item 4 of the meeting at which time he requested that the Minutes be amended as follows; - Item 1 para 4: Additional sentence "It was agreed that scrutiny should be involved from the outset" | KTF |
2 05.10.06 Item 6 | Internal Review into Working Practices The Committee recalled that it had agreed that key findings and recommendations would be prepared by Deputies R. Le Hérissier and J. Reed. It noted that this work was pending and agreed that it might be preferable to await the Privileges and Procedures Sub-Committee's report on its review into the Machinery of Government Reforms which was due for publication shortly. | JR/RLH |
3 | Sub-Panels: Presentation of reports/rapporteurs |
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05.10.07 Item8 | The Committee noted that work was underway in preparing a report for the Chairmen's Committee in respect of the above by the Deputy Greffier of the States. | DGoS |
4. | Quarterly Financial Report: third quarter The Committee noted that further information had been supplied upon request regarding a breakdown of miscellaneous expenditure across the Panels. A further request regarding details of this breakdown and the reconciliation of figures would be forwarded to the Finance and Administration Manager. | DA-MG |
5. | Panel updates The Committee noted the Panel activity reports and the following additional information: Corporate Services Panel
regarding the Migration Policy should be forwarded to the Migration Policy Sub-Panel.
Sub-Panel's report on the Waterfront Development was due later this year. The Chairman agreed to request the Chairman of the Sub-Panel to contact Deputy Duhamel directly about any issues he wished to raise. Economic Affairs Panel No information additional to Panel paper Education and Home Affairs
produce her response to the Centeniers Report within the six week allocated period. The Panel had considered presenting comments on the proposition brought by the Deputy of St. Martin requesting an independent review into the prosecution service but has decided to await the response of the Home Affairs Minister;
attending a private scrutiny meeting which had culminated in the Chairman having read the witness statement to him before he was prepared to speak. The matter is being looked into. Health, Social Services and Housing
Housing Department as there were a number of issues which merited review which the Department was not intending to review. Consideration was given to the possibility of the Panel looking at the statistics relating to the Housing Needs Survey.
the former Overdale Sub-Panel with the aim of advising the Panel of their plans in this regard. It was noted that the Chairman of the Panel also needed to be involved. | PR KTF |
| Environment (i) Consideration would be given to a number of issues surrounding the Minister of Planning and Environment's recent decision to grant in principle planning permission for the Energy from Waste plant. Public Accounts Committee A review into States Expenditure would be drivenand co- ordinated by the PAC following work undertaken by the Comptroller and Auditor General. No Ministers or Assistant Ministers would be involved in order to protect the independency of the PAC and this had been made clear to the Chief Minister and Chief Executive. On reaching the stage when the PAC considered individual Departments it would wish the relevant Panel to be present at those discussions. As the C&AG had a freedom to question anyone whereas PAC was restricted to interviewing Chief Officers and Scrutiny Panels to Ministers, it was considered highly appropriate that this method of working occur. Noting that there would be a working group comprising Assistant Ministers the Committee considered whether this was appropriate given that the group was not formally constituted by the States and therefore had no status. It was noted that input from all would be valuable, however the PAC was fulfilling its remit by reviewing expenditure issues and forwarding this to scrutiny for a review into forward plans regarding expenditure to be undertaken. |
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6. 05.10.07 item 3 | Newsletter It was noted that the newsletter would be circulated to all households during the week beginning 5th November 2007. It was also noted that an evaluation into the preparation of the newsletter and related costs would be undertaken and brought to a subsequent Committee meeting. Acknowledgments and thanks were made to all those who had been involved in its production and who had met deadlines. |
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7. | States Annual Business Plan The Committee considered reports from each of the Scrutiny Panels in respect of an evaluation of the States Annual Business Plan and ways in which scrutiny could be more effective. There was general agreement that the process had been extremely difficult to understand with changing terminology and figures without any explanations. It was agreed that the system was unworkable in its present form and steps were needed to rectify this for the immediate future. The Committee considered a proposed revised timetable from Deputy J. Reed with a number of amendments which had been seen and accepted by Treasury Officers. However some concern was expressed that this mirrored the former Fundamental Spending Review (FSR) process. The Committee also considered a proposal by the Corporate Services Panel to form a Finance Sub-Panel, of which the Chief Minister and Treasury Minister were fully supportive. The |
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Chairman, Corporate Services Panel maintained that it was the responsibility of that Panel to review the overall framework and that it could undertake this work by incorporating a representative per Panel on a Sub-Panel together with appointing a specialist adviser. This would permit an earlier involvement of scrutiny in the process. Consideration was given as to whether this would create duplication with the PAC review. It was clarifies that the PAC was aiming at providing the scrutiny Panels with a solid foundation of figures for them to work from.
There was further concern expressed that the proposed intention of a Sub-Panel was to review detailed expenditure whereas the matters which should be considered were policy changes about which Departments should be able to advise the Panels.
Given the complexity and number of the variables and issues involved, together with recognition of lack of understanding of the current system, it was agreed that the best way forward would be to receive a briefing from the relevant Treasury and Chief Minister's Department's Officers in the first instance. Any training would be deferred until the system itself had been clarified internally.
The Committee agreed that it would be appropriate to request that the relevant officers attend the Chairmen's Committee meeting on 14th November 2007 with the Chief Minister and the Chief Executive. In the event that this request was refused, those officers should be invited to meet the Committee immediately after that meeting.
Signed Date .. President, Chairmen's Committee