Hansard Official Report

Thank you, Sir, or should I say, Monsieur le Président. Je voudrais commencer mon discours en félicitant chaleureusement Monsieur le Député Bailhache d’avoir présenté et proposé cette proposition devant cette Assemblée. [I would like to start my speech by warmly congratulating Deputy Bailhache for bringing this proposition to the Assembly]. I am well aware, as Nelson Mandela said, that if you talk to a person in the language they understand, that it goes to their heads.

If you talk to them in their language, it goes to their hearts. So I am going to continue, if I may, in the English language, as I know that that is the language that is the, in the majority of cases, language that may well, by some remarks in this important debate, go to Members’ hearts.

I am afraid I cannot ... it would not be lawful for me to speak in Italian. I am capable of speaking a number of languages, but having such international guests in the gallery I think underlines the importance of this debate and the importance, if I may take the opportunity of welcoming those guests, that we welcome of course the guests from many countries and many European countries.

Most Members know that I am a linguist, and I think my life has changed and was changed immeasurably by the knowledge of another language. I absolutely support a very longstanding objective of Deputy Bailhache, and one which I have also been involved in, in the past. He spoke in his opening remarks about the osmosis effect that early language learning has, and I can say that that is absolutely correct. I think that any Member of this Assembly who had the experience of hearing more than just one language in their very early years was changed as a result of it. Immersing young children in another language at a young age is literally a life-changing gift. It opens doors to new opportunities. It opens the ability for perspectives that change one’s knowledge, one’s interpretation of other people. It builds and fosters respect and understanding in a way that is almost incalculable.

Early language acquisition is like literally the opening of a window on to another world. It is the thing, as Deputy Bailhache says, that enhances creativity. It builds empathy, understanding, and it also helps in this fast-moving, technological-driven world. It is a skill that embraces and enhances an individual’s ability to critically think and think fast. I benefited from that, and I have in my friendship group almost exclusively individuals who are bilingual, by virtue of the fact that I was able to go to a university that was bilingual. I went to a European business school, a business school that was created initially in Germany, and at those very early doors in the late 1980s, when there was the aspiration of a European single market, the ability to converse in different languages was seen as being a vital ability for future business leaders, which it was a business school. I studied economics and it was interesting that we had the same curriculum taught to us in the different year groups, in different languages. It was the same curriculum in a different language. So I find it quite difficult when I hear the kind of scepticism that Deputy Ward exemplified when he said it was so difficult. It really is not difficult and I am an example of that. I did not get just one degree, I got more than one because I studied in those three different countries; in France, in Germany, and in the United Kingdom. All of my friends who are bilingual, who I have asked, would not change that experience for anything. That is also proven by the fact that they are doing it with their children, where there is even a couple who are French, they try and ensure that their children, from a very early age, have the ability to learn and hear another language. I know that my mother, who was I think the only Jersey girl who - we have got the letters to prove it - battled with the Education Department in the 1950s because the Education Department of the day refused to give her a grant to go to a French university.

Well I can say that I have read a lot of the letters, and they are amazing, and she got what she wanted; and a woman going to university in France, in Paris, was something that was almost unheard of.

Maybe she was as resilient as ... that resilience has been passed on with me. I think that the opportunity to give children the ability to speak one and then, of course, the second language does one thing, and the statistics are very clear, it means that the ability to learn a third and a fourth language is commensurately, by a percentage I think of 30 per cent, made easier. So the acquisition of a first and second language early accelerates and means that you can learn more languages, understand more cultures, and build those empathies and those understandings in a faster way than you otherwise would do. As a former Minister for Treasury and Resources, it was once said that I knew the cost of everything but the value of nothing. I surprised Members in the Council of Ministers by actually breaking ranks. I broke collective responsibility. I think I did it twice, but the 2 reasons were that I broke ranks because the Education Department wanted to cut language assistants. I was completely against it. I could not bring myself to vote for it. So I broke ranks and I went to this Assembly and I got those language assistants with those other Members who agreed with me. I am looking across at Deputy Tadier, who is smiling knowingly.

[9:45] Because it is not a case that this is a, I hope, whipped vote and a vote that will be even a vote that the Reform Party or the Council of Ministers will unilaterally vote and together vote. This is a free vote, I hope. This is an important vote. It is a cultural vote. It goes straight to the heart of who we are, who we were, who we are and who we can be. In terms of those numbers, however, and those values, let me say that there is evidence - very clear evidence - that the ability to speak an additional language, and particularly French, it does improve the earning capability of individuals. I am not going to bore Members with the statistics, but in sectors like finance, which is of course so important in our Island, in healthcare and communications, bilingual workers earn thousands of pounds more annually than their monolingual peers. That is what investment in education is really about, and giving our young people that ability is going to increase their earning potential and their earning ability. I do not need to tell Members that Jersey is a unique place. It is unique because we are at a crossroads where French and English language and cultures have met. They are indelible. They are part of our past and I believe that they can be important in our future. Our economy depends on trade. It involves having to send something or bills to somebody else in another place in the world. In this increasing globalised world, it is vital that we give the skills to young people of that ability to trade. There was a report by a very well-respected institute called RAND that said that increasing the number of U.K.

(United Kingdom) secondary schools pupils language learning could boost by 10 per cent the U.K.

G.D.P. (gross domestic profit). They cited a figure of £12 billion over 20 years. Bilingualism plays a crucial role also in removing trade barriers. That is why I went to the European Business School.

It was thought that basically forming young people with the ability to converse in 3, or 4 in our case, languages would basically ensure and ensure that the trade barriers between European nations, whether Italy and Germany, would be reduced. I recall a very good example of that when former Senator Pierre Horsfall was engaged in some very difficult discussions with Breton and Norman counterparts. The former Senator Horsfall was brought up with a knowledge of Breton. There are 2 languages actually in Breton, there is Le Gallo and there’s also the Celtic version of Breton. In the start of the discussions, it is recounted in his book, he actually says that he said a few words to one of his opposite numbers in Breton, and it completely changed the mood of the meeting. We have massive examples of our bilingual French heritage; Victor Hugo. In my Parish we have Les Rochers des Écrivains, the Rock of the Writers, and if I could persuade Deputy Tadier to basically put some of that cultural money into celebrating that. Guernsey seems to be getting an awful lot of the French visitors, and I think we have got a story to tell about Victor Hugo. The Education Department are themselves in a former French Catholic education institute, a naval college. So that great hall in Highlands also has - it is not very well known this - but one of the most famous and most valuable organs built by Cavaillé-Coll. How about getting some organ recitals in that place? Apparently it is worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. We debated the importance of the maritime economy and net zero. Well, it is our French counterparts that are going to deliver the net zero hydrocarbon and hydrogen solutions for our fishers. We need fishermen, we need young people, we need experts and civil servants that can speak French. A lot of French people speak English, of course, but of course it is always going to make those discussions with those French counterparts so much easier if you actually can even engage in some basic advanced conversations. I know it made a huge difference in the discussions we had in resolving what were a fractious relationship with France that we inherited, that we have solved and I know are continuing. Frank Smith, the psycholinguist, said: “One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages opens every door along the way.” I want to ensure that the next generation is allowed to explore the world from multiple perspectives.

As an Island that once advertised itself as an Island tourist economy that was Britain closer to France, we are incredibly well placed to secure greater trade to enjoy greater communication, to improve our lifestyles by better communications, physical with France, and is it not going to be so much better to give our young people that ability to basically speak French from a very early age, to get that accent that will, in those very few first moments of that conversation, actually get the impression to that person that they may actually be almost French. Because in the first few words, if you have the ability without an English accent to speak French, you completely change the tone of the dialogue you have with your interlocutor partner. This Assembly has got the leadership position on behalf of islands, and I hope that this Assembly will show some courage and some leadership, that they will put some real value on the importance of French in our past and in our future. We have become an anglicised Island. Deputy Bailhache has sometimes pulled my leg that I am sometimes more English than I am Jersey, and I know that he will be smiling and he will wrap up and say something about that. But I am a Jerseyman. I am very comfortable as a British Jerseyman, but I owe an enormous amount and place an enormous amount of importance on the fact that I am also of French heritage, with being the fifth generation of a Jersey family from France that still can find relations in France.

That is why I feel so much at home in Normandy and in Brittany from where my ancestors came and where there are Ozoufs, and there are many other Members of this Assembly whose origins will go there. I believe that we can do so much more and we need to improve those education standards and setting in stone a bilingual school will do immeasurable benefit to our community of the future.

I understand there was some feedback from some Members on the quality of current French teaching in the debate yesterday. Having listened to a number of primary schools in this Assembly, I can only say that I have been thoroughly impressed with the quality of the French spoken on each occasion when pupils say the prayers. For that I congratulate the individuals but also thank the teachers. At my weekly surgery I see on average 4 or 5 people each week. I have had just one person who came to see me to discuss this subject. Knowing the parishioner, a former teacher, I was surprised by her views. The lady wanted me to assure her that I would not support this proposal. She actually had experience of working in a bilingual school, having worked in one in Canada, so she spoke from a position of experience. The reason for not wanting to see this proposal approved was from that experience, and she said there are many things to think about. She was concerned about both the practical implementation, as well as the potential consequences of displacing local families from their catchment area. She was also very concerned about what selection criteria would be used. Could we do more to encourage our community to embrace French culture and the French language?

Clearly, the answer is yes. Our own Parish twinning came as a result of the relationship between our Parish school and a French school. Sadly, the close working relationship between the 2 schools ceased many years ago, and we are going to celebrate 40 years of twinning next year. I would like to resurrect that relationship between the 2 schools, utilising technology rather than the original concept of pen pals. This would be something practical to encourage our youngsters to learn more about our near neighbours and hopefully, as before, make lifelong friends. Finally, I have asked 2 headteachers for their views. The first, the head of a Parish school, told me that they fully endorsed the comments of the heads that have been circulated. Secondly, I asked a former headteacher I know to be fluent in more than one language for their view. The brief response was: “You must reject.” They pointed out that the majority of students do French up until year 9. If they want to, they can do G.C.S.E. (General Certificate of Secondary Education). There is also the opportunity to do A-level.

They summed up their views by saying it was a nice to have but, in their view, it was an outdated idea. My decision to reject this proposal is based on the feedback I and others have had from both past and present professionals in education.

Can I just raise the défaut on Deputy Moore, please?

I will try and be brief, because it is really quite an extensive subject that we are talking about today.

We heard a lot about people’s individual experience during that. I was reminded halfway through that the old accusation that used to be made to the Assembly was that they are acting as a 49-man Planning Committee, often the case where everybody knows something about planning and can therefore make a contribution. All of a sudden we have got 49 opinions as to whether that roof should go on there or not. In a similar manner, everyone believes, and rightly, that they have some experience of schools and therefore can tell us about education. We have all been to school. Seventy years ago I started my education career in Bolton in nursery education; experimental nursery classes in Bolton back in 1953. My experience was ... the one that sticks with me is being made to take a rest in the afternoon because I might tire myself out, poor little thing. I shall ignore [Laughter] Deputy Farnham, whatever it was. I really resented this. I was a big grown-up boy, I was 3 years old. I did not have to have an afternoon sleep in the afternoon; they made me. They made me lie down on this scratchy mat - somebody else has met the scratchy mat - for three-quarters of an hour or thereabouts, and it was frustrating. It really made no sense to me. My experience from that, my experience of education, would revolve around scratchy mats. [Interruption] Perhaps it does explain a lot. But what we have had ... the question becomes: do they still do that? Because I am out of touch with that education. It has been, as I say, 70-plus years. So, I would not dare speak about nursery schools now, because I am miles distanced from that. Even my grandchildren leave me in the cold, as it were. But Deputy Bailhache and, in turn, Deputy Ozouf, have done a great job of selling something to us. All the values which say this is the pro, this is the pro, this is the pro, this is the pro of going towards what they suggest, does not address this is the con. There is always a cost- benefit analysis to be done on anything and we have heard about the benefits at length. Have we heard about the costs? No, we have not. Everything can be sorted out. Everything will be sorted out. We will arrange the staff. Even got the impression that the bilingual staff, with the right qualifications in the right place, will be flooding to us to conduct our experiment, because it would be an experiment at this stage.

[10:00] We are told that the staffing can be arranged, the matching curriculums can be arranged, the fact that the French do not start education at all until they are 6 whereas we start at 3, 4, 5. All sorts of things would need sorting out. I would suggest that what we have had is a selling job with all the pros and none of the cons. We really have to consider some of the cons because the money has not already been spent but the money is already allocated to be spent in turning a good education system into something better. But I do not believe that this way forward is the best way forward. As part of my experience in education, I spent a year in France working in a steel factory, in the steel industry, and in a nuclear plant. I was immersed, I was speaking French every day, left, right and centre, in those positions. What I have ended up with is an ability to speak something like 4 year-old Parisian Argo, which does not always go down well, and I tu-toi the bosses, which I should not but I cannot resist it. I do not address them as vous, but tu-toi. I had experience of a language lab. Does anybody remember those? I do not think ... yes, 2 or 3 people there. A language lab where you are repeating the vowels ad nauseum, so as my colleague, the Deputy has said, to know the difference between “ew” and “oo”. World of difference. But I know that and I have practised it for, it feels like, years but it can only have been a year. Where did that language lab go to with its big recording discs? Oh no, I will not go there. We are told that the language of the heart is the thing that we need to address, not the language of the mind, and this is the way forward. What I say is that what we should do is leave education to the professionals, leave it to the teachers, leave it to the headteachers. They know what they are doing and they point out the problems associated with making this move and are very accurately outlining what is wrong with this way forward. Selling what is nice sounds lovely. As Eliza Doolittle might have said: “Wouldn’t it be loverly?” It would be lovely to have warm hands, warm toes, warm feet. “Wouldn’t it be loverly?” It would be lovely, but actually what we need to do is to look at the costs as well as the benefits and make a rational decision today not to proceed with this forward, no matter how nice it sounds.

We have had a good debate and I am grateful to all Members who have participated. I think there have been some powerful speeches on both sides of the argument and I do not propose to deal with every point that has been made but to concentrate on the essentials. The first thing I want to say is that the Minister gave the impression that this proposition ought not to have been brought. Deputy Feltham was more explicit, and she was joined by Deputy Southam in saying that I had completely misunderstood the practicalities and that educationalists should make this decision. I have not misunderstood the practicalities, but the suggestion that educationalists should make the decision is quite wrong. The job of teachers is to teach the curriculum. I would not dream of telling them how to do that. It is their job and their professional skill. Deciding what the curriculum should be is a different matter. That is a policy issue, which is the responsibility of the Minister and/or the States.

Whether or not to establish bilingual schools is even more plainly the job of the Minister or the States, if the matter is taken to the Assembly. It is not just an educational matter. It is a strategic issue, affecting many things outside education. Of course headteachers should be consulted, but the decision is not for them. I hope that most Members will accept that this is a decision which it is right for them to determine. Bilingual schools will affect the characters and employment prospects of young people, the growth potential of the economy, as eloquently explained by Deputy Morel and indeed Deputy Ozouf this morning, and our identity as Jersey people, among other things. These are not matters solely for headteachers. The Minister talked of the importance of his priorities, but the Assembly is entitled to ask him to adjust his priorities if persuaded that something ought to be added.

Strategic decisions fall within the competence of the States. The central issue, it seems to me, is whether Members are persuaded that bilingual schools are, in principle, a good thing, and that bilingualism should be encouraged. The Constable of St. John appears to think otherwise, but I must say that he is out on a limb. Curiously, the Minister seems to accept that they are, in principle, desirable. He said that if I or one of my colleagues were to put forward a viable business plan to convert a school to bilingual teaching, he would support it. He must therefore, in principle, be in favour of bilingual schools, because he would presumably not support such a project if he thought bilingual schools were intrinsically a bad thing. Supporting the principle, as he says he does, he ought to vote in favour of paragraph (a) of the proposition. But the Minister’s proposal is disingenuous. He knows that ...

May I respectfully say, Sir, that I am not saying that the Minister is disingenuous. I am saying that his proposal is disingenuous. That is a different matter.

Thank you, Sir. [Interruption]

The Minister’s proposal is disingenuous. He knows that no such project will come forward. My colleagues and I on the A.P.F. (Assemblée Parlementaire de la Francophonie) are being set up to fail.

To convert a school to bilingual education needs political leadership and support from the department, and both those things are currently lacking. That could change if the States support this proposition, but now they are absent. Regrettably, the Minister is looking at the issue through the eyes of a teacher or administrator consumed by the humdrum problems of the classroom. I would like him to lift his eyes to the horizon and see matters from the perspective of an internationalist, aware of how bilingual education is expanding in the rest of the world. Look at what is happening in Europe rather than the U.K., which is at or near the bottom of league tables for language skills. I did not follow Deputy Mézec’s story of his bilingual friends from Albania and Nigeria. He seemed to admire bilingualism, but the language skills of his friends were not derived from the U.K. education system. Members, I think, will have decided by now whether they are in favour of bilingualism. So I am not going to repeat the evidence of the great advantages for speaking fluently in more than one language. Deputy Ozouf made a very powerful case for bilingualism in his speech a few moments ago. I believe that a majority of Members actually would like to be bilingual or would like their children to be bilingual. Many of us envy Deputies Alves and Tadier, their language skills. Bearing in mind that broad support for bilingualism and for the teaching of French, how is it to be advanced in primary schools? I am certainly not criticising our French teachers. As I said in my opening speech, much progress has been made in the last 10 years. The system, however, is against us. It locks us into learning French as a subject, like maths or history, rather than being immersed in the language and absorbing it effortlessly through the skin. Immersion is the only way in which a quantum leap in the ability of our children to speak French can be made. If this proposition is lost, we will be stuck in our existing rut for years to come. I hope that Members who are in favour, in principle, of bilingualism can find a way to vote for paragraph (a). It is a vote in principle. That is what it says. Even if there are reservations about how teachers will be found, how the allocation of places will be arranged, how the curriculum can be translated very easily and other practical obstacles raised by the Minister, a vote for the principle is not an irreversible vote for implementing the decision. It is a vote which lays the foundation for solutions to be found. Some small schools are struggling for numbers, bilingual teaching could boost them. But if there are no solutions, if it proves impossible, for example, to find French-language teachers for recruitment, despite all the existing support from Alliance, B.I.A.N. (Bureau des Iles Anglo-Normandes), the French Embassy and so on, that is the end of the matter. A vote for paragraph (a) will, however, make it possible to look for solutions. Otherwise, the negativity that has dogged this debate will triumph. I do feel, I am afraid, that the Minister’s approach has been: “The answer is no. Now what is the question?” I hope that Members who are in favour of bilingualism in principle will feel able to vote for paragraph (a) of the proposition. Paragraph (b) of the proposition asks the Minister to conduct a survey of parents of preschool children to find out what their views are. Would they like to send their child to a bilingual school? It is market research. If the answer is that not enough parents are interested, again, that is the end of the matter. But it seems to me difficult to argue against an attempt to find out if the proponents of bilingual schools are right or wrong as to what the market wants.

[10:15] Let us suppose, just for the sake of argument, that 90 per cent of respondents were in favour of sending their child to a bilingual school. I cannot believe that the Minister would then say: “I do not care what these parents want, I have my own priorities.” Does the Minister perhaps not want to risk knowing what parents of primary school children want? Might it be embarrassing for him to find out that there is quite a lot of support. I do not think that he has thought this matter through, or perhaps simply he has closed his mind to the arguments and is determined, whatever the evidence, that there will be no bilingual schools. But that is not consistent, on the other hand, with his offer to establish a bilingual school if a business case could be made for it. The Minister’s stance, frankly, is puzzling.

However, whatever the Minister’s stance may be, I hope that Members will take the logical step of voting for paragraph (b). It commits Members to nothing concrete, but it does lay the foundation with paragraph (a) to see whether the practical problems identified by the Minister can be overcome.

I understand that the Chief Minister has applied a 3-line whip to the Council of Ministers and of course the Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning is a member of the Reform Party with its block vote. On the face of it, I have an uphill struggle. I think the Chief Minister, if I may say so, made a mistake. This is not an issue of high government policy. It is a Back-Bencher’s proposition on which Members have differing views. There should have been a free vote. The truth is that both the Reform Party and the Council of Ministers are divided. The Council of Ministers probably more so than the Reform Party. I have had much help from my fellow members of the A.P.F. in both Reform and the Council of Ministers, for which I am extremely grateful. It has been a positive experience to work across party lines and exemplifying what I thought the Government itself stood for. I remind Members that the Minister himself is in favour of the principle. He is prepared to support a bilingual school if someone else has done all the work to create the foundations. That is not a basis for imposing collective responsibilities and telling Ministers not to vote for the proposition, even if in fact they support it. Collective responsibility does not, in any event, bind Assistant Ministers, although some appear to think that it does. If the Ministers are persuaded of the merits of the argument, they should support it. I do not mind losing a debate on the merits. I do take great exception to losing a debate on the false premise of collective responsibility. I hope that Ministers, and indeed any other Members who are still sitting on the fence, can bring themselves to vote for paragraphs (a) and (b). I shall ask for separate votes as already indicated, and I hope that such Members can support (a) and (b) even if they cannot support (c). We should put children first.

Multilingual learners must be supported but so should the children without a second language.

Article 30 of the Convention speaks of protecting minority culture. Jersey people are now in a minority in their own country and they deserve protection for their cultural identity. What is needed is leadership from the Assembly. Nothing is lost by voting for paragraphs (a) and (b). The idea may be bold and innovative, but it is not reckless. It is based upon what happens in Europe, in Canada, in China, and many other places. It is a long-term vision, but it is no good having a long-term vision if practical steps are not taken to achieve it. It reminds me of the struggle to establish the Institute of Law, in which I was involved. For years, the Law Society was vociferously in opposition to the concept. Then there was an E.G.M. (extraordinary general meeting) and lawyers realised the potential. No one would do without the Institute now. This is not a leap in the dark. Immersive education promises so much if it succeeds. If it fails, then of course it will fade away. But we will have tried. I do not believe it will fail, but it certainly will not succeed if we close our minds to it and do not give it a chance. I move the amended proposition and I ask for the appel on each paragraph of the proposition.

Yes, from yourself, Sir, or from the proposer, just to make sure that ... because there is a proposition amendment. During the summing up, Deputy Bailhache mentioned that paragraph (a) is an in principle vote on bilingual schools and paragraph (b) is also in principle about bilingual. If I understood correct, it is a vote on specific English-French bilingual school and not a bilingual school as a concept.

Perhaps it is worth just re-reading parts (a) and (b), if it is not too much trouble. I know we do not normally do that.

Just a clarification from yourself; does (b) work in isolation?

Paragraph (a) to approve in principle the conversion of at least 2 primary schools into English-French bilingual schools, with a progressively phased introduction of bilingual tuition in these schools to begin with reception classes.

Those Members voting pour: the Connétables of St. Brelade and St. Ouen and Deputies Labey, Tadier, Moore, Ozouf, Bailhache, Warr, Miles, Jeune, Ferey, Kovacs, Alex Curtis, Barbara Ward and Andrews. Those Members voting contre: the Connétables of St. Helier, Trinity, St. Peter, St.

John, St. Clement, Grouville, St. Mary and St. Saviour, and Deputies Southern, Luce, Doublet, Ahier, Rob Ward, Alves, Gardiner, Farnham, Mézec, Coles, Scott, Renouf, Catherine Curtis, Feltham, Millar, Howell, Wilson and Rose Binet. Deputy Morel abstained.

Paragraph (b) to request the Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning to conduct a survey, in co-operation with Statistics Jersey, of the views of parents of preschool children as to the desirability of establishing bilingual English-French primary schools in Jersey, and their willingness to send their children to such a school.

To request the Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning to appoint, subject to a positive outcome from the survey referred to in paragraph (b) above, an appropriately qualified project manager to ensure a smooth transition to bilingual teaching and to establish at least 2 bilingual English-French primary schools by the beginning of the academic year 2026-27.

Those Members voting pour: the Connétable of St. Brelade and St. Clement, and Deputies Tadier, Moore, Ozouf, Bailhache, Miles, Jeune, Ferey, Kovacs and Andrews. Those Members voting contre: the Connétables of St. Helier, Trinity, St. Peter, St. John, Grouville, St. Mary, St. Saviour and St.

Ouen, and Deputies Southern, Labey, Luce, Doublet, Ahier, Rob Ward, Alves, Gardiner, Farnham, Mézec, Coles, Scott, Renouf, Catherine Curtis, Feltham, Millar, Howell, Alex Curtis, Barbara Ward, Wilson and Rose Binet, and the abstentions were Deputies Morel and Warr.

I am pleased to be bringing Income Support Regulations to the Assembly today. As Minister for Social Security, I have many responsibilities, but Members will know I have always had a strong interest in ensuring that income support is able to keep up with rising costs on our Island. It will always be my priority to support people who need help. Income support is an important part of Jersey’s social safety net, and it helps to protect people on the lowest incomes from the impact of changes in the cost of food, rent and daily living expenses, among a range of other costs met through this benefit. I have therefore proposed a rise in income support components of 4 per cent. This increase is slightly higher than the most recent annual increase in the low income R.P.I. (retail price index) figures published by Statistics Jersey yesterday.

[10:30] This means that income support components reflect the recent increases in costs in Jersey experienced by income support households. The only component that I will not be increasing in January 2025 is the clinical cost component. The reason for this is that this was originally included within the income support system to support the full cost of G.P. (general practitioner) visits. With the introduction of the Health Access Scheme in 2020, everyone included in an income support household is able to use primary care services at much reduced prices, and I was pleased to reduce the cost of G.P. surgery visits further under the Health Access Scheme from £12 to £10 earlier this year. Given the significant reduction in primary care costs for income support households, I do not believe it is necessary to also increase the clinical cost components at this point in time. Despite the reassurances of the planned increases, I am aware that many Islanders will be sensitive to the possibility that daily living costs will continue to rise. I really do want to assure them that I will continue to monitor cost-of-living pressures during 2025. The estimated cost of the extra support is £3.2 million and this is allowed for in the 2025 Budget. I hope that Members will support these regulations and I propose the principles.

Could I just ask the Minister whether she would extend the information that we have to rental support in the public and in the private sector?

As the chair of the Health and Social Security Panel, I would like to inform Members that the panel are supportive of this and we thank the Minister for offering the information to the panel about it.

Just to respond to Deputy Southern’s question around housing cost components; I am always willing to speak to Members and constituents about housing cost components. Of course the housing cost component does cover housing costs within the social rented sector and income support recipients living in the social rented sector will also see increases when their rents increase as well. I do understand that there is additional pressure within the private rental sector and I, of course, continue to work with my colleague, the Minister for Housing, as he works to deal with that issue as well. I thank the Scrutiny Panel for its support and, as always, I value the contributions of the panel and the way that it works with me as a Minister. I call for the appel.

No, thank you.

En bloc, please.

En bloc, please.

I call for the appel. [Laughter]

I take pride in bringing forward this proposition before the States Assembly, and really it is a follow- up from P.31/2023. The States Assembly approved that proposition to establish gender pay and income ratio reporting across every single government department. Of course the Council of Ministers at the time also lodged an amendment - and that was really Deputy Jeune’s work - to encourage A.L.O.s (arm’s length organisations) and States-owned entities to also report such information. For me, I feel quite passionate about this area, about income inequality and also gender pay as well because it is a problem. Even the O.E.C.D. (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) have established this to be a concern and, since the 1990s, steps have been taken to try to reduce gender pay gaps that do exist and also to reduce the inequalities that we see, especially across global north states. Initially some positive work was done and the gender pay gap was coming down, but what the O.E.C.D. discovered is since the financial crash in 2008, the progress that was made has tended to stagnate and in some cases there has also been a bit of regression, with some of the data that has been published. Personally, as a male, I feel it is absolutely essential that we are taking steps forward as a legislature, like other states have done. In the O.E.C.D., for instance, there are 38 states who are a part of a 2021 report, and of those 38 states, 21 states had some form of reporting. The reporting is in place to try to address the discrepancies that exist. Now, some of those states have gone a step further: 10 of the states have, in actual fact, got an enforcement policy where they are questioning firms in terms of how they are going to reduce the gap that exists, from the data that has been published. Now, I personally would say that potentially is maybe a step too far when you are looking at the enforcement aspect, but what I am really asking for is a cultural change. We really need to be seeing firms who are willing to publish their information because it is not just about the information being published and the information being given to the Government. In some cases across some of the O.E.C.D. states the unions - for instance, in Finland and Sweden - are the representatives who receive the gender pay data and it is they who then communicate with the employers about it. I think it is crucial because we need to know this information, we need to see progression, we need to see incomes boost. I think for women especially, it is difficult for them if you want to maybe start a family. Most often it will be women who take time out of the labour market and therefore they miss out on opportunities to maybe see upward social mobility due to that.

It is a difficult decision between putting your career first or is it the time now to then start a family?

So the data really here that the O.E.C.D. has produced across the states, it has shown there is a gender pay gap across all the states, with Korea standing at 31 per cent - that is the highest - and Belgium standing at the lowest. Unfortunately, the O.E.C.D. average is 11.9 per cent, so much work has to be taken to try to address that. Speaking of income equality and gender pay reporting in Jersey, I understand that there are a number of different firms who are reporting that information already and I have to say it is good on them for doing that, because I think it is absolutely critical that this information is reported, and ideally the information should be reported into the Government. The reason for that is due to the Government having the ability to then formulate policies to try to address the gender pay and income ratio disparities that potentially do exist. But without reporting such information, how do we know what the extent of the gender pay gap is and also what the extent of the income ratio across different firms is? It is important that the Government is the enabler. The Government has to engage with non-public sector entities, and if we are not doing it across the board, then we do not know what disparities exist. That is the issue we have here, because other states are taking the initiative, and it is in the name, “gender pay gap.” It exists. You cannot deny the fact that there is a problem and it ought to be addressed. It ought to be addressed. With the 21 states who have done the right thing, in my view, they have taken action, and 17 of those states have now established gender pay gap bodies where such information is reported in to them. I think that is very, very beneficial because they are taking decisive action. But there are complexities and we must acknowledge those complexities from a human resources perspective in terms of the reporting of such information because all the states report information differently. So if you look at Israel, for instance, they have the second-highest gender pay gap percentage, but they only report information if there are 580 employees or more, so what about all the other firms who have got 50 or 100 employees, upwards to 580? Those firms are not reporting their information and so there is a potential gathering of information that could provide more informed data for policy officials in the Israeli Government, but that is not happening. So how do you compare Israel to the U.K., for instance, who have set a mandatory requirement of 250 employees and for such firms to then report their information? So we have to bear in mind the data series that the O.E.C.D. have developed.

Although it is good, it is beneficial to have an observation, to look at all the information that is there.

Again, there are a number of inconsistencies. I just think that is important to acknowledge. But from a human resources perspective, there are difficulties. I have had a couple of discussions about this.

How do you, for instance, report full-time, part-time, fixed-term, zero-hour contract, interim and also self-employed individuals? This is where the Government has to come in because everybody at the moment who is reporting such information, there is no joined-up approach. They are left to their own devices to establish a framework for gender pay and income ratio reporting because the Government have not really got involved. I think this is an opportunity for the Government to consult with non-public sector entities, including the unions, to establish what information is currently out there that is being reported, and also to engage those employers who, for instance, have reservations about gender pay and income ratio reporting because I think they also should contribute to this consultation. That is all I am asking for. Let us consult with non-public sector entities before we then go ahead potentially in the future and introduce legislation, because I think we have to hear all views and we also have to understand the complexities for businesses, because the Government here can provide a helping hand, the Government can provide the templates, if necessary. I think that would be very beneficial for all of those businesses, but we also have to establish what framework and what information would be part of that template for businesses. I think that is absolutely crucial, that we do that work. So I think it is a good opportunity for us to ensure that consultation does take place to ensure that the Government are informed because we need to have a broad range of views that form part of this consultation so the Government are better informed about what policies they should have in place in the future.

[10:45] Now, I know Deputy Farnham is rather antithetical about introducing legislation. I think he is more of the opinion he wants to try to encourage firms, and I know there are other politicians who would probably again oppose his view in that respect because they would be of the opinion that legislation is the right thing and it is probably the right time to bring into force. I know the comments paper mentioned concerns about enforcing firms in terms of the publication of their data or if there is potentially any inaccuracies in the data series that they developed. I just want to say this: this is the reason why we are engaging non-public sector entity firms, because we are the decision-making body. I do not think we have to put anything forward that is punitive. I think it is about working with them, it is about supporting them, where the help is necessary, and it is also understanding, with the current firms who are reporting, what information are they reporting? Because by the time ... in the future, if the States Assembly decides: “Look, we are going to introduce reporting requirements” we could have half of the firms who are reporting information, but that information is not relative to what data/information that the Government wants them to report because they have been doing their own thing and now they are being asked to change the reporting requirements that they have. That is a big concern and I did mention it to Deputy Alves in a meeting with herself and one of the lead officers on this. If we are not intervening now and if we are not discussing with non-public sector entities the way how we report, then we are going to see non-public sector entities report and they are going to see inconsistent reporting across the board. That is a major concern of mine, whereas in other states what they have done is they have tried to ensure that there is a consistent line of reporting.

I think that is absolutely the right way to go. Now, I also discussed my proposition with a member of Diversity Network and they commended me for lodging this proposition, because again they are very much pro gender pay and income ratio reporting, but the one thing that they did say is they do not feel as though the Council of Ministers have really engaged with that. There has only been one informal discussion - I know that formed part of the comments paper - and they feel that more actions have to take place because I think there is a lobbying group now. They do feel that there has to be the initiative being used from the Council of Ministers, from the Government, to establish a proper framework to try to assist firms, first without the need for legislation, but if nothing is being done, then I think there probably will be a call for such legislation to be brought forward, especially for them. I think that is understandable because they have not really seen the Council of Ministers take any steps forward to try to aid firms. I think we need to see that happen because at the moment, if work is being done, it has been inconspicuous and I think we need to be more conspicuous with this, we need to be more bold and we need to assist firms, We really do because, in my view, the gender pay gap as it currently stands across the O.E.C.D. - and who knows what it is going to be like here in Jersey - it has to be addressed and it is for assemblies across the O.E.C.D. to take decisive action. So far I have not seen any action being taken, so I think this consultation is an enabler. It is going to allow the States Assembly to be informed about some of the issues that face firms, but also some of the benefits of the information that we receive because, again, that will allow us to have better informed decision-making when it comes down the potential of policy formulation as well, so I think that is absolutely critical. I hope that other Members do contribute to this debate because I think it is a well worthwhile proposition and I also look forward to hearing the views of the Chief Minister and Deputy Alves as well.

I thank the Deputy for bringing such a proposition to be discussed. Just as an update for the P.31, as amended, I have been pressuring and writing questions to the Government regularly to find out how that has been progressing with P.31. Recently I got a response to a written question, that 5 out of 6 of the specified organisations do report their gender pay and income ratio and that the sixth one being very specific reasons why not. I have just had a look within some of the reports that had been linked to the responses and, yes, there is some gender pay analysis. Not everyone is doing income ratio.

That is a different issue and different analysis altogether, so I do question that, but also I think I would bring up what Deputy Andrews said about the fact that we, even with the Government and then the specified organisations, do not know if the framework that they use is all the same. So I would really highlight that even within the Government and their extensions, do we know that there are the same frameworks being used in doing that kind of analysis? Just to bring up that I also had to request - after asking, because it was not put in the first time to my answer - about arm’s length organisations as well. Of the 13 arm’s length organisations that would be identified as to be reporting, only 3 at the moment volunteer their gender pay and income ratios, so I would encourage those that do not to start doing that, as is requested by P.31, as amended, and to take that forward so hopefully by the end of 2024 we can have a view of at least within the government sphere what is happening. But why are Deputy Andrews and others like Deputy Doublet, myself, and others really pushing that gender pay gap? Well, I can give you some statistics about Jersey. In 2023, PwC reported that closing the gender pay gap in Jersey could generate an astounding £170 million boost to female earnings, £187 million in Jersey, and this is not just an increase in individual incomes, it is a £17.3 million boost in income tax revenues and an additional £3.5 million in social security contributions. So we can see that there are tangible benefits that would strengthen our public services and create a more resilient economy for everyone, as well as families and female individuals, who will also get a boost to help them with the cost of living, so it is directly linked to the cost-of-living issue. So if we were to match Jersey’s female labour force participation rate to that of Sweden - and Deputy Andrews mentioned Sweden - we could boost Jersey’s G.D.P. by 2 per cent annually, equating to about £77 million.

These are the numbers that we are talking about when we are seeing the gender pay gap being real and alive in Jersey. It is within our grasp, we can do this, and also accessing talent and skills is a continual priority for businesses in Jersey. It is also for the Government within their common strategic priorities. We are also facing a critical skills gap. There are hundreds of vacancies that are unfilled and many of these could be taken by women, who have to choose between caring responsibilities and their careers or once, when they get into their careers, they find that that gap only widens. We saw that within the last Jersey-wide gender pay gap report that the previous Government published, where we saw even a massive increase in the finance industry with those women over 55 who worked in the finance industry. I believe the gap was about 80 per cent between men and women over 55, but please do not quote me on that and look for yourselves to see the real figures. But the gender pay gap does not stop at earnings, because it also creates a gender pension gap, with serious implications for our ageing population. We also recognise that we have a cost-of-living crisis within our ageing population. So on average, women live longer than men and so need more pension wealth to achieve the same income over their retirement, yet due to pay differentials through their careers, they are left with far less. This was highlighted not just in Jersey, but the Pensions Policy Institute in 2019 putting in evidence for the U.K. Government and for the Lords when they were discussing their gender pay gap discussions and how they ended up making it mandatory. One of the areas was not just about females within the workforce, but also those in pension and having difficulty. Why do we need this reporting? Because it shines a light on disparities we face, but this is just a start. It is just to highlight data, and we always talk about how important data is to highlight those disparities because the real work begins when we identify the causes of the gap, then to try to reduce that gap we need action plans and we need clear action plans to find out how to close that gap. This is not just at the government level, this is every business who then will start reporting on their gender pay gap. They need to not just be reporting for reporting’s sake, and I would request that for the A.L.O.s and the specified organisations who have taken on board P.31 and have started to report on their gender pay gap: what are you going to do about it; what are your actions? Unfortunately, when I asked that question to the Government themselves, they responded that they will not be doing an action plan. Now, what is the point of reporting if you do not work out what the causes of that gap is, but also how to close that gap? So when we are discussing gender pay gap reporting, it is not just a “nice to have” because then it can just be like: “Look, tick, we have done it.” What the real catalyst is for change is an action plan, where we can transform the system from a monitoring tool to a change tool, and that guarantees real progress. So closing this gender pay gap is not just a step towards equality, but it is a step towards a stronger, more inclusive economy. I hope everyone in the States today, my colleagues, will remember those figures that I mentioned before about how much females could earn to help them and their families with the cost of living, but also how much that could also generate for the public services into the future with tax income. There is also, as Deputy Andrews mentioned, a clear demand for this work. Myself and a number of other colleagues within the Chamber are members of the Mind the Gap campaign group, which we have about 100 ... very powerful, very dynamic cross-section of women - mainly women, but we also have very vocal men within that group - who are demanding for this to happen. It clearly, as I mentioned before, weaves into the benefits of the common strategic priorities of the current Council of Ministers. Now, I know the Council of Ministers report mentioned that they will be ... they are doing something, or they state they are doing something in persuading companies to do reporting, that they want to provide a universal framework and reporting standard so that everyone, all businesses in Jersey, can utilise and access that. We hear you, and we will be pushing for those things to happen, and I know that the Mind the Gap campaign group will also be expecting to see deliveries happening as soon as possible because they are active - very, very active - and they want change and we need to see change. So we are - I am, on behalf of the group - requesting that we see regular updates of those changes and the actions that have been identified in the Council of Ministers’ report so that we can get to a point where we have companies not just reporting on their data, but also having action to close that gap.

I am very pleased to follow Deputy Jeune, one of the other States Members who I think is as passionate as I have always been about this issue. I want to thank Deputy Andrews for his proposition, which was a surprise to me - a very pleasant surprise - and it is always really good to see male allies also advocating for change in this area. This proposition, when Members look at the actual wording of the proposition, is very, very moderate. It is a very moderate proposition. I would say it does not go far enough and that we need to be discussing something that goes beyond this proposition, but it is a very good start.

[11:00] To give an idea of what the current expert view is, and Deputy Andrews mentioned this, I did some research of my own and spoke to a former senior economist for the U.K. Government. That individual was absolutely adamant that the evidence shows that even mandatory reporting legislation would not go far enough to create change in this area, that the legislation needs to have penalties attached to it and those need to be financial penalties. That is what the research and the expert opinion is in this area at the moment, so that just shows Members how far behind Jersey is. Personally, I would prefer to see incentives rather than penalties. I would like the Government to be considering tax breaks for companies who publish their pay gap data and I think that is something that should form part of these talks to encourage companies to publish. Some companies are already publishing.

Jersey Evening Post are not only publishing their data, but today - this morning - they are holding an event to help other companies in the publication of their data, so change is happening, but it has been very slow, given that the first gender pay gap review was published, I think, in 2018, which is now ... yes, sorry, 2019, several years ago now. So in terms of what measures need to be taken to tackle this issue effectively, I am going to talk briefly about some of those measures to demonstrate to Members that Deputy Andrews’ proposition today is really the very least that we can do. I do think that Government should be voting for this proposition, because it very simply asks them to consult with private sector entities and to have a conversation. It does not prescribe what this should look like; it does not need to be elaborate or difficult. In fact, I was a little bit confused by the comments for this proposition. From what I understand from those comments, that consultation is already happening on some level, and that was confirmed in the comments. I think that the comments show that Government have already gone further than that, so I would really like Government to vote for this today. One of the paragraphs in the comments states that: “Currently discussions are ongoing with partners in the private sector, with the intention of working together to bring forward guidance to set out expectations for reporting and to provide a single universal framework for businesses to work from.” That is great news, and the campaign group that Deputy Jeune spoke of that we are part of - and absolutely delighted to see the campaigning and the kind of grass roots feelings behind this issue - that campaign group were really pleased to see that. They were celebrating that and I hope that Government hear that and see what an impact those moves have made. I know from conversations I have had with the Minister for Social Security she is already on top of several of the incomplete recommendations from these previous Scrutiny reviews and that there are several Members of this Government that really do get it and who are willing to move forwards in their thinking with this. Another conversation I had with Deputy Morel, and I have had conversations with Deputy Alves, and we are setting up a meeting to discuss this area and specifically to find some common ground on some things that we can move forwards on and those discussions will be informed by the campaign group. I think it would be helpful if Deputy Andrews attended as well. I know Deputy Jeune will be attending as well. This is a complex area and perhaps it does need some more conversations and some more of that collaboration and joint working because I recall when I did the first Gender Pay Gap Review Panel, it was such a learning curve; it was a huge learning curve. We learnt a lot and we learnt that women do get paid less in the workplace for a very, very long list of reasons and all of which are interconnected. I think the very first thing that we learnt about when we did that first review was the difference between equal pay and gender pay gap and I think sometimes people confuse those 2 terms. Equal pay for work of equal value is not the same as the gender pay gap. It is far more nuanced than that, although we must not be complacent because, indeed, in companies in the U.K. - and possibly companies in Jersey, I am not sure - men and women are not receiving equal pay for work of equal value. There are several class action disputes in the U.K. courts at the moment and one which has recently, over the summer, been resolved in favour of the female workers in one of the retail stores, which we have a branch of that shop in our Island, whereby the male workers were being paid more for work of equal value to the female workers. So that worse problem, that kind of direct discrimination, is happening in the U.K., so we must not be complacent even about that. But the gender pay gap is not about equal pay, the gender pay gap is far more nuanced. It is about an average of what all the women get paid and an average of what all the men get paid and, yes, factors like part-time hours are taken into account in those calculations. For example, in our public sector our pay gap is 12.5 per cent, which is highly unusual, if you think about the pay scales and many of the roles that people hold in the public sector, again pay scales like teaching and policing. Why is that gap so big? It is because of those many, many barriers to women, even getting opportunities to do that work of equal value. You know, if women are not getting ... are not being able to access that equal work of equal value to the work that men are doing, they cannot get paid that equal pay, can they? So that is where the action plans are really important and Deputy Jeune mentioned that. So some of the reasons - I cannot cover them all in this speech - and I would urge Members to have a look at these reports. We often talk about Scrutiny reviews being put on a shelf. Please take them off the shelf, as I have done. I have got these 2 here. Please, please look at these reports. They are, I think, really interesting reading and some of the factors that contribute to a pay gap in Jersey: gender stereotypes from school age; occupational segregation, which stems from subject choice at school age, which leads to unconscious bias in the workplace; a glass ceiling in the workplace that stops women reaching the upper levels. Then outside of the workplace, women being responsible for more of the domestic commitments and caring responsibilities. I mean, that is a very, very simplified summary of the wide range of factors that contribute to the pay gap. It is not an easy one to solve, and I am talking to Ministers here. I know it is not easy to solve. We took some steps in the previous Government; we addressed some of those recommendations. We could not do all of it and I would really, really just like to see that work continuing and to work with Government and work across the Assembly to see the recommendations from these 2 Scrutiny reports, which had several Members from Government, Deputy Morel and Deputy Mézec. We had Members across the Assembly, the Constable of St. Martin, Deputy Moore, former Deputy Perchard, who was a very active member of that panel. So, yes, the last Government were doing things to address these factors, the previous Government. Childcare for one is one of the recommendations, addressing the childcare issues. But as we are taking action on all of these issues, how are we going to measure it? Pay gap reporting tells us if all of this work is having an impact or not. It is a barometer of equality in our Island, equality between men and women, and closing this pay gap, as Deputy Jeune has said, making our Island more equal for men and women, and this will benefit men too, okay, because they would have benefits in the home. They will get to spend more time with their children if they are taking on more of those caring responsibilities. It would have huge benefits for our economy. I will not repeat what Deputy Jeune mentioned. It is a productivity issue. It is the intelligence and the skills of countless women not being used to their fullest potential in the workplace. Despite statistics showing that girls outperform boys at all levels of education, women are still denied the same opportunities as men to work in senior roles. From the evidence that we collected in one of the reports, the benefits for companies who have gender diversity and a smaller pay gap and more diverse workforce, the benefits are reputational; decreased turnover of staff; increased productivity; increased performance; a wider talent pool and increased profits for that business. So we are about to spend £20 million on productivity, if the Assembly approves that. That money could go a lot further if it was spent in conjunction with some of the measures from the recommendations in these Scrutiny reports. We are miles behind - miles behind, I am afraid to say - but we can catch up. We have a roadmap and we have already started on the path. We need to really put our minds to this across the Assembly together. The U.K. have had pay gap reporting for 8 years. The new Labour Government are going even further. They are introducing legislation that will make gender-based action plans mandatory and they are asking specifically for a focus on menopausal women and what accommodations they need in the workplace. That is ground-breaking to me, because that will then address ... and I am assuming the U.K. have a similar issue to that which we have around women over 55 leaving the workplace, being underpaid in the workplace. They are also going to be implementing pay gap reporting for ethnicity and disability. We must not forget those issues as well. It is not just women who are being discriminated against in the workplace or who are being subjected to unconscious ...

that is not overt bias, but unconscious bias because it is not always intentional. This is an extremely moderate proposition. Government are already doing this. I would like Government to support it and I would like Members to support this.

Deputy Andrews proposes that we consult with businesses about the gender pay gap, but without any details as to what exactly we should consult upon or the intentions behind doing so. We have explained our reasons for resisting mandatory gender pay gap reporting in our comments on P.13/2024 and again in our comments to this proposition, so I will not repeat them. However, I will say getting good data is important, but it is also not so different from enforcement. We need to be able to check that the data is right and how do you ensure you have good data with no enforcement?

We, as the Government, have resisted calls to add a layer of bureaucracy to businesses purely to gather data to inform us that there is a problem, when we can easily extrapolate from other jurisdictions and from Government’s own reporting that there is a gender pay gap in Jersey. We know this and we are more interested in addressing the real underlying issues, so instead we have invested our energy and resources into practical actions towards improving equality in general by moving to a living wage, reducing G.P. costs, providing more affordable homes, as well as making school meals available in all States primary schools. We have also committed to policies intended to specifically address gender inequality, including the gender pay gap, by extending nursery and childcare provision. We are also fully committed to progress the recommendations of the Taskforce on Violence Against Women and Girls. We do not support the request to undertake a process of consultation with businesses, as we have been working towards doing so anyway. Since we have established that no suitable model for mandatory gender pay gap reporting scales effectively to Jersey’s smaller size, we have been trying to develop a cost-effective and proportionate way to encourage businesses to report rather than require them to do so. The costs of gender pay gap bodies, for example, or reporting arrangements do not scale down in a linear way. Small jurisdictions always have difficulties with this in regulatory work. Recently, at my request, officers met with the Diversity Network to discuss the possibility of joining up our work in this area, with the ongoing effect of the efforts of the network to encourage gender pay gap reporting. Discussions are ongoing, but we have tentatively agreed to jointly develop a reporting template that businesses can choose to engage with, which the Government can endorse as the standard of reporting in Jersey. I have also asked officers to attend today’s events hosted by the J.E.C. (Jersey Electric Company) which is currently taking place, and I thank Deputy Doublet for circulating that information to Members about it earlier in the week. I have asked officers to continue the conversation with the Diversity Network and wider business community to consult on practical ways in which that could be refined and implemented and how ongoing support for businesses might best be provided. So, in summary, we reject this proposition because no consultation on mandatory gender pay gap reporting will resolve the underlying issues with applying it in Jersey.

[11:15] Also, we have already made a plan to engage with businesses on voluntary reporting. We really do want to try to get a universal advisory framework in place, and we are in the early stages of work and hope that this will progress quickly.

If I can just follow briefly Deputy Alves on this. As she said, this is a work in progress. We are working collaboratively with the Diversity Network and we are very open to that and will continue to do that under the leadership of Deputy Alves. Engagement is accelerating, so we are already doing the work and we are going to continue to do it. I think we have made the argument again and again about mandatory gender pay gap reporting and how we do not believe that is the best way to tackle the problem, but we accept there is a problem. We see it in our own States reporting of the States workforce and we are committed to tackling it. So I would ask Members to reject this proposition and we will continue with the work we are doing and build upon the engagement. I wanted to just reassure Members that it is a priority for the Government, and Deputy Alves and her team I have confidence will lead it and deliver, continue to deliver, and hopefully we can work collaboratively to bring down ... to reduce the gender pay gap.

In the previous term of office, I served on the Gender Pay Gap Review Panel for the second part of its work. It did a follow-up review and produced a report with findings and recommendations to the Government that articulated things that the Government ought to do in pursuit of better gender pay gap reporting. Going through that process was enlightening for me, I learnt a lot from it and I completely support what the report concluded and the recommendations it made to the Government, including that a consultation should be undertaken in this area. I go, I think, a bit further than the Government’s comments on this, just speaking in a personal capacity, in that I think it would be right at some point to get to a position of mandatory gender pay gap reporting, but I say that while that in itself would be a good and informative thing, that act itself would not improve anyone’s life directly, it would just give us data that we could use to potentially extrapolate from it solutions to then go on to improve people’s lives. So I do not think that it is something that is worth over-egging in its importance. The important things to be getting on with are the measures that we know, without having to conduct any kind of scientific exercise, would logically lead to reducing Jersey’s gender pay gap. There are all sorts of family friendly initiatives that we can be pursuing. The Minister for Education’s work on expanding nursery places will obviously have a good impact on that. Raising the minimum wage to a living wage will obviously have a good impact on that. and that is logical that that will happen. We do not need more data to tell us that, which is why I think the need for mandatory reporting is not the urgent part of this. That is something that we do not need to rush. In terms of this proposition though, the proposition technically is of no effect because it is asking for something that is already being done to be done. That means that if the Assembly votes in favour of the proposition, nothing changes, and if the Assembly votes against the proposition, because it is not a proposition framed as telling us to stop consulting, then guess what, nothing happens either. So while in a sense it is a good opportunity to air the issues and reiterate our positions on the broader subject, as an actual worded proposition it is kind of meaningless and does not take us forward because that consultation work is already going on. The comments paper that the Council of Ministers have put together says: “Currently discussions are ongoing with partners in the private sector, including the Diversity Network, with the intention of working together to bring forward guidance to set out expectations for reporting and to provide a single universal framework for businesses to work from. The expectation is to provide government backing to private sector innovation to develop a product that is useable and relevant to Jersey and working with the private sector to generate a self-sustaining support network to assist companies to develop the knowledge and processes to report effectively. Wider consultation with businesses will take place on the basis of that framework.” So it is already happening, and I am just of the view that it is not the best use of our time to specifically debate a motion on something that is already happening and is therefore meaningless. It is a better use of our time to debate motions on things that we know would have a positive impact in reducing the gender pay gap. There are all sorts of things that we could be getting on with that Members from across the Assembly are entitled to propose that would be more tangible in the effect that they would have, rather than asking to do a consultation which itself will not directly lead to change and is happening anyway. So I would just suggest that the debate on this worded proposition does not really take us forwards and I will not vote for it on that basis, but in the agenda on reducing the gender pay gap, I think it would be a good use of our time in future to debate tangible propositions that will help us get to reducing it and that, in my view, would be a better use of time.

Actions speak louder than words, and this is a simple proposition that is asking a government to conduct some action and activity, where, sadly, we are seeing none. I have to say that I was deeply disappointed and I was prompted to speak after hearing the words of Deputy Alves, who simply read out a pre-prepared speech, clearly by an officer, because it seemed so very different and distant from the words that she has uttered herself from her own - what have been previously demonstrated to be her own - strongly held views on this matter, where she has engaged with other States Members and championed such causes. It is disappointing to hear such a change of tack. There are serious social issues that could be addressed through some consultation, which this proposition is requesting. It is sad, in effect, that we are having to ask this Government to engage in some simple engagement and consultation with Islanders and with businesses and that businesses themselves are taking matters into their own hands because they see such a lack of leadership in this area from the current Government. We have to praise both Jersey Electricity and also HSBC, who are taking matters into their own hands and conducting events of their own accord, because they see that there are social issues that can be addressed and need to be addressed both in harmony with Government and private enterprise if we are to achieve change in particularly important areas, such as participation in the workforce and turning around our greatly declining birth rate, which is - and it should be - one of the number one factors that bothers members of our public, members of this Assembly, because it will have a serious and deleterious effect on the future of this Island if they are not taken into hand and grappled with. I commend Deputy Andrews for bringing a simple proposition. I feel it is very sad that he is having to do so. The Government should take a good strong look at themselves and be ashamed of themselves, in fact, for their lack of action and their lack of activity. We were told when they came into power 9 months ago that they would be a government of action. Well, I am afraid we have seen none of this action in 9 months. They should be ashamed of themselves for their woeful performance and I will happily support this proposition.

I was not going to speak on this, but a number of issues have arisen in the debate. Yesterday we heard from the Chief Minister how the Government’s public sector efficiency programme means a greater involvement of the private sector in the delivery of key public services. It leads us to ask a question: how might we prepare for this in the context of the gender pay gap situation? We know that many public sector roles are at the lower end of the pay scale. Many of those roles are undertaken by women. Many of those women work part-time, juggling 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet. This is the same in the private sector. Moves to apply a living wage will assist in raising the income levels, but the fundamental issue is whether the work women do is considered of equal value to the work men do and if we are making progress in this matter. Given what we have just heard from Deputy Jeune on the economics of the gender pay gap, I personally feel it is vital for us to have a better understanding of where the inequality is in the employment space in the Island. I accept that the Government may have an incremental approach to working with businesses to produce data, but is this not an opportunity to form a really good partnership with the private sector to understand the wider issues? This is about a commitment. What we are being asked to do is to make a decision on whether we want to consult about this or not, whether we believe there is a way to improve our collective understanding. I think it is a weak argument to suggest that just because you have not been given any clarity on what information to collect then you should not support the proposition. It is incumbent upon you, as a Government, to develop the curiosity in this agenda, if nothing else, and to be an intelligence-led Government, one that understands the community, and a Government that is not making populist decisions and supporting and encouraging inertia. Government needs to start to look at the ways in which modern H.R. (human resources) practice is moving in the direction that will be supported through this proposition. They have to be more informed in their decision making, they have to be more curious about what is going on in that space and they have to be more proactive in working with the private sector to develop the kind of partnership working that will reduce the inequality.

I have to say I am quite disappointed by the assertions made by previous speakers, including the former Chief Minister, because I do remember sitting in a room with the former Chief Minister as vice-president of S.L.C. (Scrutiny Liaison Committee) at the time, having to chase for many weeks - I think it could have been months - for a response from her Government on the Scrutiny gender pay gap report. So to accuse this Government that is taking action of not taking action is, I think, incorrect. As Deputy Alves very well put it, we are taking action and our focus is on action rather than reports and reviews. I do want to make the point that propositions like this that, as Deputy Mézec explained, have no effect do run the risk of setting us back where we are making good strides and progress. I would prefer to focus on the actions that I am taking, and I can speak as the Minister for Social Security, and I can confidently say that I have looked at where I can make a difference, a real tangible difference in this space. I know that research has shown that pay transparency is a very practical measure that does make a real impact when people are looking for jobs. When we see jobs being advertised with negotiable pay, we know that women will very often negotiate for less pay than men. We also know, as Deputy Doublet pointed out, that there are possible ethnicity and disability pay gaps as well, which also need to be addressed. For me, I looked at where I, within my responsibility, can make a real tangible effect. I am also responsible within my department for the Jobs in Jersey website. I have already asked my officers to look at how we can encourage and ensure better pay transparency on the Jobs in Jersey site and ensure that the employers that they are working with and dealing with on a regular basis, as well as the employees, understand the importance of that pay transparency. My officers will be working on this to make it clear that there is a preference for all employers advertising on Jobs in Jersey to give clear salary information.

[11:30] I am really keen to progress this and not to focus on conducting consultations and writing reports because I think it will help to promote better and consistent pay for all groups. Once those changes are live, I have also asked for better communications to be issued to explain why these changes are being made and the importance of pay transparency. That is real action.

I would just like to correct a statement made by Deputy Moore, which was that Deputy Alves was reading a speech preprepared by an officer. I returned to the Chamber earlier and I did not ask Deputy Alves to let me pass to my seat because I could see she was busy working on her speech, finalising details and responding to comments made during the debate. So I would suggest that Deputy Moore should withdraw that comment.

I am grateful to Deputy Curtis for giving that explanation and I withdraw it, although I remain disappointed by the tone of her speech.

I will see if I can get rid of the cobwebs and start again. I am a simple chap. I have worked in hospitality for a long, long time and I recall in the late 1970s there was no minimum pay and there was no push to have people on a similar wage but there was a list of recommended pay for all the elements of staff in hospitality, from head chefs, sous chefs, chambermaids, kitchen porters, et cetera.

There was one disparity between waiters and waitresses. Waitresses were paid 17 per cent less than waiters for some obscure reason. I may have told this story before, but as a young manager I queried this with our managing director - we had 3 hotels that I managed - and he could not give me an understanding but said that this was recommended by the Hospitality Association. Our company changed it straightaway, so I am not new to this. I have always queried why females are paid less than men in many areas. I do not understand it. We have the same brain, we have the same number of digits, arms and legs and all that sort of situation. The only reason, as I can understand, is this goes back to pre-history, the days of caveman where we would go out and forage for food and bring it back and women cooked and had babies. It is prehistoric. It is ridiculously and totally unfair. This proposition is pretty simple but it does push the Government quicker. We have heard from Minister Mézec that they had been working on this on the previous Government but we have not heard anything, so this gives a little push. Every major firm that is represented in Jersey, whether it is a U.K. firm or a Jersey firm, has an H.R. Department and we should be consulting with people first rather than get the wrong end of the stick. We should not pre-empt the situation. We should talk to people and ask them how they feel about regulating the situation and putting right a situation that has been going on since wages were ever invented. It is just totally wrong and we should be leading on this. Given the statistics and financial and economic information from Deputy Jeune, we should be racing at this because this is good for our economy. We cannot afford enough infrastructure, money for health, money for the hospital, and we can generate more income by this at a signature. It is just wrong and I cannot understand why we are dragging feet on it. It just asks for consultation and report the findings by January 2026. Fair enough, we have over a year to get this consulted on with as many people as possible. It is great that Social Security has taken the lead on this but that is one organisation and arm’s-length organisations have not caught up. We must make them catch up and make the rest of the economy and the rest of the Island catch up with something that just goes back to prehistoric times. It is totally ridiculous, totally unfair and, frankly, absurd.

I have found it disappointing that the former Chief Minister, a female Member of the Assembly, has thought it appropriate to criticise 2 other female Members of the Assembly now in discussing a matter of great importance to any woman. This is too big an issue for political point scoring. It is too big an issue and it is a very easy one to grandstand upon, to virtue signal about. This proposition is indicating that the Government do not care about this area or that what Government are doing is not good enough, so I think it is incumbent on the proposer and anyone who has suggested support for the proposition to explain why they believe Government are not working at a reasonable pace in this area and to accept their contribution if they can. I, like the Constable of St. Clement, agree that this is an economic issue and it is a social issue too. Talking about equal pay for work of equal value is overly simplistic. Does the work of a firewoman equate to that of a care assistant? Does experience affect quality of work? Should you pay somebody who has more experience than another in an area?

There have been discussions of that nature around the Council of Ministers table too. How many female bosses are there in every single sector of this Island? Do we ev en know that? There is consultation going on in this area. Shouting is an activity. Is it a productive activity? Not if that activity already is happening. As with the Marine Spatial Plan, consultation is a process that often is not highly visible and with good reason too. I care about these things. Deputy Alves and Deputy Feltham care about these things. So does Deputy Millar, so does Deputy Barbara Ward, Deputy Howell and Deputy Labey, all of whom are in the Council of Ministers. I would urge Members to accept and respect Government’s efforts in this area. I remain uncomfortable that what has been brought is a proposition that is suggesting that Government are not doing enough when in fact they are doing a lot.

Probably I will be less than a minute following Deputy Scott’s speech. If we all do care, because some Members were mentioned in Deputy Scott’s speech, it feels like I was also mentioned, it feels like all of us do care. Deputy Scott mentioned it is too big an issue, it is a very big issue, which I completely agree with. Let us just vote for the proposition and get it done. If it is not for political scoring and it is not what we are doing, you are not telling us what to do and how are the Government doing or Back-Benchers. If it is important for all of us, let us just do it and support the proposition.

We are an international Island, so let us remind ourselves how we are doing to other places. In France, significant efforts are being made to close the gender pay gap. One of the key initiatives is the equal pay index, the Index de l'égalité professionnelle femmes-hommes, which requires companies of more than 50 employees to annually report on their annual pay gap. That is a requirement, a mandatory requirement. If a company in an index basically out of 100 falls below 75, the company is required to take corrective measures and persistent non-compliance can result in fines of up to 1 per cent of their payroll. Companies must address specific areas like fair pay, after maternity leave and promoting women into top earning positions. Are we doing that? We do not have the data. Also it must be said that France, along with its E.U. (European Union) obligations, is also driving the E.U. pay transparency directive, which is requiring strict enforcement rules by 2026 for companies with more than 100 employees. Of course that is scalable down to Jersey. I must also call to celebrate the situation in Iceland. It is regarded, I am told, as a leader in gender pay equality.

It consistently ranks among the top global gender pay gap countries due to its progressive policy.

Again, they have data on which to report. Luxembourg also stands out as the only country in Europe where women on average earn slightly more than men. That has not been an issue but it would be a great situation if we could say that about Jersey. Across the northern part of the world, no longer an E.U. member, the new incumbent Labour Government has made gender pay equity a priority and aims to accelerate progress in closing the gender pay gap. The party has pledged to strengthen existing reporting requirements by mandating employers to not only report their gender pay gap but also develop implementation action plans to address it. These will require companies to include their outsourced companies, an issue that is very relevant to us here in Jersey, and gig economy workers to be included in reports. The Government has made it absolutely clear in the United Kingdom that they will introduce mandatory pay gap reporting to include those other issues, not only women but also the other issues that Members have raised, such as ethnicity and disability. There are always concerns about pay gap and unfortunately there is a need for both a carrot and a stick approach in dealing with it. I do not think that there is a single Member of this Assembly that would doubt that there is an issue of gender pay in both our public sector and indeed the private sector. One can only look across businesses in Jersey to see the absence of women in many positions. There are some great examples. It is great to see that the J.E.C. with a male C.E.O. (chief executive officer) advancing that. That is really good and I am glad to hear that, but if we look at our near utility companies and other States-owned bodies, we are certainly patchy. I think that Jersey Finance having a chief executive and a deputy chief executive of male and female is good, but we have got a lot to do, and tone matters from the top. We spoke in the previous debate about leadership. Well, I have never really commented about a lot of the goings on in the last Council of Ministers but I remain of the view that there is an issue of needing to have absolute respect for both men and women and for different people of different mindsets, and Members may know what I am hinting at in relation to that. It is vital that there is a view that we do not discriminate against anybody, whether they be male, female, old, young or whether they be diverse in other ways. This proposition brought by Deputy Andrews, maybe he could have done better in engaging with some of those Members who have spent a lot of time, such as Deputy Jeune and Deputy Doublet, and I know that the last Chief Minister has spoken regularly about this issue. Under her leadership and her Chief Ministership certainly this was a priority. I do not recognise the comments that Members have said that the last Government did not take this seriously, because it jolly well did.

[11:45] I, as Minister for External Relations, yearned to have some information that I could take out of this Island and show that we were an Island of equality and fairness in terms of our pay rates, our ability to be welcoming women into senior roles. We have a recruitment crisis, lest anybody did not realise.

If anybody did not notice, there is a plentiful supply of underpaid women in the United Kingdom who could be incredibly helpful in terms of our recruitment crisis. I hear the Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning speaking under his voice. I do not know whether he is trying to tell me something. I will sit down if he wants to speak. There is really no justification, I would suggest to the Government, to not agree with Deputy Andrews’ proposition. Data is required. He is asking for a consultation in order to get data. How could you not possibly ... in this modern world where we are striving for equality, where we are celebrating the fact that we should be an equal and respectful society between men and women, can we really put our hearts behind and heads behind the logic, the correctness of voting against this proposition brought by a Back-Bencher? The comments of the Council of Ministers seem increasingly those of: “If it is brought by a non-member of Government, it must be opposed and we must say nasty things and critical things about those who have come before.” I do not recognise this kind of atmosphere in this Assembly. I will work with the current Government. I voted with the Government yesterday and I will be impartial as I return to my duties here in terms of absolutely taking everything on its merits. I will treat every issue on its merits and I think all other Members should be. This is not an issue of partisan, of Executive and non-Executive.

I urge Members to really think very carefully before they send out a message to say that they do not want work done, brought by a Back-Bencher, on gender pay gap reporting by our non-public sector organisations. This is clearly something that needs to be done. If the Council of Ministers are doing it, which I think we do not believe that they are with a sufficient amount of effort, then support it. I call on the members of the Government to support what they say they are already doing. If they are already doing this, then they should vote in favour. They should not vote against it because they are doing it and if they are voting against it, it means it is not something that they are putting as a priority.

There is no reason in this world where we have seen an absolute problem with ... we have certainly got questions. We have got improvements to make in respect of men and women in all cases. I will not dare suggest to say, Sir, as you announce, sadly, your retirement, that one day we may even see a Bailiff or Deputy Bailiff of the female kind, and I know that you would welcome that. Let us not say that as a symbolic issue but we will certainly learn to treat the Greffier and say “ma’am” more regularly than we otherwise do, because we do not see her very often in the Chair. We need to set a tone from the top and this proposition is very much about getting data. We cannot report on what we do not know and this aims to find it. I urge the Government, I implore the Government, I plead on the Government, please, come to your senses, vote in favour of this because it matters. If you are doing it anyway, it is just going to prove to me, it is just going to prove to the public and those Back- Benchers who want further reassurance that you are going to do it, you are going to carry on doing it. So I urge all Members to vote in favour of this very sensible and necessary proposition to get the data.

It is absolutely marvellous to hear so many Members so behind addressing and dealing with the gender pay gap and inequality of all sorts, absolutely splendid. So many Members have stood up and said how we should be working at speed and taking action and doing more, and one way to do it is to consult again. I will point out one thing. A lot of those Members were in a Government for 2 years and have produced nothing on this in terms of the gender pay gap but now are saying that nothing is happening in Government. I will tell you what is happening: rather than continuously consulting, action is being taken by Deputy Alves. I will read something in a moment and I can say to Deputy Moore it is not my words, it is the words of Deputy Alves who always writes her own speeches, and I will say this. What we have done as a Government is invest our energy. Rather than simply consulting, producing reports, producing documents that we can look at and put on the shelf and virtue signal to be doing something, we have taken action by investing our energy and resources and practical actions towards improving inequality and generating, by moving to a living wage, probably the greatest impact on inequality for low-paid women, reducing G.P. costs, providing more affordable homes, as well as making school meals available in all our state primary schools. We are committed to policies specifically on gender inequality around gender pay gap by extending nursery and childcare provision. I hope, as it was voted for in the C.S.P. (Common Strategic Policy), that that move to extending childcare and nursery provision, will be supported by this Assembly and not be interfered with into the future and indeed obstacles put in the way of developing those nursery places, because that would be counterintuitive to those who speak against action not being taken on the gender pay gap. It is interesting that what we are talking about is a consultation. We have no idea what we are consulting on, just talk to us about something with no structure to it, but what is actually being produced is a genuine template so that a consistent reporting mechanism can be developed. Action is being taken by Deputy Alves and her colleagues in that area. Action is being taken; that is the key. I am a bit tired of things being brought to say: “Do something you are already doing but I will take the credit for you doing something that you are already doing because I have raised something that you are already doing.” That is not helping as a Government and we need to move on from where we were. We can all virtue signal. I speak of a member of a party that is equally men and women and we are all paid exactly the same. There is no gender pay gap in our party. It is marvellous. It is ideal. It is a model for people, it is a model for this Assembly, it is a model for our move forward in our politics and our representation. It is a model for France, c’est très bien, [Laughter] [Interruption] Merci.

Pardon, excusez-moi. We have had a lot of criticism of a lack of ambition. I will tell you what the ambition is. It is to take action rather than continuously produce reports, continuously contemplate our navel, continuously ask for what is called consultation, which is just a reason to not take action, a reason to say that: “We are looking at doing something, we are thinking about doing something and we are going to gather data and then decide eventually on doing something but we are not sure what it is because we have no political direction whatsoever.” So what we are going to do is take some action and that is what we have seen in these few months, that we have tried to take some action as opposed to the continuous reporting that we have had. That is what we have to look for, and we will come to that as we come to the Government Plan and we will come to that as projects come through, we will come to that as we talk about reports on nurseries, which I will be producing soon, and we will see some of the actions that are being taken, some tangible actions that are being set up as opposed to being perhaps opposed later on. I urge Members this. If you want to vote for this I suppose you can and you get involved with this notion that Back-Benchers have to drive Government because of perhaps a level of lack of trust in things actually happening. It would be nice if we could rebuild that trust at some point with some sort of meaningful dialogue as opposed to the personal nature of some of the comments that have been made about Members. What I would suggest is if you want to vote for this you are encouraging yet again this notion of bringing forward something that is already happening, using States time - and I know I have taken 5 minutes of States time to explain this but there you go - you might as well because that is what we seem to want to do rather than just letting the Deputy get on with this, develop the actual reporting mechanism, have a system in place that can be used and gather meaningful information and perhaps make genuine tangible change. For those Members who have been in the Assembly for so long who constantly talk about this, I would say perhaps the time for action was a long, long time ago rather than sitting in this Assembly and just saying action is not being taken now. Give it a chance. Give the person working on this a chance to do something rather than constantly bringing distractions to the policies and the actions that are being taken.

Sir, may I seek your judgment? I believe the previous speech is at risk of misleading the Assembly.

It stated that no action was taken and I have just counted up at least 8 or 9 ...

Is there not a Standing Order that permits Members to ask your judgment when a Member is at risk of misleading the Assembly, Sir?

Would the speaker give way for a point of clarification?

No, Sir.

Sir, I am sorry, I have had a difficult few days. I am happy to give way for clarification, of course.

I do not want it to be like this, so please do and I will clarify because I have a great deal of respect for the Deputy. It has been a challenging few days.

I am grateful to the speaker because I think it is important that the tone of speeches in this Assembly is respectful and that we have a collaborative approach. [Approbation] As such, could the speaker clarify whether he has an understanding of all of the recommendations from both of the previous Scrutiny reports and the actions that the previous Government undertook? I have just briefly reviewed them and there are a minimum of 8 that the previous Government completed and I think up to around 13 to 14 that were under way. Has the Minister reviewed those? Perhaps he has not and I would understand that, which might explain the potentially misleading statement he made.

Yes, I absolutely do not want to mislead the Assembly. When one makes a speech and makes general comments, you are right, I should not make general comments. I absolutely agree it would be nice if the tone of speeches were better in this Assembly, particularly over the last 2 days. As somebody who has sat and had to deal with that personally, it really would be quite nice. What I mean is I think more action, much more action, can be taken and my drive at the moment is to act on reports. To me, a recommendation is not an action, it is a recommendation and you have got to do something with it. Many of those were not and that is what I am trying to get to, but I think that a number of people in this Assembly have stood up and criticised a particular Member of this Assembly for not taking action at the same time as not seeing that actions are being taken, so perhaps we are in a similar position here. I am quite happy to apologise to the Member because I know things went on, but what I would say is you have to give this Government a chance to recognise in a similar way the things that are happening. Perhaps this is a good interaction and a good point of clarification because, like I say, we have got to move on from where we were. We have got to move on from the perhaps unhappiness that has happened in this Assembly and give this next Government a chance for what is best for Jersey and what is best for all of us.

[12:00]

Sorry, Sir, yes.

I must thank all Members who have contributed to this debate. For me as a feminist, I think it is absolutely crucial that this proposition is supported. We need to be very open about the differing views that firms will have. We have to embrace those who are in support of gender pay and income ratio reporting and we also have to understand the views that potentially are antithetical about gender pay and income ratio reporting and potentially the complexities that some of the firms face if they have to report such information. That would give the Government a good understanding of the assistance that they could provide to such firms in those instances. I have to say to Deputy Jeune, I commend her. I think it was a fantastic speech and much of what she said in the PwC report, and it is a report that I read some time ago, but again it is a report that is certainly worth reading because there are many benefits in seeing more women partaking in the labour force. In Jersey compared to other jurisdictions, we tend to have a high labour force participation rate among women, but again I think that potentially could be increased and that would be down to implementation of policies. But those policies could only probably come to fruition if we are reporting such information that this proposition is looking to engage on with non-public sector firms. I think it is absolutely pivotal that we have an understanding of the extent of the gender pay gap and we need to look at the measures that we can implement to try to reduce the gender pay gap that exists. I understand from a number of speakers who are Executive Members that they postulated a view that we are already doing this.

Well, there is a difference between consulting and consultation. I may consult Deputy Farnham about a particular political matter but it is not a consultation broadly because again 47 Members are not part of that consultation process. This is the reason why we need to see a more expansive approach where non-public sector entities are engaged. It is not about particular groups who the Government are trying to work with such as, for instance, the Diversity Network who articulated a view that the Government must be doing more because they do not feel that the Government have really engaged them enough. Even when I discussed my proposition with the Minister, there were competing priorities and this was at the bottom of the list or, shall we say, it was a lower priority. There were other things that the Minister was trying to bring forward above what I am trying to do here with this proposition, but I still think if we are not to support this proposition today, then there is a real risk that the gender pay gap and income ratio reporting again could demonstrate that there are disparities that are becoming larger and the Council of Ministers have not taken positive steps to try to address it because they are not consulting widely with non-public sector firms. All they are doing is discussing with who they choose to discuss this with, because they are antithetical about the potential of legislation and they are denying people the opportunity to have their say. It is their right as citizens to postulate their view. If they believe that mandatory reporting should be in place, and potentially they might even hold the opinion that we do need legislation, we are not going to hear those voices because those voices are going to suppressed because no consultation is going to be approved. That is the real risk that we run here. This Assembly is not autocratic. We should be embracing the pluralism of views among the public and unfortunately that is not going to take place. Why? Because the Council of Ministers do not want to hear the voices who are very much pro the feminist movement, who are very much pro equality, who want to address the gender pay gap, who want to address income inequality in this Island. That is not going to happen because the Council of Ministers are saying: “No, we are not going to do it.” In saying that they are doing this work already, I am afraid that is not the truth because even with the Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel, how many times have we asked questions of the Minister, the Chief Minister and the Assistant Chief Minister, and we have got nowhere with gender pay reporting; neither have we got anywhere with income ratio reporting because the Government have not taken steps. They have not been active, they have not been conspicuous, they have not been bold. This is an area where it is absolutely critical because there are so many benefits, as Deputy Jeune highlighted in her speech, of reducing that gender pay gap: increasing incomes, increasing output within the economy, increasing G.D.P. Why are we not pro this proposition? I do not understand because this debate unfortunately has been based about data and some individuals do not understand the importance of data because without data all we have is an opinion and it is the Council of Ministers’ opinion. If we are politicians, surely we have to be better informed and it is data that is reported to us that is going to better inform and enhance the development of good, robust policies, but that is not going to happen if Members go: “Oh, no, we are just going to say no. We do not care.” Surely if you are a feminist you would be supporting this proposition. It is supporting rights, it is closing the gap. Why would we not address this? Why are we just leaving the inequalities remain as they are and potentially getting worse when we are the deciding body in this Island in terms of addressing the issues that exist? Many states, as I mentioned, in the O.E.C.D. see this to be a problem and they have taken positive steps to address it, whereas we as the States Assembly, what are we doing? The Executive is not really doing much, hence why I had to bring forward my proposition and all of the sudden the case is: “Oh, no, no, no, sorry, we are going to try and do something” but you are not going far enough and hence the need for this proposition to hold the Executive to account. All I am doing is my job as a non-Executive Member.

I want to see women progress and we have got to think about the benefits of this consultation in the longer term because there are many things that could come out from this consultation that will support and enable the Executive who potentially are going to miss out on opportunities to engage with crucial stakeholders who they are probably not going to engage with at this point in time because they are just engaging with a select few individuals. That is not really going far enough. We have got an Island with 104,000 people here and we are just going to speak, say, to the Diversity Network, an informal chat, et cetera, and that is as far as it goes? We need to be doing much more; much more.

We cannot see politicians not doing anything and unfortunately that is the case here because even if we compare the Government Plan and absence of data, we are not informed as non-Executive Members. Again here, the Executive has the opportunity to obtain more information, obtain more data and they do not want to do it and instead what we are given is a response that: “Oh, well, we are already doing this, we are already implementing schools meals, et cetera.” That is absolutely irrelevant to this debate. I do not want to speak about school meals, I do not want to speak about the implementation of other social policies. This is about gender pay and it is about income ratio reporting. If you are not doing anything in the area and you are going to have to try to justify your position to say: “Well, look, we are doing something”, I am afraid that is not good enough because that is not relevant to the debate. We are here to discuss the particulars of this proposition. I know there have been some people who have said there is going to be no structure to the consultation.

Well, of course there is. That is the Executive’s job. This is an in-principle proposition. You go away, you do the work, you form the questions. It is all about qualitative engagement, asking people questions, receiving responses, interpreting the information, collating all the information you have, and then doing it that way at least it will better inform the Executive. For me as a progressive ideally, yes, I would like to see gender pay and income ratio reporting become mandatory but if the consultation comes back with a response that is overwhelmingly firms do not want to do it, then fair enough. I will respect that decision and I think the Executive has to respect the views of those who are maybe antithetical to the views that they hold and hence the reason why we should be supporting this proposition. Give people a voice, do not suppress them. That is autocracy. We are a liberal democracy. Surely people should hold a view and surely we should respect the views of those who are antithetical towards us but by not engaging, I am sorry that is really not good enough. That is not a democratic process and I think it is really sending out a poor signal to members of the public. We cannot just be thinking about ourselves all the time and thinking that our opinion is best when we are not willing to engage because our opinion potentially could be disproved because other people may come up with the evidence to reinforce their argument. Then we have to be accepting that their point is probably better than our own, but by not engaging we do not know that, do we, and that is the particular issue that I have real concern with here. What I would say to Members is this: do the right thing, allow non-public sector firms to have a voice, let them engage. They need to articulate their views to the Executive and from then on we need to respect the results and again there are 2 camps, I understand: one who is definitely for pro reporting and the other who is less so. I get that in terms of a mandatory aspect or not, but we need to ensure that this consultation does take place. I think I have really made the point very clear on the importance of this proposition. I have to commend Members for contributing to the debate, even though I maybe did not agree with some of the speeches that were made, but I hope we can now go to the vote and I call for the appel.

Those Members voting pour: the Connétable of St. Clement and Deputies Doublet, Gardiner, Moore, Ozouf, Warr, Miles, Renouf, Jeune, Wilson and Andrews. Those Members voting contre: the Connétable of St. Helier, St. Brelade, Trinty, St. Peter, St. John, Grouville, St. Mary, St. Saviour and St. Ouen, and Deputies Southern, Labey, Tadier, Luce, Morel, Ahier, Rob Ward, Alves, Farnham, Mézec, Bailhache, Coles, Scott, Catherine Curtis, Feltham, Millar, Howell, Ferey, Alex Curtis, Barbara Ward and Binet. Deputy Kovacs abstained.

It has been so far, I think, quite a long week and I think we are starting to feel it. It has also been a week that perhaps has been fraught maybe more so than some of the usual debates. I think that we have had some very tough, controversial but also interesting debates and necessary debates in the last couple of days, which I think we have handled ourselves well in ultimately because we have shown that we disagree ourselves, sometimes even internally, and that is fine and that does happen from time to time. I am hoping that with this last item on the agenda - and I am grateful that Members have agreed to allow me to take this slightly early because I think it is timely and it does need to be debated today for reasons that were understood earlier in the week - that we can at least find lots of common ground.

[12:15] I look over to my colleague the Minister for Sustainable Economic Development, I call it as it was Economic Development, Tourism, Sport and Culture but also now Sustainable Economy, and I think it is all of those things, hopefully. I know that whatever the outcome of this debate that I am not here to question the Minister’s commitment to arts and culture in the Island because I know that he has that very much at his heart and on that subject we are very much singing from the same hymn sheet.

It does not mean that I will not be making critical comments on the direction of travel because I think there is definitely something to play for in this debate, both in terms of procedure but also in terms of the material outcomes that we are seeking for all Islanders in this domain. I am also mindful that because it is the last debate of the week before we maybe take probably not even a much needed break because I know that we have got other work to do - certainly I do tomorrow - it is important to keep things fresh as far as possible. I always try to find a small angle that perhaps takes us slightly away and brings us back to what we are here to consider perhaps with slightly fresh eyes. Talking about fresh eyes, I cannot help but forget that earlier in the week when Deputy Gorst was sitting next to me he said that he likes speaking after me because we see things through slightly different lenses.

I took my glasses off because there is a strange irony that Deputy Gorst and I have very similar looking frames to our glasses but it is entirely possible, I am sure very likely, that we both have physically different lenses in our glasses and possibly slightly different philosophical lenses in the way that we look at the world. That is what I want us to look at today, at how arts and culture ... I am just going to call it arts and culture for ease but it does, of course, include heritage. I think heritage is part of that wider culture, which is both tangible and intangible, so I do not want them to think I am forgetting them in all of this. The way we look at arts and culture in our Island I think is really important, and I will come back to that. The second sartorial reference that I will make is that I notice that there was a journalist who joined us in the Assembly on Tuesday who shares the same surname as our Minister and he works for, I think, the Bailiwick and J.E.P. (Jersey Evening Post). I do not know if he is there today. Slightly whimsically, he was commenting on the attire of Members and he said that there was quite a lot of blue ties in the Assembly on Tuesday and that he picked out 2 or 3 of the lady Members, shall we say, if we are still allowed to use those terms, and said that they were dressed very smartly and: “Maggie would have been pleased.” I think he was referring to Maggie Thatcher. Indeed, outside when I was talking to the Chief Minister with his blue tie, blue suit and myself with my blue tie on at the time, he said: “You look very conservative today, Deputy” and we had some banter that I do not need to go into because that will remain in the corridor. I made sure yesterday and today that when I came in expecting to deliver this speech I thought I would choose something of a neutral tie. It is not red, it is not blue but it is very much gold, and I have chosen that for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that what we are talking about today is not just the bottom line of an accountant’s sheet, and this goes back to the lens reference. The way we look at the world can be in 2 ways. It can be about just the bottom line of an accountant’s sheet or, in our case, the bottom line of a Government Budget. There are savings that need to be made and we need to be realistic. These are the kind of arguments that we will be hearing later on today, or we can think about the value of things, not just the cost of things. I would say that by wearing a gold tie made with golden thread I want to talk about the way that culture and arts are the golden thread that runs through everything that we do as a community. Culture and arts bring cohesiveness I think that binds us all together as an Island community. It is also part of that Island Identity work that we are working so closely on, which sometimes feels really elusive, but it is also a thread that binds us with the rest of the world. As the Minister reminded us earlier this week, we are not an isolated Island, even though it can feel like that. We are an outward looking Island and this is where the value of the arts and culture really come into their own. It is about the local but it is also about the global. It is about the personal experience, it is often about the esoteric sometimes but it is also about the universal, and that is the way that we can reflect and put ourselves in positions that otherwise we would not necessarily be able to reflect on. The second point I would make on this is that the reason that funding for culture is so vital to us and that if we should reduce that funding or even reduce the mechanism by which we fund it or change it, we should do that at our peril and we should only do that after due consideration and due consultation. There are so many Islanders whose only engagement with what you might call - I am not even going to call it high art - different types of art, different types of music, the only opportunity and the only exposure they will have to it is by the funding that we provide for the arm’s-length organisations and for others who provide those opportunities. What I mean by that is some of the outreach work that goes on. Some people in the Island do not have to think twice about jumping on a plane, going over to London where all of the public museums are free. I would recommend that any parent and child, if they have the opportunity, to go to Trafalgar Square, go to the Tate Modern or the old Tate, go to the various different museums, the Victoria and Albert, and have a look at this, but it is not within the gift of everybody to be able to do this. We also heard earlier in the week about digging deep on these controversial issues for some that are difficult and finding out what our values are. I think those values are about having universality, equality to make sure that everybody has access to the arts and culture that our Island has to offer and also the fact that they can be enriched by it. I do not want to entirely make the case for the arts because I think that has already been done. I hope that each of the 49 of us, or fewer today, who are in the Assembly will be convinced of the value of arts, but I make those because it is important to talk about the wider subject matter that we are here to debate. Let us look at immediately what is in front of us, and I will refer to my report because I have written it in a deliberately concise way so that it could be followed quite easily. Initially I do also want to talk to perhaps the Members who were here in the last Assembly and I am not going to forget the new Members, of course. This started in 2019 when there was a recommendation in a report by my predecessor when I was briefly at Culture to look at the state of the sector in Jersey. There was a general consensus and a recognition even from politicians that funding for that sector had fallen behind and a report was commissioned but unfortunately not published. When I took office in 2019 I said: “This report is really great, there is some good stuff in it, it needs to be published.” So I pushed my Minister, who was Deputy or Senator Farnham at the time, to publish this and he did agree. One of those findings and recommendations was that Jersey had fallen behind in its funding of culture, where the European average for the E.U.27 was 1 per cent of their overall budget. That is a benchmark that is used and that is why the 1 per cent we are going to be talking about today is not just plucked out of the air. It is a standard benchmark that is used to assess where we stood versus the E.U. We have heard a lot about the E.U. this week and we know that they do some things very well and I would say that putting value on their culture and their arts is something that we have learnt from and that we are also doing in Jersey. Back in 2019 there was a list of Members who supported this who are still in the Assembly, and I think it is worth refreshing our memories as to who they might be. We had in alphabetical order Deputy Ahier, Deputy Alves, the Constable of St. Helier. We had Deputy Gardiner, the Constable of St. Brelade. We had Deputy Carolyn Labey behind me. We had the Constable of Trinity. We had Deputy Le Hegarat, Deputy Mézec, it is no surprise, Deputy Kristina Moore or Senator at the time. Deputy Morel was pleased to support that and I have heard him make many speeches at art events about how important the 1 per cent for arts is as a formula. Maybe he can talk about that later. We had Constable Shenton- Stone, or the Constable of St. Martin as she is known, Deputy Southern, the Constable of St. Peter, Deputy Ward and, of course, myself. We were all here when that decision was made, but there was another decision that was made only a year later when the Government were trying to cut the funding in 2023 because the original proposition was time limited and only took it up to 2022. That proposition was to keep it in 2024 and into the future. Effectively and in reality a previous States Assembly ratified that decision and said: “We support the 1 per cent and it should not just be for now and for this term of the Budget, it should continue into the future.” I am pleased to say that apart from one Constable who is no longer in the Assembly, all of those who voted on that day - I think there were 44 - voted to support that principle. That is the starting point. We have a very strong message of support from some of the existing Members of this Assembly and many of those other Deputies and Constables and Senators who have now left. I have to say also some of those late Members, so there were Members there who are sadly no longer with us but when they did vote they said: “We want this to continue into the future.” So that is fine. The thing is that I recognise that there is a valid political debate to be had around this point but it is not for me or any other Back- Bencher to initiate that debate. It is for those who want to change the status quo to initiate a debate and the usual process for that, which is outlined in Standing Orders, would be that if a rescindment motion wants to be made, you have a proposer and 3 other seconders and you bring a report explaining the arguments for the rescindment. That has not happened. What do we have from this Government? First of all, there has been no consultation with the industry. It has simply been sprung on everybody in the form of a line of text in the current Government report saying that now that we have reached the 1 per cent it will stay like that and we will give it an R.P.I. figure, which in itself is not very clear because I had to read that a few times. I had to message the Greffe and say: “What do they mean it will stay like that? Do they mean the 1 per cent will stay in place and it will be R.P.I.?” or will it be the figure? I think it became clear that they were saying: “Let us freeze it at 2024 levels.

We have got a big hike in government expenditure coming, and we certainly do not want to give the arts any of that extra growth that we do not need to. So let us bring in R.P.I. at the time, let us bring in the R.P.I. model” without having gone to the Assembly to do that first, without having discussed it with the sector whom it will affect the most, and just put it as a line in that Budget report, at a time of course when R.P.I. is relatively low. If this had been done at a time when R.P.I. was at 5 per cent, 7 per cent, 10 per cent, I would say: “Okay, maybe they are trying to protect the budget of the art sector.” But if they had done it and said: “2025, you can have your 1 per cent, we will get some consensus and then we will bring it. Then we will talk about whether R.P.I. is best, whether 1 per cent is best, whether something in between is best.” It could be the difference between 1 per cent and R.P.I. or it could be a completely different figure, it could be based on G.V.A. (gross value added), then I would be less concerned about it, but I do also have material concerns. I think it is important to try and make the case as to why the 1 per cent is useful, and I think why the previous Assembly supported it unanimously, and why even the current Minister has, up until now, sung overtures to its beauty, if you like, if I can be slightly flowery in my golden threads. I think the beauty of the 1 per cent is that it is fixed, everybody knows what they are going to get. The Government decides what it is going to spend for a particular year, and it does that spending of course based on taxation, it has to raise that revenue. I always like to think of this as a social contract that has been made between the Government, the Assembly and the citizens, but it is also a contract of course that has been made between the Assembly and the arts community, and we are saying that whatever we spend, we recognise that 1 per cent of that needs to be spent on arts and culture.

[12:30] When that money is spent, and I perhaps at this point could ask for a sheet to be distributed at some point so that Members have ... have Members got it? Great. All right, we are all on the same hymn sheet, so to speak. That money, which is distributed to the arts sector, it is around about £10 million, give or take, and it might be slightly more in coming years, that is what they rely on, as I have said, to provide services to all of our Island so that it can be accessible for everybody; I have got the sheet here as well. What I said in a recent interview with the paper is that when we spend money on the arts and on culture, we do not just spend it on that, we spend it on health, we spend it in education and we spend it on well-being. We spend it on tourism because it is providing things for everybody in our Island to do with their tourists, whether it is for locals to go and see a classical concert at the Arts Centre or to see a pantomime that is put on at Christmastime, perhaps Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or whether it is something different at the beautiful Opera House that will be opening next year, which I hope that many people can go to and enjoy. These are things that they would not enjoy without that money and many of these events are free and they have a cross-subsidy into departments like the hospital, like our care homes where arts and healthcare was able to be restored because of this vital funding, and our schools. I spoke to the Arts Centre very recently who have sent me some of the figures through; I will not go through all of them, but because of that money and the guaranteed growth that they have had, they are able to go into schools and it is gratis. These are lessons which are effectively provided and paid for by Economic Development for the Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning so that he does not have to find that money out of his budget. The idea is that when in fact Ministers might be being told: “Well if we give arts and culture an extra £300,000, £400,000 or £500,000 this year, we might have to take some money out of your budget” but let us look at the reality. Because if we turn to the back page on those figures that I have circulated, we notice that not all of the money is simply spent on the 4 arm’s-length organisations, it also goes to fund festivals, which are great for the Island. Some of the money goes to the Creative Island Partnership and Creative Spaces cultural diplomacy, so all those other things that are going on that Ministers are doing with Europe, for example. But the last part is the non-culture and arts spend which is outside of the Economy Department, so to speak, which nevertheless goes to fund culture.

We have £500,000 going to fund Jèrriais and Jèrriais teachers. That is money that would otherwise be coming out of the Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning’s budget because normally teachers are paid for by Education. If you are an art teacher, if you are a music teacher, perhaps with the exception, I am not sure about how the Music Service is funded, and there is a para-aesthetic element there which probably does get funding from Economic Development, you would be paid for out of the Education budget. All that great work that Jèrriais teachers, for example, are doing in our schools is being paid for by culture. It is the same with the Liberation Day celebrations. Some of it, I am sure not necessarily all of it, those great events that we host for the whole of the Island on what is effectively our national day, is provided by the cultural budget. When push comes to shove, if the budget is reduced, if spending is reduced, and the Minister will say: “Well there is still growth, it is just much less growth”, these departments, these sectors will do less. I am not going to go on because we are coming up to lunchtime and I am trying to capture the spirit of this argument rather than just the facts and figures. We also have to remember that many people who choose to work in this sector, it could be for Jersey Heritage, it could be for the Arts Centre, it could be for ArtHouse Jersey, Jersey Opera House or many of those other organisations, they often do it because it is a vocation. They are jobs which often require - certainly at Jersey Heritage but others - to manage an Arts Centre or an Opera House over here, you have to have a very specific skillset but the pay is not commensurate, I would say. They are often paid a lot less than they would be if they were working in other sectors in Jersey where they might not have to have quite the same skillset. They are doing it, they are often taking a cut in what they could be earning, and they are putting long hours in - and we know long hours exist in many sectors - and they do it out of the passion. It is really this guaranteed funding model which I think is securing the future of our Island. I would put it to Members on 2 counts: it may well be that there are some Members of the Assembly who have slight concerns, they look at a particular organisation and say: “I do not really know if I understand that, I think they have got a few too many administrators. I think they could do this, I think they could that.” There will be others who say: “I really appreciate all that organisation does and I know if they had more they could do more.” That is not what this debate is about. It needs to come back to the point of focus which is the principle. If Government is to bring in sweeping new changes to a formula, then they must first of all do it with due consultation. That consultation has not taken place and they should really be doing it through a standalone proposition to seek the consensus of the Assembly and all involved, not just impose it. We would not do that for the fishers that we heard yesterday; we heard talk of an extensive consultation programme. We would not do it without knowing what the long-term consequences were and the potential cuts to services that needed to be made in that sector, and I think we would not do it without the due consultation of this Assembly, so I ask for the same respect to be shown. I do ask for Members to put aside whatever political affiliations or pressure that might be borne upon them again in this vote and bring it back to the fact that at the end of the day and at the end of this week we are all, first and foremost, parliamentarians, States Members, and that we must protect due process, as well as looking out for the industry, the arts and culture sector that we are here I think to do the best for at all times. Thank you. In making the proposition I only move part (a) not part (b).

I will follow the theme started by Deputy Tadier and some conversations that I had in the coffee room. People rightly challenge me and other Members, asking when we are facing a deficit in the Budget, housing shortage, cost of living, meeting healthcare, why we would continue to invest the same amount, 1 per cent, into the arts, and I think it is a very valid question. Once I discovered during the conversations, sometimes it felt that it is just invited in the art, as an art, but it is much more. As Deputy Tadier said, arts are essential to proper functioning of our society. I will not go through all the benefits or return to the same things that Deputy Tadier mentioned but I would like to bring to Members 3 specific examples that can illustrate why it is important to keep this funding.

I give these examples from my time in 2023 as the Minister for Education. First example, private schools, primary private schools, do have art teachers, they have teachers who specialised in arts.

When I started in the Soviet Union I did have an art teacher, as I had a P.E. (physical education) teacher, now generalists. When I started to look into the budgets, obviously to have an art teacher, even for one art teacher for 2 or 3 primary schools across the Island, it will be a very, very high cost and we will need to train people, and it was almost impossible. I am really, really grateful for this 1 per cent of arts that we put into the Budget. What we did have, we did have artists, professional artists with qualifications working with the children who delivered art in combination with Jèrriais, who delivered art in combination with Jersey history, and children in the government primary schools received art lessons in combination with the Jersey history. It was funded by this because I did not have funds in my budget to provide it. Second example, I am not sure how many of you visited joint exhibitions done by all primary schools at the Capital House where each school developed a theme connected again to our Island, and it was done with this particular funding. I know about the programme within the health which art therapy was delivered from this budget, so for me 1 per cent of this budget, it is not just arts, it is services delivered to our residents, to Jersey residents, and they will benefit from them. I liked to also challenge my other Ministers and basically to see what else can be done with the funds more, which I felt maybe we missed. Again, it is new funding and it is funding that has been developed, and very well-developed, Creative Island Partnership, Music Manifesto; it is lots of things happening. I would like to give you 4 points and everyone can ask themselves: “Have we used this budget for this or maybe we can use this budget.” First of all, it is economic drivers, nobody talks about art that is a commodity. There are islands who benefit from investing in the arts and artists. A strong art sector is an economic asset which stimulates business activity, attracts tourism and revenue and retains a high-quality workforce; it is economics. We are told that we need to diversify our economy, arts, it is one of the ways to diversify our economy because arts can bring revenue. Second, it is educational assets and it is imagination and creation. If we are talking about lifelong learning, with A.I. (artificial intelligence), A.I. will never, never, ever replace creativity and creative thinking. Arts is what brings you this creative thinking and different thinking; one of the things. Three, civic catalysts. The arts welcome a sense of place and a desirable quality of life. The arts also support a strong democracy, dramatising important issues and encouraging collective problem-solving. We know that we did this and if you look around, Corn Riots, the festival Corn Riots, how much it has developed over the last 2 years and how much Islanders are engaging and learning the history, learning the heritage and getting involved with the democratic process. We had our first People’s Assembly, I hope it is not the last one, and I hope they continue to be engaged. The fourth one is the cultural legacy, that is preserve the unique culture and heritage, passing Jersey’s precious culture, character and traditions on to future generations. I cannot emphasise more ... and again coming back to what this proposition is about. I did vote - thank you to Deputy Tadier for reminding who voted for - I was there, and I am still there. I do believe that we might need to have a debate that 1 per cent should be coming from the core budget and not from the growth because we know that somewhere on page 107 it is very clearly stated that we have £48 million general growth to this Budget compared to what was approved in 2024. So we might have a discussion that 1 per cent should have come from this £48 million general growth in the Budget that is coming into our debate later but again this discussion needs to be held on the floor of the Assembly, not sneaked through some lines within the 100-pages document that we need to look through and to find out. Forty-four Members supported in principle in 2022 for the 2023 Budget, let us discuss the model in an open and transparent way, and I encourage the Government to bring this proposition to the floor for the Assembly, but not to make a decision which reverses the States decision and to make a new model. My vote will be obviously in support, as you can understand from my speech, for Deputy Tadier for 2 principles. One principle, the decisions of the Assembly should be upheld and if the Government wants to change, bring it back to the Assembly to the debate and, second, 1 per cent, it is the bare minimum that we can invest in our culture, arts and heritage that residents will benefit across all ministerial portfolios.

I am quickly editing my speech because much of what I wanted to say Deputy Gardiner has covered.

I had 2 principles that I wanted to cover: firstly, the mechanics of what has happened with this proposition, and I will briefly reiterate some of the points, and, secondly, the principles behind it, the arts and culture, and why that is really important and to give a perspective on that. Just to briefly go back to the mechanics of it, I have touched on this today already, it is about respect for me. I think this Assembly, in the 10 years that I have been a Member of this Assembly, has been a place where different ideas could be listened to and accommodated. I think it is an imperative that Government must do that, any Government. Whoever is in Government has a duty I think to listen to all Members of the Assembly. Likewise, we need to consider each other’s perspectives that might be different to our own and compromise and come to agreements that might not be exactly what we had originally envisaged. This is what we did with Deputy Tadier’s original proposition, it was a fresh idea that had not been considered by Government and it was overwhelmingly supported. I think the Assembly at that time were really proud to do that and I would like to see that respected. I will say that word again: respect. It is absolutely imperative in our democracy that we are functioning with the level of respect for each other. The second point that I want to touch on is the principles behind why the arts, culture and heritage are so important, along with our natural environment which has been the subject of another debate this week. Also I think the third thing is our amazing community spirit. Those 3 things are what give our Islanders their quality of life in Jersey. Particularly I want to talk about families partly because of my background in teaching, but also I have a young child myself, and it has been tangible, the increased offering of the arts, the culture and heritage offerings has been tangible. As my child is growing up in this Island that has that increased offering, it is absolutely life-changing, and I cannot emphasise that enough. For a child to grow up with the high-quality culture and heritage and arts surrounding them, it is life-changing. I want to mention one organisation in particular. I think all of the organisations and projects on this list that Deputy Tadier has circulated are doing fantastic work but ArtHouse Jersey I think is the newest of the organisations. I have been absolutely astounded by some of the offerings from ArtHouse and the variety of offerings that they have been able to give to the Island, and that they manage to accommodate all different types of disabilities and different backgrounds and different ages. A recent exhibition, I took my child and went with my partner and my stepson, they were so engaged in it, and they never would have had that experience previously I think without this funding. I thank Deputy Tadier for that, and I thank ArtHouse and the other organisations, it is life-changing. That perspective that the children who are growing up with this offering are going to have as they grow up and contribute to our Island is going to shape Jersey in a different way. I cannot understate how important it has been. Of course, it is important that we make our Island an attractive place. I think others have said, we need to keep young people on our Island so that they are having families. It needs to be a fun, attractive, exciting place to live so that people will stay and have families and contribute to our economy. My other perspective on this is, I am a humanist, and when I reflect on what life is for, I want to state that as human beings we are not productivity machines. Our purpose is not just to contribute to the economy, but it is to enjoy our lives and to enjoy experiences as part of a community with people that we love and, critically, with people that we do not know that might come to an art exhibition in a common publicly-accessible space and be able to experience new ideas alongside us. We can then exchange views with people that we might never have met; it is so important.

[14:30] As a Parliament we deal with lots of things and I think Government provides services on a daily basis but perhaps we do not give enough thanks for and recognition of. Because it has been said that part of the reason that Islanders do not engage with politics is that they are quite happy with how things are and that the Island is well run. I will leave Members to make up their own minds about that, but we do deliver to Islanders a lot of things that meet their basic needs, and I am going to psychology again. I am sure many Members will be aware of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It is a pyramid, and at the bottom of the pyramid you have your basic, basic needs, like food, water, shelter, clothing.

Governments obviously help individuals to have access to those basic needs. Then you have got safety and security, our uniform services in Home Affairs, Government delivers those things as well.

But it is not very often that as a Parliament, and probably Government as well, that we get to look above those basic physiological safety and security needs, at the belonging needs, and that is something that arts and culture and heritage offers to our population, that feeling of connection, a sense of achievement, and a sense of self as an individual and as a connected person within a community. Right at the top is self-actualisation and that is something that, it is an abstract idea, but what we want for our population, we want the very best for them, do we not? We want to give them the basic things that they need to survive but we also want them to, as I think the young people of today might say, live their best lives. We can do that with this funding. I know there will probably be some speeches against that will say: “Oh, it is only a small amount and it is a technicality and we are still giving a substantial amount of money.” I do not accept that, I am afraid. I think that we need to keep this 1 per cent. I am a bit disappointed that Deputy Tadier is not proposing part (b) because I wanted to vote for it. I think that part (a) that he is asking us, that decision that was made by a previous Assembly which should be embedded in the fabric of what we are offering to the people of Jersey, to not change that without bringing it back to this Assembly for a proper debate. I would hope that if that happened, and if that debate did come back, that there would be a resounding support for it for all of the reasons that I have outlined because we owe it to our population. Our Islanders deserve to reach those peaks of self-actualisation and have a quality of life and enjoy their lives. I will be emphatically voting for Deputy Tadier’s proposition and I hope that Members will reflect on the fact that this is an opportunity for us to continue doing something for Islanders that brings real meaning to their lives.

It has been a joy to listen to the first 3 speeches, including Deputy Tadier’s, because the recognition of the importance of the arts has been clear. I agree entirely with Deputy Doublet when she says proper arts and culture, they are not just events but provision. Proper arts and culture provision and heritage provision is life-changing, I totally agree. I fundamentally believe that a creative society is a resilient society. It is resilient when it is creative because it becomes innovative. You have less fear of the world if you believe you can create and solve problems yourselves. That is part of arts and culture funding, there is no doubt in my mind. It is why I believe that arts, culture, heritage funding sits well within the Economy Department because I believe the economic benefits of a proper arts and culture provision are enormous. I remember the debate in - was it 2019, I believe, Deputy Tadier? - when Deputy Tadier brought his original proposition which I absolutely voted for wholeheartedly, I remember a few things that I said. One of them was the importance of the arts is that it teaches us to see through other people’s eyes, it helps us empathise with people, it helps us understand other people’s perspectives in a way that other pursuits do not. It obviously brings us, because of the heritage funding as well, closer to our own heritage, our own understanding, our own identity and culture. On the cultural side it is just endless. There is so much that we can talk about, whether it is us liaising more closely with France, Brittany and Normandy, whether it is us sending art teachers to teach in French schools, which is what we do, to have residencies in Rennes, Guernsey, Jersey and have that taking place, all of which has been funded through the arts and culture and heritage provision. I fundamentally believe one of our problems in Jersey is holding on to young people. They are faced with high housing prices, they are faced with limited career options, which is always going to be a problem in a small Island. I grew up - and I remember saying this in the debate as well - believing that arts, culture, heritage were not funded properly in Jersey. At the time, I remember saying this in the early 2000s to a friend of mine, if 2 banks - and I will not name them - but there were 2 particular banks, if they did not sponsor it, it would not happen in arts and culture because Government was not funding it. The frustration I had at that, as someone who has always been engaged in arts and culture to be in Jersey and to feel that it was something that was missing, really hurt. From a career perspective, it meant I felt that I could not pursue that sort of career in Jersey. The nearest I got was marketing, which is very creative, and I enjoyed my career in marketing. To be honest, I am not even close to being talented enough to be an artist or a musician, but had I had that level of talent, I perhaps would have felt forced out of the Island, and I wanted young Islanders to feel that they could stay in Jersey. One of the ways to help them stay in Jersey if they wanted to pursue more artistic pursuits was to have career paths there and now, for the first time, we have got them. We have artists who feel supported; it is absolutely wonderful. We have got the “Bergerac” funding that has had 4 trainees on that whole production who have learnt how to work across the piece. They were not doing one job each on that production, they were doing a whole range of jobs across that production. I had the pleasure of speaking to one or 2 of them and they were so pleased with the opportunity that that production gave them because they now have stuff on their C.V. (curriculum vitae), which they can take to future employers in future productions. It is absolutely invaluable. To hear people talk so positively, and absolutely thank you to Deputy Tadier for agreeing, he and I are really in lockstep in believing in the value of arts and culture. I thank him for not trying to bash me in some way, anti-art or anti-culture, because I think most Members of the Assembly would realise is very, very far from the truth. I am really proud, there is no question, of this list here that Deputy Tadier really kindly circulated about how a lot of the arts and culture funding is spent. One small point of clarification, I guess, is I believe - I am happy to be wrong; I am happy to be proven wrong - the Jèrriais funding was done from the Economy Department before the 1 per cent for the arts. I think that was the case but obviously it became easier once the 1 per cent for the arts was in place because the arts had more money and we were able to do the Jèrriais funding from there as well. I am particularly proud of the Ballet d’Jèrri. There is no way the Ballet d’Jèrri which people all ages are enjoying so much ... I was so pleased I spoke to the director just a couple of weeks ago. She has now booked their first tour dates in Paris, I believe, next April, so they are now ambassadors for the Island, they are taking the Island out. I recommend anybody go to their performances. It is different; I find it absolutely wonderful. Of course, from the perspective of girls, because it has to be said, being the father of a daughter, I know that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of mainly young girls - it is not 100 per cent young girls but mainly young girls - who pursue dance at a young age, ballet and other dance, from a very young age. Now they have got a company, a professional ballet company and dance company in the Island that they can look to and believe that they can be that person in the way that I, when I was a young lad and absolutely useless at football, but still liked to believe I could play for Liverpool one day. I “believed”, definitely a past tense use there. But it was important for me and, while Liverpool did not play in Jersey, I realise how important role models are to us. The ballet provides role models for anyone who is interested in dancing performance in the Island and all those young people now look up to them. I think the debate is settled on arts, culture and heritage as being absolutely vital to our Island life, and what the 1 per cent has really done is boosted it, taken it to a new level where it is operating in support of the tourism industry. It is operating in support of the finance industry. It is operating in support of Home Affairs because, for instance, I know ballets and various art projects are being done in prisons; in the prison, we have only got one prison. Arts, culture and heritage, it is in support of health, in support of old age, in support of education. As Minister, and I hope Deputy Tadier who brought the original proposition would agree, and I think from his speech he clearly does, I have been really clear that this is not just for the Minister for Sustainable Economic Development to spend purely on directly economically-related things. We have, and I have, wanted that spend to seep into other departments, to support other departments, where it is arts and culture related, and to help them do that. To hear Deputy Gardiner, the former Minister for Education, explain how important that was to arts in schools is absolutely vital. I like to be a collaborative person and that is it in action. Nobody in this Assembly, I believe, would be able to say that the 1 per cent has not served an incredibly important purpose, but I think the important thing here is that in so many ways that purpose has been served. We went from such a small amount of arts and culture funding to such a significant amount of arts and culture funding and we have transformed the Island as a result, and we are continuing to transform the Island as a result. But, this is to another matter, the argument is not over, the value of the arts in terms of do we think it is valuable or not, I believe that is settled, the question is: is this the right formula to continue with? Over the last 3 or 4 years in Government, I have come to believe that it was the right mechanism to get arts funding to where it is today, but as an ongoing provision it is not the right way to do this. That was really brought home to me when Deputy Luce lodged his proposition which initially, I believe, was 1 per cent for agriculture. I could see as soon as that proposition was lodged, and I talked about it with the farmers beforehand, and said: “We really should not do 1 per cent. The need of agriculture” and we had worked with the agriculture officer on this, “is not 1 per cent” which back then would have been £9.5 million, £10 million. That was not what we needed in agriculture, we needed a sum; I believe it was £6.7 million in the end. That was the assessed amount that we needed for agriculture and a marine economy. Had we agreed to 1 per cent, yes, we would have put a lot of money into agriculture, of course, we could find ways to spend £10 million, £11 million in agriculture, do not get me wrong, but it was not the actual need. Beyond that, this 1 per cent formula creates a problem, and it creates a problem which it is based on expenditure, it is 1 per cent of expenditure of the Government. In order to honour that, which to be fair the Minister for Treasury and Resources has continued to do, we have to adjust the actual budget through the year. I believe I am correct in this because I do remember the Treasurer telling me this, there is an adjustment 6 months in because they have a reforecast of government expenditure and often it is higher than it was first believed at the beginning of the year. They then have to put extra funding into arts and culture because other departments are spending more than it was expected. What I am trying to describe to you with the 1 per cent formula is a spiral of increasing cost. In simple terms, the way I have put it to people, if one department overspends, arts, culture and heritage gets more money. What you can see there is, in a sense, if I was really, really focused on arts, culture and heritage, I would be encouraging all other departments to overspend constantly because, as arts and culture Minister I would be getting more and more money for arts and culture, and in itself that creates a spiral. I do not believe this has happened. As an example, I am just using these numbers because it makes for easy thinking, if you have a department which overspends by £100 million, the Treasurer has to give an extra £1 million to the arts and culture budget, so suddenly your increase in expenditure is not just £100 million, it is £101 million, and that is the fundamental flaw in this formula. It encourages increased expenditure, an ongoing spiral of increased expenditure. That is the reason why I was working with Deputy Luce back when it came to the agriculture budget to please do not go down the 1 per cent route, let us find a way, because what you will do then, you will have 2 budgets which every time there is an overspend somewhere else, you are then having to put more money into those other 2 budgets.

[14:45] It has been talked about having a 1 per cent for sport, so then you would have 3 budgets. Every time there is an overspend somewhere else, you have got these 3 budgets that have to be topped up even more. So your £100 million overspend suddenly becomes £103 million, because you have got to top up the sport, you have got to top up the agriculture, you have got to top up the arts by £1 million each, and that is the fundamental flaw in the formula. I did not see that in 2019, I had only been in the States for about a year. To be honest, us voting for that at the time was the right thing to do because what it did, it served its purpose, as I have said before, of taking arts and culture spending from what was far, far too little to a much more significant amount. But we are at the right amount, 2025, £11.5 million. As Minister, I am really comfortable that that is a superb amount and we can use that really, really well, and to move it onwards beyond that every year to go up by R.P.I. is about right. At the moment, I do not have to make a business case for further expenditure in the arts and culture budget because obviously it is growing as government expenditure grows. Every other Minister, whether it is the Minister for Health and Social Services, whether it is the Minister for Justice and Home Affairs, whether it is the Chief Minister, they have to make business cases to ask for more funding for a particular project. I do in other areas outside of arts and culture, but I do not have to in arts and culture. Even in agriculture, which is now an R.P.I.-linked formula, if I wanted to go beyond that R.P.I.-linked formula, I have to make a business case, just as all other Ministers do, and it would be same here. We go to an R.P.I.-linked formula, then I, if I want to do a particular project somewhere which is going to cost another £500,000 beyond the £11.5 million that we have got, I have to take to the Council of Ministers a business case and try to win that argument. I do believe that is fundamentally the right thing to do because all the other Ministers are having to do that and there can be arguments, let us say, around health, that you could argue some of that is sometimes more important than arts and culture to certain areas; same with education. Sometimes some of the things there might be more important than some of the things in arts and culture, but they are having to make business cases and I am not; I just get the extra funding. Do not get me wrong, as a Minister it makes my life much, much easier for arts and culture. I do not pretend that is not the case, it is a relief I do not have to do that work, but there is, in many ways, a fundamental unfairness about it. There is also something else which has not been mentioned, and I do understand why, because I do not think in the last 20 years I have seen a Government budget be less one year than the previous year, but it could happen. There is nothing which says government expenditure has to increase year on year, government expenditure could decrease. If government expenditure was to decrease, the arts and culture Minister would have a really difficult problem because 1 per cent would absolutely shrink, so it is not a 100 per cent guarantee that the arts and culture budget gets bigger every year. The moment government expenditure decreases, the arts and culture budget decreases.

With an R.P.I.-fixed formula that would not be the case, the arts and culture budget would grow with that. It cannot be said that you are guaranteed every year an increase in arts and culture funding but I accept it is probably - by a long way probably - the most likely thing to happen, but it can be the case that it would decrease. I think it is really important to point out some certain areas. Since 2021 the total budget for arts, culture and heritage has grown from £6 million to our proposed £11.5 million next year. That is nearly double the budget over 4 years and I think that is absolutely the right thing to do; we are pleased we have done this. But of course, as I said before, I have not had to put business cases to do that, I have not had to show why I deserve, or why the arts, culture and heritage budget deserves that money. I just hope that when people look at this spend that Deputy Tadier has passed around, I hope they think I have done the right thing and I have done a good job. That is what I hope people see but obviously it is all challengeable, and some people are bound to think it should have been here and not there. That is why I was really pleased that Deputy Doublet talked about ArtHouse Jersey. It was one of the things I did when I first became Minister for arts and culture, and I think I was Assistant Minister at this time, was I said: “I significantly want to increase ArtHouse Jersey’s budget” and I almost tripled it in one year because I could see that their approach to arts and culture was the sort of approach that I wanted: it was wide, it was diverse, it was open. One of the things I do worry about in arts and culture is gatekeepers. If Kirsten is the only person who decides what arts goes on in Jersey, then you are only going to get Kirsten’s view of what arts goes on in Jersey. Art is diverse by its nature, so you have to have a wide variety of gatekeepers, in my view, and by supporting ArtHouse Jersey in that way, I believe we have done fantastic things. The events landscape has been transformed by them, whether it is shirts looking like they are being laundered at Charing Cross or whether it is a giant globe floating on Queen’s Valley Reservoir, or whether it is grains of rice in Capital House or whether it is Capital House itself. I am so, so proud of Capital House. That was ArtHouse Jersey’s initiative because they suddenly had the funding that they had not had before, so they said we could open Jersey’s first free public gallery, and that is what they have done. So many artists, whether they are international or local, have been shown there and it is a wonderful, small space which they use incredibly well. I suggest to anybody who is feeling tense, feeling pressured, feeling like they just do not know what to do this lunchtime, pop to Capital House.

They are closed on Mondays and Sundays but outside of that, when they have got an exhibition on it is a fantastic place to go and spend an hour. There is no doubt in my mind that the 1 per cent has that unfairness about it. I think I am right in thinking this, the only way that 1 per cent would work in a fair way across the Government budget would be if the whole budget was worked out by percentages, 27 per cent for health, 13 per cent or 14 per cent ... I am trying to think of where they are, 15 per cent, 16 per cent, 17 per cent, 20 per cent for education, 1 per cent for the arts, 0.5 per cent for agriculture, whatever it may be. If you did the whole budget in that way, then I think it would be fairer. But because we as an Assembly have sliced out one portion of that budget for this 1 per cent, it does create an unfairness on pretty much every other department and, as I say, it also creates a spiral of growing expenditure. I do want to say, because I do not want these things to get mixed up, alongside the 1 per cent we have also spent I think £11.7 million on the Opera House. We have also spent roughly £6 million on the refurbishment of Elizabeth Castle. It is really important to note that they are not from the 1 per cent for the arts. They are separate capital projects that had to be championed and, to be fair, I think Elizabeth Castle, again, Deputy Tadier was behind the Elizabeth Castle funding. That was through a Government Plan, I believe, but there was lobbying before that; I think I am right in thinking. Obviously the Opera House has been a long-standing project but they are supported by the 1 per cent. What is really important to understand, if we do not use the 1 per cent for capital projects, we use the 1 per cent for the operational revenue expenditure. Capital projects are still going through that normal capital projects bidding process, so to speak. If we were to maintain the existing formula at the current forecast, it would mean finding an additional £719,000 each year against other spending pressures, and we know there are real spending pressures. I look across, I see the Minister for Infrastructure, I know that we have issues in infrastructure such as drains, et cetera, things like this, which are huge capital amounts, which definitely are losing out to some extent because arts, culture and heritage will get another £700,000 next year and it will get probably another £700,000 after that, et cetera, et cetera. I know £700,000 will not sort out our drainage infrastructure but it is just an example of the way that the arts and culture budget will hinder other departments where they need it too. I cannot pretend that the higher priority for the States should be arts and culture. Arts and culture is a really important priority, it is personally a huge priority for me. I was really gratified when someone who is an important person in the arts and culture scene in Jersey said to me: “You have been a fantastic champion for arts and culture in Jersey” and I want to be seen as that because that is how I want to act. But I do not believe by changing this formula that I am in any way denting arts and culture in Jersey, I believe it just allows us to put arts and culture on a level, now that we have brought it up to the right level, that we are then putting it on the level in the way we manage the budget in the same way as all other budgets, except for Overseas Aid which obviously still sits with a G.V.A. link. As you come to vote on this, I ask you not to think about whether the Government is championing art, whether the Minister is championing art, that debate is settled. We have heard it. We have heard it from the bringer of the proposition, we have heard it really kindly from Deputy Doublet and Deputy Gardiner, that is not the issue in question.

The Government continues to support arts, culture and heritage, I continue to support arts, culture and heritage, but what we are asking for is the ability to now bring that into line in the way we attribute future growth into line with other budgets in the same way, and that is what is being asked for here. The debate is about the formula, it is not about the value of art, it is not about the importance of art, it is not about the importance of anything else. It is just about the way we fix that and to stop arts and culture becoming that spiral, and a model, if it catches on, a model for other, let us call them minority budgets in the entirety of the Government Plan, because if that model was to catch on, government expenditure would very quickly fly out of control. I do know that with this Government, trying to take control of government expenditure is a real priority for it, and this particular formula is one example where it makes it harder to take control of a budget. With that, I make my case.

In the Council of Ministers’ comments paper to try and encourage Members not to support this proposition, it focuses a lot on the need to fund the health deficit and future needs of healthcare, but what I failed to see in their analysis is that supporting arts and heritage and culture is part of preventative healthcare. This is often described as: “Social prescribing: integrating creative art activities into healthcare strategies aiming to prevent illness, improving mental health and enhancing overall quality of life.” I believe it has been touched on a little bit, even in Deputy Morel’s speech, but I feel that there is a lot more to be explored around this area of linking that social prescribing and the health needs of our community in Jersey and that from art and culture. I say that with a little bit of experience because my aunt in the U.K. very much collaborates with both artists and clinicians in different kinds of biomedical settings to create innovative public art and especially within hospital settings. I was trying to see which kind of best example to show you but she, for example, where she worked with doctors and with parents in Great Ormond Street Hospital, had to find a space for parents and carers of children that were in hospital. She worked collaboratively with them to have that conversation, to focus on their well-being and to help them when they were spending a lot of time in the hospital, how to have time for themselves. There are many, many examples and I have been to some of her public work that she has done to help set this. Now her work has mainly been funded through funding and donors from the arts, a little bit from medical and from health, but a lot of it is also from the Arts Council in the U.K. or from the Lottery. It is really important to show that, and I wanted to bring that example, there are a lot of ways that we in Jersey could be much more innovative.

Already we have heard from Deputy Tadier and from others, and even Deputy Morel, about the innovation and interesting things that we have been able to experience and see in Jersey because of access to this funding for arts and culture but it probably has not even touched the surface yet. I really want to pull out that because one of the reasons in the report from the Government on not doing this was because of the health deficit and because of health, that the health budget needs ... and we have heard about there is so much need for healthcare but why can it not be both?

[15:00] Because arts and culture funding could go towards that social prescribing and for finding ways to be innovative in supporting our, not only patients, but also Islanders at large to help us with our healthcare in a preventative manner so we do not utilise the services of the hospital as much if we are reducing stress or improving our cognitive function or also helping with our emotional expressions and well-being. We also of course have our healthcare providers as well who are put under a lot of pressure. We have heard a lot recently from them about the concerns they are having within the healthcare system in Jersey and the stress that they are under. They also could benefit from this type of support through the arts and cultures to help them reduce stress and also help them with their well- being in the hard work that they do. There are lots of benefits and long-term impacts in understanding how there can this be symbiotic relationship between arts and culture and, for example, healthcare.

I heard that the Minister for Health and Social Services wanted to start doing more about preventative healthcare, absolutely fantastic. We have not heard yet what, necessarily, that looks like or how that links with the budget that he is asking for in the Draft Budget 2025. But could this not be part of that, linking art and culture and understanding how important that is to social prescribing? That preventative means that we could support that linkage. But, as others have said, Deputy Doublet has said really the main thrust of this is, I suppose, it is not really about arts and culture, it is about the fact that ... and if Deputy Tadier had not spotted the fact that this formula had been taken away and that there was this change in understanding about how to fund arts and culture in the Draft Budget we would not be having this debate. Because maybe some of us do not have an eagle eye like Deputy Tadier does, to find out that this is happening behind the scenes, behind closed doors because we would not have necessarily seen it hidden in a very detailed, as the Chief Minister alluded to on Tuesday, budget; we may not have seen this. I think that is, ultimately, what we are talking about here today. I know that a lot of us will say how important arts and culture is but really the bottom line is the fact that this is about taking away a decision that the States Assembly had agreed to this 1 per cent without bringing that debate to the Assembly and doing it in this way. Really I know Deputy Morel has talked about our aid budget, if this has happened to us in culture, how do we know that the same feeling in the long term of changing a formula that has been agreed by the States Assembly is not done in the next Budget? We heard that the Treasury find it difficult with these formulas, will they row back on that commitment for 0.3 per cent of our G.V.A. for Jersey Overseas Aid and hide that in the Budget as well? I think this is really about being worried about the way forward, about how this is being treated. I really urge Members to vote for this. Of course vote for arts and culture and seeing that it has a huge impact for our community in all the ways that we have heard so far. But really it is also because it is about the principle of hiding this change of a States Assembly decision deep within the very detailed Draft Budget that we have got from the Chief Minister and instead of having that coming in a transparent and open way to have that discussion in a States Assembly.

I only rise to probably use 60 seconds of time to reflect on what Deputy Morel said. Unfortunately, I cannot see him to address him but I am sure he is listening and that is regarding the technicality and nature of some of the logistical challenges of implementing the 1 per cent as is. When I first spoke to Deputy Tadier about this proposition I said: “I might amend it” and I think his ears probably pricked up and was curious as to how. I said: “There is a very technical element that those who have sat around a room when a Government Plan or Budget is being prepared, they hear the challenges of this being a budget on actual spend of arts and culture. I may well amend this to say the administrative change from actual spend to forecast spend, if the Deputy agreed, would not be substantive in nature but would be one about improving logistics for the Government for their financial planning.” This is really just to say for any Member who is concerned that the mid-year adjustments that may or may not occur from departmental overspend, if that is a valid reason I would trust Members may consider and Members may wish to speak on it, that a change to the formula that could well be brought to change it from actual spend to 1 per cent of, say, forecast spend. Whether that needs a proposition I am sure Members could agree to that fairly quickly. But let us not get caught up on small details.

When these logistical challenges quite rightly appear to the public service we should be willing to adapt to make sure that the principles set here are right and can be implemented without technical hiccups. It is really to address that and to ask Members not to fall on that one argument, if they are minded, and to think that where we can take in feedback to make systems easier to implement, let us do so. There is clearly a method within a 1 per cent delivery that sets a figure, as approved in a Government Plan and amendment mid-year should not be needed beyond that.

I just rise and I mean I accept Deputy Curtis’ argument but Deputy Jeune made a really valid point.

These issues need to be brought out on the floor. This is not stuff that happens behind the scenes.

We saw period products where the Deputy sitting next to me had to rescind her proposition to do that. Sorry, Deputy Moore, my brain is frazzled on a Thursday afternoon. We had to rescind a proposition properly within the Assembly. I think this is where Deputy Tadier is going with this. I am glad someone has spotted that or glad he has spotted that. The challenge always with the arts is around the numbers. How do you measure the economic value of arts? I can point at 100 teachers costing us Y amount, so many schools costing X, the hospital costing, well, who knows what a hospital costs and drains costing another sum of money? We can point physically at those things, at those numbers and that is why we can give them budgets. Arts is a very difficult almost nebulous thing to get hold of and say: what actual value is arts giving to our economy? I can understand why we have ended up with this idea of, well, maybe a way of sort of promoting it or budgeting for it is to use this 1 per cent model. As someone says, if you can think of a better hole let us go to it. But it is about: is there a better formula or a better model to do that? But I am seriously concerned that we really do undervalue arts, the whole idea of arts. It is not just today. We have heard all sorts of nice stories today about all these lovely and beautiful things that we do but inherently, if we go into the future, arts and creativity is almost going to be the only U.S.P. (unique selling point) of a human being. Because we are going to have A.I., we are going to have all of these things. It is that individual creativity that we need to encourage which will add value to our economy. It gives a different perspective on our economy. Because in the end you can always get some machine which will produce a widget or something else and someone will be able to do it cheaper somewhere else. But creativity is inherent to a human being and if we do not encourage people to go into creative industries I feel we are losing out on the diversification of our economy. I think that is a really, really important thing. I also say words are great, it is great, we are doing this for this and this for that. You need to put your money where your mouth is and that is why it is really important that we spend correctly on arts. But, again, I do not know what that number looks like. What is the right number? I think a lot more work needs to be done in those areas. Deputy Jeune talked about the value in terms of health and well-being. There is tension between the amount we spend on healthcare versus the benefit that can be gained from people getting some mental health benefits from creative arts and areas like that.

What is the saving that brings into something we can physically measure? These are the questions.

I would say I am just going to go on my own experience and my son’s experience. He was at Victoria College, did his traditional maths, English, sciences, all of those kind of things and ended up getting involved in the arts, just by sheer accident. He has gone to university, he went to the Royal College of Art, sponsored on the ground, his education was subsidised. He is now in graphic design in London in a leading graphic design company. But it was purely by accident that he has this new living but he does it away from the Island; he does not do it in Jersey. There was kind of no intent there because the intent is always let us go into the finance industry, that is where the money is, that is how you will be able to afford a home. There is no idea, no thoughts around, how do we diversify our economy to ensure that other people who have different skills and different skillsets can put their roots down in this Island from a young age. I appreciate you always need to travel and get away from here but we could do with giving that opportunity to people locally. I still come back to the point is if you can think of a better formula than 1 per cent, and I appreciate it is not perfect, then please bring it to the Assembly. Because the most important thing is bring it to the Assembly, do not start fiddling around with the numbers in the background in the Treasury Department and pretend you have not made a change to the formula. Let us stick to the formula that the Assembly agreed on. If it is to change bring it to the Assembly, get the Assembly to agree to change it and then come up with a new formula. I can buy that, I cannot buy this hidden behind closed doors.

As Deputy Jeune and other Members have mentioned, we all have reason to champion arts and culture, including for life enrichment and mental health. We have a similar reason to champion sports funding too, and I am heartened by the work the Minister for Health and Social Services has initiated in preventative medicine, which encompasses both of these areas. I have supported the funding of culture, heritage and arts, both in a Scrutiny role and in my role as a member of the Council of Ministers. I wish to acknowledge Deputy Tadier’s efforts to improve funding in this area. I also would like to compliment the Deputy’s tie, as he did mention it at the beginning of the debate. Too often the work of the Economics and International Affairs Panel gets lost in the morass of competing interests. The arts, heritage and culture have an important area in the economy, particularly in the area of performance and design. It is not easy to make a living out of the arts, particularly when the focus is on creating output. If Deputy Tadier and the rest of the Economic and International Affairs Panel plans to encourage a greater percentage of the increased budget in this area being directed in the area of the commercialisation of the output of our artistic community, that could be an area of benefit to both that community and the Island at large. The Minister for Sustainable Economic Development has explained the problems with the current formula. This Assembly and Government has been criticised on more than one occasion for runaway spending. I note that Deputy Tadier in his report described the change in the formula for the funding of arts and culture as sneaky. Yes, Government could have brought a separate specific proposition to change the formula but that is not against any rules. In fact it has happened previously on other occasions, including with respect to the funding of the hospital and States Members may have different views about that. As the report accompanying Deputy Tadier’s proposition shows, the proposal in the Government Plan to change the formula is clearly stated in the Government Plan, to be debated by the States Assembly in November. That is in a context of many choices regarding funding in many areas of Government. I would question the reason given in the Deputy’s report for calling the counterproposal sneaky. Most of the Members of Council of Ministers have had roles in Scrutiny.

[15:15] Which one of them would have expected the Scrutiny members and officers not to have picked the point up? The officers, even if States Members did not. Deputy Tadier, hopefully, as chair of the Economic and International Affairs Panel, has a confidence in the quality of his panel’s officers that matches mine. Hopefully, his panel, as it continues its review of the Government Plan, will also acknowledge that the Government Plan has increased funding for culture, arts and heritage. This Assembly has a history of passing propositions, which on examination of their detail, might have been drafted with the benefit of hindsight. Deputy Tadier has suggested Government should have consulted with industry when seeking to change the formula that he proposed. My question to the Deputy is, who drafted his original formula; industry or him? Did he consult with industry regarding the precise nature of that formula and talk about some of the unforeseen consequences, one of which the Minister himself has mentioned about the possibility that the funding could go down in times of austerity? Is not that something that the Economic and International Affairs Panel is consulting upon right now? With respect to that possibility, in addition to the other problems that the Minister for Sustainable Economic Development has highlighted, States Members should be aware of the advice of members of the Fiscal Policy Panel. I do believe at least one States Member is very concerned about the advice that they have given that more money should go into reserves and into the Stabilisation Fund. It is public knowledge how focused Government’s chief executive is on delivering savings, affecting departmental budgets across the board and are causing a certain amount of pain in many different areas. Rather than be affronted by the proposed change in the formula that Deputy Tadier introduced, I invite Deputy Tadier to feel encouraged by the possibility that the alternative formula proposed by Government secures further funding for arts and culture in changed circumstances, even when other areas of government are experiencing cutbacks, even when the Fiscal Policy Panel has advised that more money needs to go into reserves and that surely is a win. We are voting on paragraph (a) of the proposition and I believe this is really about the difference in approaches towards orderly and efficient States Assembly debates and productivity in those debates; how we do things and how we do them well. The Government Plan remains an appropriate forum to proposed changes in government spending. As Scrutiny Panels remain the vanguard for scrutiny of the Budget and there is efficiency in the way that the work is divided and in which the different panels focus on the different elements of those Budgets. much of the purpose and value of those panels is to indeed ensure that points of detail in the Government Plan are not missed. I really must commend the work that I have experienced of the Scrutiny officer that I have had the privilege to work with.

How many other parts of the Government Plan do Members wish to be debated outside the context of the Government planned debate on the basis that these are points of detail in the Government Budget that they might have missed, had on the basis that they were not perhaps a member of the Scrutiny Panel? I do believe that those points are raised generally in the Government debate when of concern. If you do keep bringing other matters before the context of the debate of the Government Plan, well will this not be a runaway train? I urge Members to just simply get back to the basic text of this proposition and to think again of the way in which we debate government funding in the context of the Budget and the role of Scrutiny and I, therefore, urge them to reject this proposition towards more orderly and considered debate.

I hope the Minister for Treasury and Resources will be listening outside the Assembly to some of the things I have got to say because she is the one that has got the problem. I was asked by Deputy Tadier, I will admit, whether or not I was going to support his 1 per cent because he may have thought that I may be in the typical Treasury mould of not wanting to agree hypothecated funding, which would have been my default position. I did come to this Assembly today and indeed, when considering this last night, with a likely default position that would be against hypothecated funding.

However, I say that because the problem that the Minister for Treasury and Resources has is that the experience that I had in serving on Finance and Economics and the Island’s Minister for Treasury and Resources from 2014 is the challenge of balancing budgets and finding growth monies. There is nothing new about the health funding problems, nothing at all and also how to deliver savings.

The one issue that I learned, based upon the experience of my predecessors, was that you need a multiyear funding settlement, a minimum budget settlement for departments and those organisations which we fund. The last Assembly abandoned the multibudget approach. There has been much negativity spoken about that but I could give Members a bit of a background if they have got time, not now, as to why we moved to that multiyear funding. It was a minimum funding, always with the ability in the Budget to allocate additional money if additional monies had been brought in from additional government revenues. I know the Government will say that they have got projections in the Budget but they are meaningless. They are not statutory minimum limits. There is absolutely no certainty that any department, any A.L.O. or funded organisations of which the arts and culture organisations, which I will come to, have any certainty that their budget, what it is going to be next year and that is the fact. Just putting a projection means nothing. What matters is a statutory minimum base budget. I am afraid to say that I will take issue with the Assistant Minister for Economic Development and External Relations when she cites in evidence the support of the Fiscal Policy Panel, a panel that I brought in. I know well, I know why they exist and I am pleased that they do exist and their opinions matter. Under the new chair of the eminent Sir Jon Cunliffe, who I think was very polite but very clear in his observations, that there is an issue with the sustainability of our future funding. Yes, we need to put money in reserves and, yes, we need to deliver greater services but we also need to deliver, firstly, a control of inflation. One of the strange bizarre things is the inflation figure that was reported yesterday is probably going to mean that the Government needs to be careful what they pray for. If they want to have an R.P.I. increase I am afraid the R.P.I.

is rising, and it is rising because of domestic-driven inflation and not imported inflation. No organisation, whether it be a government organisation, whether it be a business, whether it be a third- sector organisation, whatever, can just simply operate on a year-to-year budgetary approach. The abolition of the statutory guaranteed limit for budgets, minimum funding limit, was a retrograde step.

I have invited the Minister for Treasury and Resources to meet with me to explain why it is going to be impossible, I would say, to deliver savings and efficiencies without a plan. You do not deliver efficiencies. I am tired of hearing of the Government Member saying that the cuts means service cuts. No, efficiencies mean just that, they mean productivity, they mean doing the same for less.

Doing the same for less means investing in how to get that. We have a huge opportunity, all governments around the world. We are listening to the U.K., of which we are dominated by the media, talking about the massive opportunity in artificial intelligence, about how that can mean that those boring, repetitive tasks can be carried out by computers and wherefore we can release those individuals engaged in those administrative boring tasks to front line services. When we move to multiyear budgets my predecessors and Treasury, all 5 of them that were alive, met in Cyril Le Marquand House and we even had a photograph taken in front of the great late Senator Cyril Le Marquand because we all thought we were unanimous in thinking that he would have agreed. I know that Colin Powell, who was also in that picture, absolutely agreed with this as a thing but we do not have it. Why does this matter for this debate today? It means that, effectively, there is no certainty for those cultural and arts organisations. All they have got to hang on is the extant decision of this Assembly to have the 1 per cent of spending. I would have more sympathy with the Minister for Treasury and Resources and the Council of Ministers if they were to say that they were going to go back to a multiyear funding approach which gave a guaranteed minimum funding to all these organisations, whether they be the organisations in health that deliver those fantastic singing opportunities. I followed a van just earlier and saw the Community Services people going to people’s houses and how music can change the otherwise distraught situation that many people with such as Alzheimer’s. There are many exciting things that have happened as a result of Deputy Tadier’s proposition and they are also incredibly important because they are reinforcing of the very fabric of what makes Jersey. I have sometimes been regarded as simply a Member of this Assembly that is just interested in money. Money is about economic growth and getting growth in and I believe that there is a huge opportunity. I am in entire agreement with everything that Deputy Morel has said in past debates, in supporting this and in what he says now. I somehow think that he is being pushed into a rather difficult position. I think he is being pushed into a position whereby he is being leaned upon by other Ministers, and certainly the extraordinary increases that are being required for Health in the Health Budget. The Council of Ministers has certain massive problems in balancing the books but I have limited sympathy for them because, effectively, they have abandoned that well-founded, that international best practice of the I.M.F. (International Monetary Fund) and other global organisations in long-term funding. I think that this 1 per cent has provided the organisations in Jersey with an ability to do just that, long-term meaningful planning for projects; preserving, enhancing, enriching our rich heritage. Without it I think that the organisations are going to be vulnerable to the pressures of the short-termism that inevitably follows a short-term year-to-year budgetary approach, the very thing that the Fiscal Policy Panel and those wise economists are warning. Without something, and the 1 per cent is something, they are unable to fulfil their planned potential that must be planned and organised and worked on, not just one year in advance but multiyear in advance. It is worth considering also in this context how other countries fund cultural budgets. France, they commit approximately 1.4 per cent of its national budget to arts, heritage and culture. I think nobody would say that France is not culturally important with the many fantastic things that they do. Germany, the Federal and State Governments allocate between 1 per cent and 2 per cent of their budgets to cultural funding. They recognise the importance of arts and heritage to social cohesion and economic vitality and economic growth. Sweden spends around 1 per cent of its national budget; they have a strong focus on making arts accessible to all citizens and that is mirrored also by many countries in the Nordic area.

[15:30] Denmark allocates 1.1 per cent guaranteed funding seeing culture as an essential component of a healthy society. The United Kingdom, which has been spoken about by some other Members, delivers approximately 0.2 per cent of Government spending; that is well below the 1 per cent and they supplement it with this rather curious arrangement of lottery funding, which is maybe an interesting way of funding it. I know it has delivered a lot but some people will have the view that lottery funding is basically taking money from a certain section of society and improving the outcomes and the cultural abilities for others. I will contend that the value of investing in arts, culture and heritage is important to Jersey. It makes us mean something more than just financial services. I was delighted to hear the Assistant Minister for External Relations and the Minister for International Development being able to advance the cultural diaspora and those cultural issues in the work that she is doing in assisting the Minister for External Relations. I can personally attest to how valuable it is to be able to not just talk about financial services with Ministers and politicians and other interlocutors around the world. Starting a conversation about something that is not financial services is a brilliant way and a very engaging way and a very motivating thing that you can start on. I have often done that and then turn to some of the more tricky issues to do with the international financial debate, which we have much to be proud of. We are not an Island that is just about financial services, we are more than that. We were more than that, we are more than that and we can be that again. I am excited about the future of arts and culture. I think that there is much to do. I attended the plans for the 1000th anniversary of William the Conqueror, 1000th anniversary of his birth, in 2027/2028.

I think there was a second Norman invasion of the French Embassy in London and I can tell you that Jersey was well represented. We were treated as equal partners and I jolly well hope that there is going to be a fantastic Jersey contingent but it needs planning and it needs the 1 per cent and it needs certainty. Without that it is going to be an easy budget not to give and not to cut. I understand the importance of culture. It is about creating hope for our young people. The Opera House, well my late civil partner wanted to become a member of the Jersey Opera House Board; I am sorry that he is not going to be able to. There are some other things that I am going to talk to the Minister about that he was planning, and I hope they happen. The late Simon Boas, as chairman of the Jersey Heritage Trust, I think did a fantastic job in advancing the interests of heritage and we must not forget that.

There were many exciting projects that had been delivered by Jersey Heritage Trust and I too enjoy hugely. I looked up on a dismal Sunday morning, when I was feeling a bit sorry for myself, to the fantastic display of those t-shirts in the bottom of town over that frog and I say that lifts the spirit. A toad; I am so sorry, it is a toad. I was just looking directly at the court and it has got some really interesting previous sentences that I literally do not abide to by today. I am not somebody who would normally agree with hypothecated funding but I am afraid that I am going to depart from the Treasury line. I am going to upset no doubt the Treasurer and the Minister for Treasury and Resources by saying that because they have not moved to multiyear budgets, because they have not got any minimum funding, I think that we have to give some sort of guarantee to these important organisations who are doing fantastic work. ArtHouse Jersey, chaired by the late Philip Hewat- Jaboor, basically game-changed, as the Minister for Sustainable Economic Development has said. I sat as the president of Planning having to deal with a planning application for Mont Orgueil Castle.

I do not think I am welcome on the Planning Panel but if there is ever a rerun of the Elizabeth Castle planning application I can warn Members it will take some time. Our young people deserve more hope; they are disillusioned. They want something to look forward to. They want a rich cultural Island. I support the Government’s concerns about their balancing the budget but I am afraid to say that we need to have a certain commitment for our cultural organisations. If we do not vote in favour of this proposition I am afraid our cultural organisations will have nothing to hold on to. I urge Members, including Members of the Government, to vote in favour.

Sir, before I start, could I just ask you perhaps for an interpretation, now that the mover of the proposition has not moved part (b)?

Where we would be left with what the outcome of voting for part (a) would be, specifically in relation to this year’s Budget and when the Government would be expected to come back with a proposition.

Sir, could I ask as well, while you are cogitating? Can you also confirm that there is nothing incumbent on the Council of Ministers to come back with a proposition simply if this Assembly were to pass this today that they would be obliged to remove the reduced funding and to revert to the 1 per cent?

Sir, could I just confirm then that proving this proposition would be that the Government would have to bring a separate proposition to propose an item that is in the Government Plan already, so that it is debated separately from the Government Plan?

Could it still be included in the Government Plan, please, Sir, as well? Are you saying it has got to be extracted outside the Government Plan?

Sir, the interpretation we have reached is that this is the debate about funding and if people decide they want to go with the 1 per cent, the 1 per cent will be reinstated into the Government Plan.

Because we have debated it here we cannot debate it again as part of the Government Plan, so this is the funding position.

I may have to bring amendments to the Government Plan to reflect the implications of that.

Sir, I think it is a point of order.

It is a genuine point of order from my understanding.

One of the issues that the Government has advanced is the fact that the funding formula, the extant decision of this Assembly, is 1 per cent of spending. I am not sure whether you or law officers have given a ruling as to whether or not the Government can fix the 1 per cent of spending because we set an annual maximum budget-spending limit. I think that if it is not being determined it might be of assistance to the Ministers to get a ruling from you as to what it means. Because it cannot be really relevant, I do not think, to say that it is an in-year thing because we set a budget.

Now, but if I could advance one ...

It might be helpful, Sir.

Sir, could I also proffer a question on that same matter? Would you be able to rule on the fact that the 1 per cent for arts of net revenue spending has been in place for the last 5 years and that Government knows how it works and, therefore, it should not really be an issue as to reopening a debate about what it is?

Sir, and it may be that we need to ask the law officers because my understanding from your interpretation, if you could please confirm that, is because of this use of the word exclusively. But, effectively, even though the Deputy has said we are not debating paragraph (b), effectively we are.

We are, effectively, debating this ...

(a) which also refers to changes to this target revenue expenditure model, it says that there has to be an exclusive proposition and that no changes will be made to it, unless there is an exclusive Government proposition, which I take it to be outside the Government Plan and the debate concerning ...

Yes, so then I apologise to Members. I thought that this matter would be scrutinised by the Economic and International Affairs Panel, nonetheless, and it would not because basically the matter would be resolved now.

Sir, can I ask a point? It seems to me there are 2 choices, I think that is the most likely outcome.

There is a second outcome which I do not envisage and I do not think would happen but it is possible, is that if the Government were adamant after this debate that they wish to maintain an R.P.I. formula and not a 1 per cent formula, they could lodge in short order a standalone proposition to be debated before the Budget and that could be debated. If they won that then they could maintain an R.P.I.

figure in the Budget. I think there are those 2 distinct options.

May I ask a question, just because I am confused now? Because I interpret this as exactly what you have just said, Sir, in terms of the Government would have to bring a proposition to debate, which is why I was sat there and thinking we are having the wrong debate because we are talking about arts and we are talking about whether we want to bring a proposition for rescindment. Because this is now a different debate for me. But can I also ask, Sir, if this was to be lost, could anybody bring an amendment to the Government Plan to remove the line in the Government Plan of R.P.I. and, therefore, it would revert back to 1 per cent?

Sir, could I just ask for a point of order from you to clarify that, to rule on that once more? Because many questions have just been asked and I think the position on this has evolved.

[15:45] My last understanding, if you could rule if that is correct, is that there are 2 options that the Government can take; Members may feel one is more likely or not. One option is the Government chooses to amend the plan itself, one is the Government chooses, regardless of lodging period, to bring an independent proposition to rescind and leave the Government Plan unamended. As proposed, this does not support the merit or otherwise of the 1 per cent and merely request a decision ...

Sir, yes. I think what would be really useful, now that the Solicitor General is here, is everybody appears to be going on the basis that we do not necessarily agree with the Deputy’s previous proposition are binding and that we need a rescindment. Our view is that that is not the case, that we are obliged under the Public Finances Law to do a Government Plan every year. I think the critical question here is do we need a rescindment or has Government followed the correct process, which is what we believe we have done in taking a different stance? I think the question of: is this something that needs rescindment? Is the previous proposition binding as regards this Government Plan? It would be a very helpful question to have answered.

Just to be crystal clear there is no need for a rescindment.

Yes, thank you, Sir.

Thank you.

Sir, I am sorry but I have got to get this right, none of the speeches that we have listened to have been about saying this is just about saying you must bring a rescindment if you are going to change anything. But now we are talking about this is the debate on 1 per cent.

I am now completely confused by that because the wording to me is that you cannot change anything until you bring a change to the P.40 because it references P.40, like in P.40/2019. I would support that, I think it is probably a good idea that we do rescind things when they need rescinding and now we are being told that does not need to happen and this is the debate on the 1 per cent. I do not feel equipped at the moment to make that decision on 1 per cent because I am not coming to the Assembly today to make that decision on 1 per cent because the second part was taken away. I do not think we are debating the right thing here, Sir, and it really concerns me about that.

Yes, Sir, I have just heard what you were saying about the Public Finances Manual and the use of the Government Plan to change content without needing a separate proposition. So, does this mean that this proposition (a), is this ultra vires because it is saying that we basically agree that something cannot happen that is in the Public Finances Law? Maybe I should be asking the Solicitor General about that, Sir.

Thank you, Sir. Yes, okay. Basically, because it says that in order to change it it would have to be an exclusive proposition, so it has to be exclusive of the Government Plan. Effectively, by proving (a) that would mean you are directing the Government to basically change the Government Plan now.

Can I ask a linked question? Just because I am confused from what you said before that a new Government Plan is automatically changing obviously what was a previous Government Plan. But does that mean the Government Plan can change any previous Assembly’s proposition already approved? Because in that case ...

Yes, Sir.

If I may and I thank most warmly the Solicitor General for coming into the Assembly. I think you have dealt with ably and maybe the Solicitor General can confirm beyond all doubt, the difficulty that I think Members are having is that while an amendment to a Budget is an amendment to the Budget that can be changed, but when there is a proposition that is asking the States to do something on the next Budget and subsequent Budgets, then that is kind of a standalone proposition, which in my understanding would require the Assembly to revisit that fundamental principle. It is a policy decision which I know the Government Plan can trump anything but it is a multiyear commitment.

That is my first question to put beyond doubt, and maybe the Solicitor General could kindly confirm that. I will come to my second question in a minute, if I may.

I will do my best to confuse the situation even more. As I read Article 9 of the Public Finances Law it is the Council of Ministers who must prepare a Government Plan and lodge it. In the first instance, plainly, it will be for the Council of Ministers to determine what that plan will include. I take the effect of this part (a) to be what the Bailiff has said it is, which is that it is an expression, if it is adopted, of this Assembly’s will that the Government Plan on this topic should be formulated in a specific way. The fallout from the Government not doing so it seems to me is political, not legal. In other words, it is open to the Council of Ministers to prepare a plan in whatever form they think is appropriate. If they do not heed the will of the Assembly then, as I say, it seems to me the fallout for that is political, not legal. I hope that is helpful.

I am grateful for that. That is a clear message, I think, that the politics matters and there are 2 things that the Government lose votes of confidence on and that is a loss of a budget. If the majority of Members see a Government doing something which is not the will of the majority of the Members that is indeed a political point, which normally would lead to the fall of the Government, and I do not wish to see that obviously. The issue that I wanted to ask, and maybe this is something we can take outside of this because I do understand what the Ministers are saying, is that somehow this commitment is needing to be an adjustment within year. The Government Plan sets out an expenditure amount which includes provisions and contingencies but, ultimately, it has a maximum amount of government revenue expenditure that is required because of the Consolidated Fund requirement. My question is it can be an allocation for this particular area of funding, arts, heritage and culture, that is, effectively, made on the basis of the Budget decision but 1 per cent of what is agreed by the Budget. It does not necessarily surely have to be amended, subject to the jiggery- pokery that goes in inevitably; that is not a negative thing that happens, in terms of there is a maximum revenue expenditure that is set, and that is the 1 per cent on which the calculation should be made. Is that a reasonable interpretation from a political or from a legal point of view? Because it is really important because arguments are being advanced and it is very complicated because you have got to basically recalculate it during the year. Revenue expenditure is set for one year, it has got a maximum limit and it is 1 per cent, no?

I am not sure I understand, it is my fault, what the Deputy is asking me to offer a view on. It sounds to me perilously close to being a question that is procedural in nature. I am not trying to pass the buck but I am not sure that is a matter for me. As I have said what I have said, it is for the Council of Ministers to produce a plan. If it decides not to heed the express will of the Assembly in so doing, it seems to me that the consequences are purely political. I am really not sure I can help much beyond that.

I am grateful for the answer, which is, effectively, I think that this is politics. It would be improper for me to try and make a second speech about what has been said.

Yes, then just one last question hopefully. If the States Assembly, therefore, approve this they are basically saying they want to circumvent the Scrutiny process that is involved in the review of the Government Plan and have Government amend the Government Plan.

I was going to say I think part of the frustration of sitting here and why I am being patient is that I have obviously been through this with the Greffe and the proposition has been approved. I understand it, I accept that other Members might still have concerns. The point I would make is that Standing Order 23, Sir, normally would require a States decision that is being made to have a rescindment. It might be helpful to explain why this particular one does not need a rescindment and why I have had to lodge this, effectively, in order to have the same effect. If Government were to come back with a standalone proposition that would require that this is done.

The question I would ask, for example, would Deputy Ward’s bus passes for young people be able to be rescinded - and it is a serious question - by amending a Budget plan? If the Government came forward and said we are removing ...

Thank you for your clarifications there. I will now make quite a different speech than the one I was intending to make. I have to admit I found this proposition quite a difficult one to think through.

Firstly, because I wanted to remain consistent with my position, the position that I took last year when I made an amendment to the Government Plan that asked the Government to make a rescindment proposition in relation to the removal of G.S.T. (goods and services tax) on period products. Of course, what I was not asking the Government to do at that point in time was make a change to the budgets at the same time, which I think is where the difficulty lies here. Also, a rescindment was required because that had been a proposition that had been taken by the Assembly within that year and had not been subject to a Government Plan Budget. With that in mind, I would like to firstly say that I am someone that does value arts and culture. I have 2 related degrees and I also spent a significant amount of my working life working in arts and creative industries’ policy and funding. I have followed arts funding here and in other places quite closely because of that. I am also very aware of the Burns Owen Partnership report that led to the initial uplift in funding and the reasons that that report recommended at the time that an uplift was required. That was because the arts, heritage, and culture sector had been underfunded for years and the aspiration at the time was to bring up the level of funding so that it was a suitable level of funding for that. I think what Deputy Tadier has done in bringing the 1 per cent has achieved that goal and I applaud him for doing that. It really did make a huge difference to the arts and cultural sector. When I thought that this would lead to a separate debate, one thing that I wanted to say is I thought the prospect of a separate debate actually came at risk to the arts and cultural sector. The reason being is that having worked in arts policy and funding for such a long time previously, I know a good deal when it is made and this one is a better deal than has been made to other areas, other sectors, and other departments in this Government Plan. I am very conscious that, as a Minister, I am consistently having conversations with third sector organisations in other areas that are struggling and they have not been afforded the surety that has been afforded to the arts and cultural sector. There is a commitment to R.P.I. increase, which would have been what we would have referred to in my old workplace as indexation. I know that, actually, in other areas, I would have absolutely said: “Yes, that is what we need” and considered myself very lucky to have got indexation for arts and culture. I do not take these matters lightly. I have been in a position before where I have had to tell several arts and cultural organisations that they remained on standstill funding for a year. That is certainly not what we are doing here. It is an increase in the base budget compared to previous years. I think there is a lot of work that we need to do. I am conscious that the Comptroller and Auditor General has made several recommendations in her recent report on arts and cultural funding. I would gladly work with other Ministers to work on those recommendations that the Comptroller and Auditor General made, but I think while the 1 per cent formula works very well in capital projects for arts, where you have got a specific capital budget and 1 per cent can be then allocated to a specific project, it does not work as well within this context.

Because, of course, when general government revenue goes up, automatically the arts revenue goes up, whether or not it is required. I think we always need to look at what outcomes are going to be derived from our funding to ensure that we are getting the best possible outcomes. I think if this was to go through today, the issue that I would be challenged with is where the additional money is going to come from within government budgets. Perhaps the proposer of the proposition could suggest where he thinks Government could take the money from in his summing up. Also, I listened carefully to Deputy Doublet. She talked about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and I am always very aware of that. I am very aware of the reasons why arts and cultural funding is so important and what it means to our community. But when I think about the hierarchy of needs, at the moment, we are in a position where we have got very basic things that actually are unfunded. Myself and Deputy Mézec are currently looking for funding for where we could have carpets in Andium homes. I am consistently being asked whether I can fund low-income households to have white goods. For me, it is very difficult to be in a position where I would be effectively approving a higher budget increase for arts and culture than I have just brought to the Assembly in terms of the income support increases. So it is with a heavy heart I cannot support this proposition, but it is not without a lot of thought and due consideration.

I think this is something I can get behind. I do not think everyone is aware that I have been involved in the arts and entertainments industry for 40 years prior to joining the States. I was a young boy at the old Forum Cinema when that closed. Ten years on the “Bergerac” series; that is the old “Bergerac” series. Meanwhile, I bought the Cine de France company, ran that for 20 years. Then I managed to get the old Odeon Cinema, which was closed and boarded up, open and run that for 5 years until such time as the lease ran out. But 30 years ago, I had a brainwave, people need entertaining on the Island and I thought: “Drive-in cinema, that would be great fun.” It took a while to get all the various permits together but we used the old go-kart track at St. Brelade and erected a 60-foot screen and advertised it. We had a full house for the movies. One night we had Jurassic Park with 60-foot dinosaurs roaming around and we transmitted the sound directly to car radios. That was great fun until we had a very atmospheric night and the sound disappeared and everyone started speaking Italian. So I had to climb on the truck and tweak the aerial and bring the soundtrack back to English again. After that, the site was zoned for housing so we downscaled things into Howard Davis Park and started the Jersey Film Festival, which was very successful. We ran it for 24 years.

One of the last films we had was “The Greatest Showman”, 7,500 people on one night, which was a record for us. I would like to bring it back one day. We did dovetail with the Battle of Flowers because so many people were coming to the Island, so as well as local people we had people with young children with nowhere to go, so everybody came to the film festival in Howard Davis Park.

But I would like to bring it back one day so I will be knocking on the Minister’s door at some point.

But this is certainly, with arts and entertainment, something that is very crucial to the well-being of the people of Jersey and is something I can sincerely support.

It is good to be back talking about the fundamental point, which I think we all basically understand is do we keep the 1 per cent funding formula or do we not? To me, this is not about the rights and wrongs of the funding formula, it is not about the current level of funding for the cultural sector, it is about how we do something. The Assembly has previously made clear that it had a view about the funding of arts, culture and heritage, separate from the Budget. It had a view that it wished to bind Ministers’ hands. It had in mind a clear way that wished funding for this sector to be funded, a formula, clear and simple. Now, that had practical value in terms of delivering revenue to the cultural sector that it had not previously had, but it also had symbolic value. It told the public that we, as a body politic, had a view about the importance of arts, culture and heritage. It was a statement. In fact, as Deputy Tadier said, there have been 2 statements. The Assembly voted for it twice. That is a powerful message to send out from this Assembly. Many members of the public, particularly those with an interest in culture, will have taken note. That is one reason why this is different and why it is appropriate that if we are going to debate the funding of the arts, we should do it in a separate context outside the context of the Budget. The current States decision that is a result of Deputy Tadier’s proposition is impossible for Ministers to ignore or argue about. When it comes to the Budget debate in the Council of Ministers, the overall funding for the sector is not up for discussion.

Now, you may not agree with that, but since that provision was put in by States decision twice, it should come back for proper debate in a similar way. I would expect to have a debate about whether there is a funding formula for the arts, and if a funding formula is appropriate, what would that be?

I would expect that debate to consider the increase in funding that has already happened, to assess whether it has worked, to see what the funding implications are of a change in the funding model. I would expect to see the Budget placed in the context of the Government’s strategy for arts and culture, so that we could assess the new funding against the strategy. Now, you may say we could have that debate in the Budget debate, but we cannot. Not really. There will be no separate discussion of it unless an amendment is brought, it will be just one footnote in the debate on the Budget. Even if an amendment is brought, we will not have all the supporting documents that would be the case brought by the Government if a separate proposition was brought by the Government. We should not be forced, and even if we did bring an amendment, it would basically say: “Can we please stick to what we already agreed to?” We should not be forced to put in amendments to a Government Plan to ask it to stick to a previously agreed decision that was deliberately put in to instruct the Government Plan process. So the practical consequence of this was conceded by the Minister, which is that there will be a funding cut compared to the formula. R.P.I. is less than the increase in Government funding that would have occurred. The Minister confirmed, in fact, that it is around £700,000 a year going forward. Again, fine, there is a case to be made for this being too much but not in this way. The problem with this way of doing things is partly shown in the confusion around this debate. We are not actually clear what we are voting. Some people were not actually clear what they are voting for.

I am pretty clear about it; I think we all are now. But it is symbolic of the fact that we have not had a proposition from the Government to make a clear statement that we are having a debate which has had to be brought in a proposition to try and reinforce a point that we thought we had already agreed.

Let me look at the Minister’s argument in particular. “The purpose has been served” he said. “The question is, is this the right formula?” I think he answered, in his mind it was not. Yes, it is the question, absolutely right, but the answer does not belong just to the Minister. It does not belong just to the Council of Ministers. Because of the way this decision was originally taken, it belongs to the Assembly.

[16:15] He said it creates a problem. He said there was a fundamental flaw in the formula. Well, perhaps maybe there is. Fair point. That is definitely worth discussion, but let us have a proper debate about it with a report, with all the figures, consultation beforehand, with all the relevant sectors. That is the way to do it. The Minister said he is happy with the amount we have got to through the formula.

Again, good to hear. So was Deputy Feltham. But, again, that is not just a judgment for him. It is not just a judgment for the Council of Ministers, because the Assembly has shown it has its own view on which it has voted. The proper way to deal with this is to bring a proposition to the Assembly so we can test the Minister’s view, examine the figures, compare against the strategy. Instead, we are having a sort of surrogate debate here, where the Minister is asking basically: “Trust me, I believe in the sector, I would not do anything against it.” I think the Minister made a revealing comment at the end of his speech: “If it catches on, government expenditure would fly out of control.” I think that is quite a big part of what is going on here. I remember from my time in Government the Treasury do not like formula funding; it has, in their view, all sorts of perverse outcomes. The Minister resorted to exaggeration to make the point but, nevertheless, the point exists. They do not want it to catch on.

Once again, I say reasonable points. In which case, have the confidence and the courage to bring a proposition to this Assembly, do not bury the point away in one line or few lines in a Budget. Deputy Feltham asked: “Where should the money come from?” That is revealing. The money was in the Budget her Government inherited. It is the formula. It is in the formula. It should have been the starting point. We should not be having to help the Minister out. One final reason why it is important is because there has been no public or stakeholder engagement up to this point. No consultation.

Remember the public know about the 1 per cent. Not everyone, I grant you, but everyone with a stake in the sector knows and it is valued. It shows, as Deputy Doublet said, a lack of respect for not just the Assembly but everyone in the sector and all those who value it to smuggle a significant change in this way into the Budget. If the arts, culture and heritage budget is cut, which it will be under this change, we will end up having conversations with people who feel let down. How did that happen? I did not even hear about it. Well, no, the trouble is they snuck it through in the Budget. If we are going to change something that has been a bit of a landmark for the Island in terms of its representation of arts, culture and heritage, that, too, should be a statement, just as the original decision was a statement. It should be an event. It is a significant change; the public should be engaged, stakeholders should be engaged. The Minister asked us not to consider whether arts, culture and heritage is supported. I agree, we are not considering that. It is about the right way of doing things. The Assembly and the public deserve a proper debate to assess the way we as a society want to fund the arts. The Minister’s arguments may win out but that should be a proper debate in its own right. Thank you.

I have here a speech written by the Constable of St. Martin. She is unwell and she has asked me if I can read her speech. I am in complete agreement with her speech and would be happy to call it my own as well. I rise to speak in support of Deputy Tadier’s proposition. The desire to move away from the 1 per cent of overall revenue expenditure is, I believe, misguided and fails to respect the importance of not just this funding but what it means to Islanders. Just as we felt a solution had been found to resolve the historic and chronic lack of funding arts, heritage and culture has often been provided with over the years, we find that we have to fight for it again. If the Council of Ministers believe that the level of funding needs to change, then it needs to respect the previous decision of the Assembly and understand what this decision represented. It should have invited an open debate on the matter to make a case that financial prudence trumps the holistic benefits this funding creates, a case I cannot help but feel unconvinced by. Ministers may argue that the Government Plan is the place to do this but, if it is, then why was it not more clearly presented? Why was it not discussed beforehand? Why should something so important be granted just one short paragraph? It is true that we live in uncertain economic times but the value of arts, heritage and culture cannot be represented on a spreadsheet or compressed into a singular numerical value. It is innately irreducible. That is the point of it. It is not a question of business, it is a question of how we, the elected representatives of the Island, think about Jersey’s soul. This funding supports an essential part of Island life and the Government should have given both the Assembly and the sector their due respect by bringing forward a proper proposition. We have made it clear time and time again that this Assembly needs to be respected. Our Governments are elected by this Assembly and seek their legitimacy from them, not the other way around. We here today are the sovereign body. As Deputy Tadier has referenced in his report, we should not have to rely on him or any other Member to have to take the initiative to make this proposition. There is a risk that this new model returns to a desire to quantify all aspects of government spending without the due recognition that there is more to life than economics, and no guarantee that cuts will not be made to funding in future Budgets. By voting for this today, we would send a clear message not only to the Government but also to future Assemblies that changing this model is off limits until a proper debate is held on this issue and a clear attractive alternative is provided, that it is the Assembly not the Government that makes the final decision. We should have been provided with a clear rationale to make this decision from the outset and a clear breakdown of why funding would be in a better place under an alternative model compared to the one we seek to maintain. If you have engaged with any of the festivals, exhibitions or events that have sprung up over the Island in the last few years, then the benefits this funding brings to Islanders should already be clear to you. Jersey has a rich and unique history and within this history is a penchant for attracting and inspiring ground-breaking writers and theorists. Over the Festival of Words, we heard about Jacques Copeau and other famous and infamous as French writers’ activities in the Island. We have Wace, an old Victorian, just won an Emmy for his writing. Islanders are now having their novels picked by major publishers. We have, of course, made the mistake of kicking out Victor Hugo, later kicking out the Sex Pistols for more valid reasons. It often feels like we discuss or celebrate these connections as we do our political history and literature in a way that is too often too transient, too focused on condensed bursts of interest, rather than through sustained engagement. We need ambition and imagination, not austerity. Perhaps what we really need is a longer conversation on how we can do more to support research into the Island’s history and culture, about what parts of our collective history we can republish and make available for the first time in decades, rather than sitting in the library and archives, and how we can encourage new works inspired by and about the Island to appear beyond these shores. We have talent and we can cultivate more of it if we continue to inspire Islanders and use these funds to give them access to both our past and the wider cultural present. Our Opera House is due to reopen next year and I hope its management team, its directors, and this Government are able to maximize the opportunities the refurbished building will bring to the Island. There is huge potential to attract new talent and new productions to the Island and we should not settle for less. The Government should be looking to attract leading talent to the Island and let Islanders experience the very best of artistry available. Perhaps we could even look at partnerships with production companies and theatres in the U.K. There is talent in theatres, big and small, that we should encourage to come to the Island and encourage Islanders to fall in love with these shows.

There are also a considerable number of pieces by renowned artists that are held within private collections on this Island and we would do well to think of how we can work with their owners to publicly exhibit them and let Islanders and tourists see them up close. We often hear of those in business talk about innovating and unlocking potential. That is something our Island has in spades but needs strong funding to support this. We, as an Assembly, need to be clear that we value the importance of art, heritage and culture in this Island and value the contributions it makes to Islanders’ lives. We need to demonstrate this by accepting the proposition before us.

I should probably preface my remarks by saying that I may repeat things that other people have already said, but I think they bear repetition. One of Jersey’s great strengths is its reputation for prudent and careful financial management, which is one of the building blocks for financial stability, which is one of the things that gives us our outstanding international reputation. It is crucial, therefore, that we evaluate our spending priorities with care, foresight and responsibility. This requires balancing the needs of all sectors from healthcare and education to infrastructure and the arts in a manner that reflects the evolving fiscal landscape. In 2025, we are proposing an additional £269,000 for arts, heritage and culture compared to the 2024 funding level. The Budget has not been cut. This increase, while modest in comparison to some areas of government spending, is a testament to our recognition of the value that it brings to the Island. I disagree with some of the comments of Deputy Renouf. In the past, the Government has adhered to Deputy Tadier’s Government Plan amendments, which have now expired. Firstly, that funding for arts, heritage and culture should reach 1 per cent of total government expenditure, a target successively achieved by 2022. That proposition has been met. The Deputy’s amendment to the Government Plan for 2021, which I think was P.40, inserted words into that plan to talk about future years. It did not include numbers for 2025. As Members will know, or certainly should know, under the Public Finances Law, we are required to debate a Government Plan or Budget each year. As we have discussed earlier this afternoon, each year’s plan will, to some degree, change decisions of the previous plan to reflect the circumstances and priorities of the day. As we move forward, we must recognise that government finances are constantly evolving and our approach to funding must evolve with them. For the 2025 Budget, we propose a shift to our approach to funding for arts, heritage and culture to a retail price index or R.P.I.-linked basis, ensuring that resources continue to grow in line with inflation, but without the rigid constraints of percentage-based allocations. R.P.I. linking will allow the initiatives that some Members, such as Deputy Gardiner, have spoken about to continue. The shift to R.P.I. is a considered response to the broader fiscal landscape, balancing the need to protect cultural investment while also addressing the many pressing demands on public services. This new approach allows us to be flexible, ensuring that funding decisions are based on need, merit and the overall context of government expenditure rather than adhering to an arbitrary formula. Crucially, this approach ensures that funding for this sector is maintained in real terms throughout the life of the Budget. The 2025 Budget is a comprehensive document encompassing a wide range of financial priorities, from changes to tax allowances to investments in critical infrastructure and healthcare.

[16:30] This holistic approach allows the Assembly to consider all aspects of government spending in a balanced and thoughtful manner. We must therefore be cautious about singling out individual areas for additional funding without considering the implications for the whole. We can all think of areas where additional spending would be beneficial or desirable, and the place to have that debate is when we consider the Budget. In line with the common strategic priorities, we are actively working to curb the growth of public sector expenditure. This year’s Budget is focused on delivering the C.S.P.

objectives, addressing health deficits and providing fair pay awards for our staff. Ministers are being asked to prioritise their existing budgets, including making significant savings over and above those agreed by the last Government and we believe the same approach should apply to arts, heritage and culture. Even Ministers have had to put in funding cases for their additional monies committed to C.S.P., they have had to justify the spend, they have not just said: “I want money” and it has been handed over. Yet this is exactly what Members are suggesting we do with arts, heritage and culture.

We give them more money whether or not there is a clear justifiable need, a clearly stated outcome and that it will really serve the purpose it is designed to serve. If there is a clear case for additional funding for arts, heritage and culture, it must be justified through a robust business case and considered during the broader Budget debate. I would not want to put words into his mouth but I am quite sure the Minister for Health and Social Services would be happy to discuss with Deputy Jeune her thoughts on social prescribing and if he agreed they could bring a business case seeking funding for that activity and innovation. There is no sense that money is not being available, we are saying it must be properly requested and justified, which I think is actually what Members are asking Government to do in the Budget. It is worth noting that the Council of Ministers lodged this Budget in August, giving Scrutiny ample time - some 16 weeks - to review and challenge all aspects of the plan. We anticipate, of course, that Members will bring forward amendments where they see fit but it is disappointing that we are once again engaging in a piecemeal debate on funding priorities ahead of the full Budget discussion. This fragmented approach risks undermining the comprehensive nature of the Budget process and diverts attention from the overall fiscal picture. Maintaining the current 1 per cent formula for arts, heritage and culture funding would require an additional £719,000 annually, an amount that has not been justified by business cases or prioritised against other pressing needs. It is also important to highlight that this proposition does not identify a source for this additional funding. Given the tight balance of the Budget, any increase in spending must be matched by compensating measures, whether through savings in other departments or through increased taxation.

We have done some preliminary numbers on what those savings might look like if we were going to cover that £700,000 by going to departments. I do not believe these have been shared with Ministers, possibly for the sake of their blood pressure. For example, it would mean an additional cut of £112,000 to the Cabinet Office; a cut of £86,000 to Technology and Digital; Education, which is already having to deal with significant cuts, another £88,000; Children, a further cut of £32,500; C.L.S. (Customer and Local Services) £35,500; Infrastructure, relatively minor at £22,000; Environment, £62,000. Even the police, £15,600. All departments, if that is how we chose to find the money, would be asked to make further cuts. I can tell you that that will be a very, very difficult discussion indeed around the Council of Ministers’ table. Deputy Doublet, who is no longer with us, asked both the Chief Minister and myself what Government were doing to help Islanders with the cost of living. In the Budget, the Council of Ministers has chosen, for example, to freeze duties on fuel and alcohol to support Islanders with the cost of living, both of which cost similar amounts to the Deputy Tadier’s proposed increase here. As Deputy Feltham has said, it makes very little sense to give people access to an art gallery when they do not have carpets and cannot put food on the table.

That is the risk we are facing. It is not a threat, it is simply a clear statement that this money will have to be found from somewhere among the departments or we will have to consider increasing duties against our C.S.P., which the Government accepted. It is also important to consider the growth in arts, heritage and culture funding over recent years. In 2021, as the Minister said, the total budget for this stood at £6 million. By 2025, it will have nearly doubled to £11.5 million. The nature of this significant increase means that elements of the spend risk not always being subject to the usual rigour of cost-benefit analysis. When I discussed this very briefly with the Comptroller and Auditor General, she was far from impressed at some of the uses to which this budget had been put in the past. It is essential that all public spending, including for art and culture, is guided by clear objectives and measurable outcomes, ensuring that taxpayers’ money is used wisely. The arguments against formula-driven funding are well understood. The 1 per cent rule, while initially well-intentioned, has led to inefficient allocation of resources. By linking arts, heritage and culture funding to a percentage of overall government expenditure, we risk prioritising cultural spending above other vital services, such as healthcare and education without a thorough assessment of needs. For example, an additional £31 million is being allocated to address urgent challenges in our healthcare system. Under the 1 per cent rule, this will require a £305,000 increase in this funding, an amount that could instead be used to hire 5 additional nurses. These are the types of trade-offs that we must consider carefully. Despite Deputy Ozouf’s comments about international standards, the Fiscal Policy Panel has consistently advised against the use of hypothecated funding, noting that it introduces inefficiencies and constraints into the budgeting process. The panel’s latest report welcomes a shift from a percentage- based allocation to an R.P.I.-linked approach for arts, heritage and culture funding, emphasising the need for flexibility and fiscal responsibility. To conclude, we are proud of the investment we have made in arts, heritage and culture. It goes without saying that we value that sector and we recognise its value to the economy and to the well-being of Islanders. These sectors are essential to our community, our identity and our economy. With an eye to the time, I would just like again to clarify my understanding of the consequences of approving this proposition today. The Deputy and others have made points about whether C.O.M. (Council of Ministers) have followed best process and I am somewhat disappointed by some of those comments. The Budget was developed in exactly the same way as the Budget for 2023 and 2024, of which Deputy Warr and Deputy Renouf formed part. The comments about subterfuge and lack of transparency I find deeply disappointing. I would argue that the process followed is not only proper but also appropriate, placing the debate within the wider context of government finances. In contrast, the Deputy has not only lodged a proposition relating to a financial matter in advance of the Budget, which is unhelpful even if it is permissible - and I have said that several times in the last few months - it has also asked Members to set aside the minimum lodging period designed to allow Members to have suitable time to consider propositions.

I think the discussion we had this afternoon about what this proposition means is a salutary example of the dangers of trying to push propositions through. This is not urgent and could easily have formed an amendment to the Budget. If the Assembly approves this proposition, there will be no opportunity for you to debate the merits of the 1 per cent formula as part of the Budget. It will be a fait accompli.

This is not a debate on process, it is an actual debate about whether this Assembly wants to make more than £700,000 of cuts to services or raise additional taxes to fund a 1 per cent A.H.C. (arts, heritage and culture) levy. This would be over £700,000 of additional spend that has not been planned, has not been prioritised against other lines of spend and ultimately has not been justified. I repeat again, we have increased that budget. Members must be clear that despite what they think of the process used, this is a vote for more expenditure and funding will have to be found from somewhere. We must ensure that future funding is based on clear, evidence-driven business cases, not arbitrary formulas. The proposed RPI-linked approach will allow us to continue supporting arts, heritage and culture in a sustainable and responsible manner, while also addressing the broader needs of our Island. I urge you to support this balanced, thoughtful approach to funding as part of the 2025 Budget, ensuring that we safeguard our cultural heritage and support the creative arts while maintaining the fiscal discipline necessary to meet the challenges ahead.

I will not be long. Just to reinforce some of the points that others have made but also to express my support for Deputy Tadier’s proposition. I think we have been reminded repeatedly by the Government over the last few days of the need to prioritise to be financially prudent but sadly this appears not to extend to prioritising the prudent investment needed to sustain and support cultural aspects of Island life, which so many Members before me have fought hard to develop and protect.

I do agree with Deputy Morel that this proposition is about the formula. However, the reason why the proposition is here is because the 1 per cent formula, which was previously agreed by this Assembly, is under threat in the absence of a clear, consistent and secure alternative. Where I disagree with Deputy Morel is on the point he makes about the potential for the current funding formula to create a situation where funding for the arts will spiral out of control. Both he and the Minister for Treasury and Resources have within their gift as Ministers to control for any signs of that happening. One would think that if the allocation of 1 per cent is made then this would be easier to control, clear and consistent, with what has been done previously. Why complicate it? Whatever accounting practices are used to address overspend in other areas of Government spending is actually a moot point. Actually, better performance management is needed to address the issues raised by Deputy Millar but that is a debate for another day. The thing is this Assembly has said that it wants to see 1 per cent of revenue expenditure spent on arts, culture and heritage and we expected to see this in the Budget this time. If the decision of the Assembly today is that it does not then there will need to be a separate debate on how we do fund arts, culture and heritage in the future. What is clear from the statements made this afternoon is that the R.P.I. approach will not wash. Deputy Renouf alluded just now to the uncertainty that arises from the Government’s approach. What I would add is that a Government Plan and/or a Budget should reflect certainty and confidence. Sadly, the approach is struggling to instil confidence among many Members here today and I can imagine similar concerns will be circulating in the sector. I just want to talk about the narrative around that money is needed urgently for the health service. While it is accepted that that is the case, I think it is important to distinguish that we are talking about revenue expenditure for arts, culture, and heritage. We are not talking about an allocation of capital to build a hospital. There is a difference.

So there is a potential to confuse the reasons why the hospital and arts and culture are intermingled in terms of arguments for funding. If you look at the list of the breakdown of arts and culture, it appears none of the allocation is actually directed at health activity, but what it does and what the funding allocation has achieved has supported the delivery of better health outcomes, which we have heard about through social prescribing. This is where the investment in arts and culture is realised.

In conclusion, despite the outcome of today’s debate, it has become clear through the discussions that we do need to have an informed evidence-based discussion on the future funding mechanisms for arts, culture, and heritage, but, until then, we must protect the funding mechanism we have certainty on now.

It has been a very interesting debate. As I mentioned earlier, I am slightly confused, it is not quite the one I thought we were going to have, because we seem to be deciding on the 1 per cent today as opposed to whether we come back to have that debate. The original P.40 I voted for, and I look back at my votes and think: “Why was I doing that?” and I wanted to because I thought we were spending at that time 0.68 per cent on the arts from the report on that proposition.

[16:45] I supported the increase of 1 per cent overall States revenue by 2022. That is what we voted for on P.40, to request the Council of Ministers to take steps necessary to achieve this target in bringing forward a Government Plan and that has happened. We have spent 1 per cent on the arts by 2022.

That is happening. For this proposition, the current proposition today, we, this Assembly, not myself, I did not agree with reducing the lodging period for this very reason, for precisely where we are at this moment in time. We were told, it seems, that we are reducing the lodging period in order that we have time, that if this is decided that something needs to come back to the Assembly for the ...

because we expect to have a debate with lots of detail as Members have said a number of times, then this Assembly will come back and have that debate. But what this is now interpreted as is the decision now on that 1 per cent today. Will we maintain that 1 per cent today or not? That seems to be the interpretation. That is what I believe we are now voting on. Today is now that detailed debate but we are doing it without the consultation, the research and a Scrutiny report. I have had a lot of time on Scrutiny, I have scrutinised the Government Plan a number of times. By the way, something is only hidden if you do not see it. This is not hidden because you can see it, because it is in the report and we are talking about it. So to say something is hidden when it is in plain sight is slightly odd.

The reasons for it can be discussed, they should be detailed in public hearings on the Budget, should be discussed in that way via Scrutiny Panels, which is fine. That is what should be happening and I am sure has happened. I was happy to support this. In a way, perhaps we should have kept part (b), to be quite frank. Happy to support part (a), because I thought it meant we are saying: “Okay, because we have reduced the lodging period, because the proposer is not here in the next sitting, it gives time to come back with that proposition to say: ‘Look, let us have that proper debate on the funding before the Government Plan’.” It seems to me that if we decide this today, I do not know if that can happen and I am a bit concerned about that, because I am very, very confused as to what we are voting for, if I am honest. We talk about the arts, lots of people talk about the arts. I will make another point, the Jèrriais funding is from C.Y.P.E.S. (Children, Young People, Education and Skills). It is in C.Y.P.E.S. budget. I am yet to find - and I say that because I might be wrong but I do not think I am, but we will see - the line where it is transferred from anywhere else into C.Y.P.E.S budget to be transferred to Jèrriais. It is in the C.Y.P.E.S budget and then it is counted as towards the 1 per cent of arts funding. So this is money from C.Y.P.E.S that is spent on Jèrriais, not in the cultural budget.

Money does go from C.Y.P.E.S to support things and given that there has been so much criticism of languages in the last couple of days - absolutely unwarranted criticism - and I perhaps take this chance to apologise to language teachers on the Island for some of the comments that were made about them, highly committed and professional individuals. I just want to make that point clear. Also, myself, music is something I love and I am involved with. Music is such an important part for well-being, all the things that people said, we know this. We absolutely all agree. We all love art. I love art.

We all love art. Hands up if you love art. Put 2 hands up if you love art. Put your hand on your head if you love art. We know that. That is the discussion. We are not talking about that. I do not think anybody in this Assembly is saying: “Well, let us not have any of the arts. Let us walk away from it.” What we are talking about here is the way in which it will be funded. It reached 1 per cent by 2022, which I voted for, and I totally think that was the right thing to do. I will note that the Constable of St. Saviour voted against that at the time but I am glad he has changed his mind; that is great. We are talking about specificity in funding, but what we are doing today is we are doing that without the debate that a number of ... and this is simply the problem I have had. A number of Members have said, we are only voting today to see whether we will bring something back, because you have got to debate it fully and properly before we get to a Government Plan, because for some reason that Government Plan is not transparent enough, it is opaque even though it has clearly been found, because we are talking about it. I do not really understand that point of view but there you go. How do I make a decision on whether it is the right thing to do? We stick to the 2022 debate and say: “Yes, we will just stick to that, that is fine.” In Education, demands are being made of Education all the time. I have to run a survey in something that has been voted against in principle and voted against bringing in 2 bilingual schools, but we still have to run a survey. I have got to fund that with no funding. Money has to come out of Education from somewhere to do that, because I do not have a pot of extra money; I wish I did. If more money is spent than is allocated, it is going to have to come out of Education somewhere. Heaven forbid, it came out of Jèrriais or the Language Department, so we cannot touch any of that. Where would it come from? Special needs provision?

School meals? I do not know. Funding of staff? We are in a really good place with education at the moment with staff, they are not on strike, we have an education reform programme where Members are involved, engaged, and we are making significant and positive change to make the role of the teacher more effective and give them more time. We are trying to do as much as we possibly can with the limited funds that are available. Does it come from that? I do not know. So I have to be very, very certain as to what I am agreeing to. What we are doing today is having that full and detailed debate without the full and detail I expected. Now, this could be my issue and I have interpreted the proposition incorrectly but I do not think I am the only person in this Assembly to do that, and that is a shame. But I think we need to move away in this Assembly from the last 2 days, which has been about absolutes. You either agree with this or you are an anti-culture, anti-art person.

If you do not agree with this, you want to see the destruction of the arts and the move to a soulless society where we walk about in grey, whatever. It does seem to be, though, that is the juxtapositions that are being created and they are unfair, because none of us are in those positions. It is simply not the case. So we are talking about how much funding for the arts will increase. Personally, I think there is a way forward with this, which would be ... well, that is too complicated because you have the Government Plan coming up, so that should have been allocated before. I do not know what to do with this but I am getting very used to the notion that if you do not go with certain Members’ views then you are not for something. I am very disappointed that the ruling has been that we are now deciding on that 1 per cent today because I do not think we are doing that in an informed way today. Members are shaking their heads, you can change my mind as to that is what we decided, but that seemed to be the ruling. Today is an ipso facto debate on the content of the Government Plan and how we are going to fund the arts. We are having it early because this proposition is a really important one to bring forward. The contradiction is we are having it early because there was not enough detail on the Government Plan to see whether it is the right thing to do, but we have had no detail today as to whether it is the right thing to do. I know people have strong opinions on it and that is fine, they probably will not change their mind anyway, but that information on whether it is the right thing to do has been called for. This is wrapped with contradictions. I struggle with this, because I just wonder about whether this is the right type of decision to be making at this time and the knock-on consequences for my budget and for young people on the Island, and how we are going to manage that. But I suppose we could perhaps ask for some arts funding in schools to be done and save some money that way. I do not know. But I am struggling with part (a), given the interpretation that we have.

I will try to be brief. I was not really expecting, like many, to still be here at this time of the afternoon but I just want to make a few points, if I may. When I came to the Assembly, as I was preparing this time last year to come forward with a proposal to increase funding for agriculture and fisheries, the first thing I did, quite unashamedly, is go to Deputy Tadier’s proposition of how you fund the arts, because I was really envious of the way he had done it, the way he had put forward the case, the funding he had got and the position he had put his responsibility in I thought was fantastic. I went away and basically rewrote his proposal, if you like, his title to his proposition, just changed the words and the money. I was quite convinced and very, very happy that 1 per cent was a fantastic way to go forward and that is the way I proceeded until I got to the Treasury and had it explained to me why 1 per cent actually was not the way forward and how it was not that wonderful. We have heard today how we are going to reduce this budget at our peril. But, actually, this is not a budget about reducing the money for arts and culture, this is £11.5 million annual amount of money that is given to it and it is going to be linked to R.P.I. It is guaranteed that, in real terms, it will stay the same. Deputy Ozouf smiles. He mentioned long-term planning uncertainty. How much more long- term planning uncertainty do you need than a fixed figure which is linked to inflation for a guarantee that next year, in real terms, you will have the same amount of money. I am confused by that. I was convinced this time last year that 1 per cent was not really the way to go forward, it was not prudent in as much as the more money government spent, the more money would then go to farming and fishing. That would be wonderful but, actually, when you are planning forward it is better to know what you are doing. The last point I will make is this. Members will know how many emails they had about the Marine Spatial Plan in the 36 hours before the debate. If art funding was under pressure, under threat, how many emails do you think we would have had in the last 36 hours? How many have we had? I have had none. Nobody has contacted me and said: “This is the wrong thing to do, you have to change it, we are worried about it.” People are not worried because £11.5 million is a good amount of money and it is linked to inflation in the future. It is the way to go. I cannot support this.

Very quickly. I have always supported Deputy Tadier and I continue to support him on most things.

We are probably going to part ways a little on this one, because when we introduced this I, for one, did not expect at all in any way, shape or form that we would be up in the £1.2, £1.3, £1.4 billion of net revenue expenditure mark. I would remind Members that ... I mean, thanks to Deputy Tadier we have seen an increase from £6 million for arts in 2021 to £11.5 million now. I would remind Members this is a debate about how much funding for arts will grow, not about cutting it and to get down to cancel the equation down to its simple formula, there is a bit of a difference between what Deputy Tadier wants and what we are doing, which we think is more financially prudent, given we have seen the funding for us almost double in the last 4 years. Of course, if we go to the advice of the Fiscal Policy Panel, and Members are quite rightly keen to always remind us about the importance of following their advice and we get criticised by some Members for not following it, but those Members may wish us now not to follow it in this instance. For example, as they outlined in their report last month, the panel continues to recommend against the use of formula-driven budget growth and especially formula-driven budget growth linked to G.V.A. or net revenue. This risks creating spending targets that are inefficient and/or undeliverable. That is firm advice, important advice from the F.P.P. But while recognising the tremendous increase we have seen in funding for art, thanks to Deputy Tadier, I think we are at a good level. We fund arts well and this R.P.I. - to echo the word of the Treasurer, Deputy Luce and others - will secure that funding in real terms. Of course, we come back to the Government Plan year after year and the budgeting process. We can continue to review this in the future but for now I urge Members to support what we have on the table.

I want to start by referencing Deputy Morel’s speech. To make sure my understanding of the formula is correct based on what the Minister said I looked up clarification of the definition online as well, introducing the wording of the proposition referring to percentage of the net revenue expenditure.

The results show that the percentage of net revenue expenditure refers to the government’s income, like taxes or fees, minus total spending. Therefore, I disagree with the idea that if a department overspends it will increase funding for arts, culture and heritage. I would also like to mention to Deputy Millar and Deputy Luce that the R.P.I. also fluctuates unexpectedly each year and even that formula would still bring the Government in a position of having more or less allocated to this arts, culture and heritage funding than they planned for but still has to be accommodated. As other Members have pointed out, the funds for arts, culture and heritage can be used across various departments meaning it is not a loss for the Government in any way. This funding is essential for supporting initiatives in areas where arts, culture and heritage overlap with different departmental projects, being limited just by how innovative and creative each Minister can be with the linked initiatives and this related funding. I will give an example. The Sustainable Economic Development Department, formerly known as the Economic Development, Sports, Arts and Culture, is known to be the main beneficiary. This funding can support local talent to be present on international stages, even beyond what is already done, fostering connections between arts, culture, sports and academics, they all interlink. It also brings in international professionals to share their expertise with local artists and other categories.

[17:00] Additionally, it funds festivals and events that give people in Jersey access to renowned artists they might not otherwise see without expensive travelling costs to the mainland. The list here can go on.

This funding can also support health, well-being and mental health support initiatives through arts programmes, as mentioned by Deputy Jeune. In Social Security, besides the support in health aspects, it can help combat loneliness, especially among seniors. It is used in Education and Children’s Services at all levels in widely recognised activities in and outside of the curriculum. This also connects to financial services, where the arts can play a role in understanding numbers and data in an easier format. It supports External Relations and Overseas Aid through cultural diplomacy events and cross-cultural collaboration between different nations. In Infrastructure and Housing, it can enhance public spaces, roads, and living spaces, and improve living conditions. In the environment sector, it can promote sustainable practices and highlight the importance of protecting our heritage through art. The points I have raised show how vital this funding is not only for arts, culture and heritage, but also for broader departmental initiatives. The importance of keeping the funding at the previous existing levels is clear. The need for this funding was already discussed and approved in 2022 using a specific formula and the last text approved in the Assembly said: “We commit to the reinstatement of funding at the agreed rate of 1 per cent of net revenue expenditure for 2024 and beyond.” I repeat: “And beyond.” Therefore, it should not be up for ongoing debate unless a new proposal suggests changes to the formula or add an ending point. As the Bailiff mentioned to my clarifying question earlier, a new Government Plan cannot overturn a previous Assembly decision, otherwise what would be the point of having propositions approved if each Government Plan could just erase this without further debates. For this reason, I support maintaining the 1 per cent funding for arts and culture from the net revenue expenditure and I support this proposition encouraging the rest of the Assembly to do the same.

Thank you. Does any other Member wish to speak? If there is no other member who wishes to speak, I close the debate and I call upon Deputy Tadier to reply.

If Members will just give me 10 minutes of their time. It has been a long day, so I will do my part to try and remain brief. I think it was Shakespeare in one of his plays said brevity is the soul of wit, and I will start the clock now. That does mean I will not necessarily be able to respond to every single point that has been made in the debate but I will try and respond, I think, to the sense of what has been said. Can I just clarify one thing? I got a text message through from an officer at Culture who said to me the Jèrriais budget does form part of the 1 per cent and I have circulated it. The thing is it gets deducted from the 1 per cent before it even gets to Economic Development. So they have even got less than the 1 per cent to play with in the first place. They are already £500,000 down, because that is already counted through some creative accountancy. That is a matter for the Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning and the Minister for Sustainable Economic Development to talk about. But we can see that the smoke and mirrors have already started before we even get to the 1 per cent. Now, let me also address an issue that is material here before I turn to some strong arguments as to why I think we should support this today. What I would say to Deputy Ward is that I was put in a very difficult position because, effectively, what the Government is trying to do is rescind a very clear States decision that was not only taken on one occasion but on 2 occasions. It was made the first time in 2019 as a principle for the 1 per cent. It was made for a second time and then agreed by everybody, apart from one Member, of this Assembly who said that the principle should continue in 2024 and beyond. When the Minister for Treasury and Resources says that the amendment that was put forward was only up to 2024, that is not correct. A very clear in-principle decision was made by the previous Assembly, which said that they wanted this 1 per cent to continue into the future. Deputy Morel was part of that Assembly at the time in 2019 and in 2020 which made that decision. He was also a Minister in 2022 and 2023 which proposed a Budget based on that 1 per cent. So he was already a Minister and everything that he said today about it not being the right formula was said to him by the Minister for Treasury and Resources in 2019, and it was said to myself and other Members. We dealt with that back then and we made a case as to why the arts, culture, and heritage were special and why it merited a 1 per cent fixed income. So I think that proposition has been made clear. It sets a worrying precedent if we can just disregard States decisions that have been made by saying: “It is okay, it is part of the Budget.” That does mean that other principles that might have been made by previous Assemblies, like the free bus passes for young people, the Minister for Treasury and Resources could easily produce a Budget next year which says: “Oh, and by the way, we are getting rid of the bus passes for young people. Why? Because we think they are okay now. We think that young people do not need it anymore. They have had it up until now but they are richer now than they were before, they can afford bus passes.” How do you think Deputy Ward would feel about that? He would probably feel the same way that I feel, and I would support him on that. I would say: “This is absolutely outrageous.” Just because they can do that does not mean that they should. They should consult with the stakeholders. I do not know if anybody heard, because I did not hear it, the one thing I said earlier is that there has been no consultation. They have not been to the industry, they have not been to the sector, the 4 arm’s-length organisations but also the others who are in receipt of grants and say: “Look, we are thinking of doing this, what do you think about that?” The reason they did not mention it is because they have not done it. This is completely discourteous to bring this at this time. So this is not about just standing up and putting one hand up, 2 hands up, your left leg in, your right leg in, and saying we support the arts, it is about saying we are all in with this. A good argument has not been made and put forward and a consultation has not been done with the sector or with other States Members to show why the 1 per cent should be removed and why something else should be put in its place. Let me quote Deputy Morel from 2019 when he said: “When it comes to finalising the M.T.F.P. (Medium Term Financial Plan) [or the Budget, as we now call it] on that annual budget is cut just a little bit more off the bottom for the arts, because that is the easy one to cut.” It is his words. In that sense, the arts, culture and heritage are always the easy ones to cut. That is why we have to draw the line in the sand and say: “No, you will not cut below this line and this is as far as it goes.” But, of course, the Council of Ministers are waving this figure of R.P.I. What is R.P.I.? Because certainly my figures that it was based on and in the Government Plan said it was 1.7 per cent last year. That is a movable feast. This idea that actually it will provide stability is that it is really difficult to plan. They will say 1 per cent last year, 1.7 per cent last year is what they will get. But you know what will happen, because Deputy Feltham talked about index linking, the next iteration of Ministers that come around will say: “Why is that budget index linked? My budget is not index linked, I will have to cut that.” They will definitely have to cut it when inflation is running at 7 per cent or 8 per cent. They will say: “You know this R.P.I. that is not great, we will have to get rid of that. How do we get rid of it? We will just bury it in a line in the Government Plan, hope that somebody picks up on it.” I think the words from Deputy Scott were: “Well, it does not matter if we are being sneaky, because even if Deputy Tadier does not pick up on it, he has good officers who might pick up on it.” Along, of course, with the other £37 million, £40 million of budget that we have to scrutinise from Economic Development. Because I am speaking to a 10-minute rule, I am not going to give way. I think we have had enough interventions this afternoon. Unless it were a point of order, I cannot, of course, stop that. So what I would say is there will be difficult decisions, because I do not believe we are at the point where the 1 per cent is sufficient. What we are seeing are quite a lot of initiatives where money is being given out and some of those will succeed, some of those will need to be built on and some of those are becoming very successful events or entities. One great example is Ballet D’Jèrri. I think that I have possibly been to one ballet before outside of Jersey and that was amazing, but I was quite far away from it. My mind was blown when I went to the Arts Centre and I saw what can only be described as very contemporary - but in a sense also very classical in another way - a ballet that was going on. It was a series of small pieces which actually were magnificent. I know that also they were going into schools. I might have had to pay a relatively small price to see that, because you would pay certainly a lot more to view that in London or Paris, but our schoolchildren in schools around the Island were seeing that. So what I would say is what are the risks of giving the arts and culture too much money?

The downside is that if we do not give them too much money, the reality is, and this is what, again, Deputy Morel was saying in 2019, he was decrying the fact that Jersey Museum shuts in January and February. “The Jersey Museum is shut in January and February, why can we not fund the museum, our national museum, to stay open in January and February? It is appalling, it is absolutely appalling.” I feel exactly the same as him and that is why Deputy Morel and I worked jointly to try and get Jersey Museum to stay open all year round. One other piece of work we have done is that Jersey Museum, whether we know it or not, is actually free for everyone to go into. That is amazing.

They have told me that the footfall into there has doubled but, miraculously, the footfall into the Maritime Museum has also increased significantly. We think - it is anecdotal - it is probably because when people go into the museum, they say: “Oh, this is great, why do we not use the money we have saved to go and visit the Maritime Museum.” So it does have a knock-on effect. I do not think any of this would happen without the 1 per cent. Now, the risks of giving too much money to the arts.

Maybe somebody will spend a bit too much time in a library or an art gallery. You can imagine somebody saying: “Oh, that person has been abusing it. Look at him, I just saw him at the library this morning and now he is in an art gallery, a free installation. It is a disgrace, he is abusing the system.” Or actually, people might go to see the trees that have been lit up in Howard Davis Park.

Some of that might be in St. Saviour, I am not sure, is it, in Deputy Ozouf’s patch? Or they might go to Queens Valley again, which is also in St. Saviour, and they might see that beautiful globe. How many tens of thousands of people engaged with that? The point I would make is that the 1 per cent has not just become a success story that we should not tamper with now, it is has actually become a byword. When we talk about the 1 per cent, when Deputy Morel goes to an event and he celebrates the 1 per cent, everybody knows what that means. It means commitment from Government and it means that when Ministers go around the world, they can say: “We have the 1 per cent in Jersey.” “What is the 1 per cent? “Oh, it is 1 per cent of our revenue expenditure. Does not matter if it goes up or down, it will be paid.” It is an amazing thing. It might not appeal to the political pedants or those who focus on the bottom line but it is something which we can all be proud of. So in my last 30 seconds, I would say the list I read out earlier focused on previous Members of the Assembly who are still here but I fully appreciate that we have other new supporters of the arts, whether it is culture, heritage or arts in its many forms, who also strongly support the arts. This is the opportunity for those new Members to reaffirm the commitment in principle today to that 1 per cent and say to Government: “We do value the arts but we also value the concept of the 1 per cent.” 9.55, I am going to sit down and I ask Members to fully support this proposition.

Do you call for the appel, Deputy?

I do, please.

Very well, the appel has been called for. I invite Members to return to their seats. With that, I ask the Greffier, please, to open the voting. If all Members have cast their votes, I ask the Greffier to close the voting.

[17:15] I can announce that the proposition has been adopted. [Approbation] POUR: 23 CONTRE: 15 ABSTAIN: 0 Connétable of St. Clement Connétable of St. Helier Connétable of Grouville Connétable of St. Brelade Connétable of St. Saviour Connétable of St. Peter Deputy G.P. Southern Connétable of St. John Deputy M. Tadier Connétable of St. Ouen Deputy L.M.C. Doublet Deputy S.G. Luce Deputy S.M. Ahier Deputy K.F. Morel Deputy C.S. Alves Deputy R.J. Ward Deputy I. Gardiner Deputy L.J. Farnham Deputy S.Y. Mézec Deputy M.R. Scott Deputy P.F.C. Ozouf Deputy L.V. Feltham Deputy Sir P.M. Bailhache Deputy R.E. Binet Deputy T.A. Coles Deputy M.E. Millar Deputy D.J. Warr Deputy A. Howell Deputy H.M. Miles Deputy M.R. Ferey Deputy J. Renouf Deputy C.D. Curtis Deputy H.L. Jeune Deputy R.S. Kovacs Deputy A.F. Curtis Deputy B. Ward Deputy K.M. Wilson Deputy M.B. Andrews

Sir, can I say merci beaucoup for everybody who spoke. Could we have the votes? I think it has been asked for already.

Pour, we have the Connétable of St. Clement, Connétable of Grouville, Connétable of St. Saviour, Deputy Southern, Deputy Tadier, Deputy Ahier, Deputy Alves, Deputy Mézec, Deputy Ozouf, Deputy Bailhache, Deputy Coles, Deputy Warr, Deputy Miles, Deputy Renouf, Deputy Curtis, Deputy Jeune, Deputy Kovacs, Deputy Curtis, Deputy Ward and online we have Deputy Doublet and Deputy Gardiner. Contre, we have the Connétable of St. Helier, Connétable of St. Brelade, Connétable of St. Peter, Connétable of St. John, Deputy Luce, Deputy Morel, Deputy Ward, Deputy Farnham, Deputy Scott, Deputy Feltham, Deputy Millar, Deputy Howell, Deputy Ferey and online we have the Connétable of St. Ouen and Deputy Rose Binet.

Sir, can I just confirm is that 38 votes in total out of 49 Members? Just checking, seems a bit low.

That is 38, yes.

Very well, that concludes Public Business for the meeting and in the absence of the chair I invite the vice-chair of P.P.C. (Privileges and Procedures Committee) to propose the arrangement of Public Business for future meetings.

ARRANGEMENT OF PUBLIC BUSINESS FOR FUTURE MEETINGS