Falklands : FALKLANDS LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY MEETING FRIDAY, 24 JULY 2009
Submitted by Falkland Islands News Network (Juanita Brock) 29.07.2009 (Article Archived on 12.08.2009)
(Part 1: Motion to Pass Islands Plan)
A meeting of Legislative Assembly took place on Friday, 24 July 2009 at 1030hrs in the Court and Council Chamber of the Town Hall. Present were The Hon Keith Biles (KB - Speaker), Cllr Andrea Clausen (AC), Cllr Janet Robertson (JR), Cllr Ian Hansen (IH), Cllr Mike Summers (MS), Cllr Mike Rendell (MR) and Cllr Richard Cockwell (RC).
LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY MEETING FRIDAY, 24 JULY 2009
(Part 1: Motion to Pass Islands Plan)
A meeting of Legislative Assembly took place on Friday, 24 July 2009 at 1030hrs in the Court and Council Chamber of the Town Hall. Present were The Hon Keith Biles (KB - Speaker), Cllr Andrea Clausen (AC), Cllr Janet Robertson (JR), Cllr Ian Hansen (IH), Cllr Mike Summers (MS), Cllr Mike Rendell (MR) and Cllr Richard Cockwell (RC). Mr Anton Livermore (AL) acted as Clerk of Council as Ms Claudette Anderson-Prior was away. Mr Keith Padgett (KP) acted in place of the Chief Executive Mr Tim Thorogood and the Attorney General Mr David Pickup (DP) also was in attendance as well as CBSAI Air Commodore Gordon Moulds (GM). Absent were Cllrs Stevens and Birmingham.
The meeting began with prayers by the Rev Kathy Biles of Christ Church Cathedral. Prayers were followed by confirmation of the records of Legislative Assembly held on 26 and 28 may 2009.
KB: Honourable Members, Good Morning. I have before me a record of that meeting and before we start I am sure that we would recall that in the debate on the Supplementary Appropriation Bill a question was raised by the Honourable Janet Robertson for the Hon Chief of Finance and/or the Chief Executive, which at the time could not be answered and was going to be answered in writing. (To the Hon Mrs Janet Robertson) The response is appended to the record on page 60 and since the Honourable Member didn’t have a chance during that debate to ask any supplementary questions or indeed anybody else could raise any question on it, I would ask you now to please confirm that that matter has now been resolved to your satisfaction.
JR: I confirm that that’s the case.
KB: Thank you.
The document was then signed as a record of that meeting. The following papers were laid on the Table by the Director of Finance. (The Chief Executive Mr Tim Thorogood is away):
Papers to be laid on the table:
Copies of Subsidiary Legislation published in the Falkland Islands Gazette since the last sitting of the Legislative Council and Laid on the Table pursuant to section 34(1) of the Interpretation and General Clauses Ordinance 1977.
Falkland Islands Status (Application Fee) (Amendment) Regulation 2007 (Correction)
Immigration (Fees) Regulation 2009
Retirement Pensions (Contributions) (Exemption) Order 2009
Air Navigation (Fees) Regulations 2009
Prison (Declaration) Order 2009
Family Allowances (Amendment) Regulations 2009
Customs (Import Prohibitions) (Fees) Regulations 2009
KP: Mr Speaker, I beg to lay on the table the aforementioned papers.
Questions for Oral Answer:
Question Number 07/09 by the Honourable Ian Hansen
IH: Can the Honourable John Birmingham please inform this house on the progress and cost to date on improvements to airstrips on Beaver Island, West Point Island and New Island, and since the cessation of FIGAS operations to these locations what has been the total cost to FIG in providing/supporting this service? Furthermore, since the cessation how many passengers have been transported to and from said locations, and how does this compare with the number previously transported over a similar period?
RC: Honourable Members, the initial surveys were carried out of the three airstrips by the assessment team, who were officers from Stanley Airport, FIGAS, Civil Aviation Departments and the PWD Highways and also the Design Office.
The potential to lengthen each of the airstrips was identified. However, in each case, a considerable amount of air flights will be necessary. The PWD now needs to make a more detailed assessment of each airstrip will be necessary with the aid of earth-moving equipment in order to be able to provide a reasonably accurate cost for completing the work to lengthen these strips. Public Works visited New Island in June and carried out some assessment digs that will now allow them to estimate the cost of the job to improve the airstrip.
It is planned to visit Beaver Island to carry out similar exploratory work shortly. And after the visit to Beaver Island a similar exercise will be planned for West Point Island.
Once completed and the assessments are carried out, it will then be possible to estimate the costs for the required works to lengthen the airstrips. Elected Members will then have to decide if FIG is going to pay for this work or not.
The numbers of passengers flown on to these three airstrips in 2007/8 was 98 and in 2008/9 it was reduced to 55. The cost of providing the interim helicopter service in 2008/2009 financial year was £7,724.50.
IH: I thank the Honourable Member for his reply.
Motion Number 4 of 2009 by the Honourable Mike Summers OBE
MS: That this House adopts the Island Plan 2009/2014
This motion was seconded by The Honourable Richard Cockwell
MS: Mr Speaker, Honourable Members in introducing this Motion would just like to say a few words about the Islands Plan and one or two specific figures. I won’t talk at great length at least you all hope.
The first planning for the Islands Plan started when I joined this house in 1996 and it took some while to work through all of the requirements of setting out a forward plan for running a small country. And the first Islands Plan was established in 2001 after a lot of work by a lot of heads of department the creation of statistics, the collecting of information etc. So it was a very busy time but we started off this process in 2001 and since then we have developed the Islands Plan with changes and improvements but the difficulty with writing and creating an Islands Plan is that you both have to describe what you do already and what it is you intend to do. And in creating this Islands Plan for 2009/2014 we tried to restrict the amount of description of what it is we currently do for the Government because there’s a large amount of routine work that needs to be carried out but to concentrate on the longer-term projects and the aspirational targets for the next five years.
So the Islands Plan is set out in a number of sections that deal with particular generic areas. And, again we have resisted the temptation to describe the Government section by section and department by department but to choose some themes that we considered represented the aspirations, the ethos, the intent of running this small country.
Just in terms of specifics I will talk about one or two things:
The first section on self determination is critically important and perhaps more than any other section in this Islands Plan, it does actually describe what we do on a regular basis. I think that is inevitable but it is important that we continue to explain to the world our right to self determination and to visit the UN C-24, to engage with the CPA, to ensure that our programmes of engagement with Members of Parliament both in the Westminster Parliament, in the devolved parliament and the European Parliaments are maintained. And, that we keep people informed. And the whole of this section about self determination is about that and making sure that we carry forward the programmes that enable us to continue to persuade right thinking people around the world that the right to self determination is a right that exceeds all others. So that is an important section of the plan.
(I will) comment briefly on the sustainable economic and financial management section because I had a lot to do with that over the years and more recently. It, to a very large extent, reflects the work that we are doing on the economic development strategy and the rural development strategy and describes some of those processes and some of the targets that are beginning to emerge from that. But they will change. The inevitability of the planning process is that as you go through it you will identify which of your original aspirations were achievable, which ones were not (and) which ones need to be modified. Some of these targets will certainly change in the next year or two. And that’s why the Islands Plan should always be reviewed on an annual basis.
But the economic development strategy will, we hope, set some targets for economic growth for describing how the economy will continue to develop and we also describe in not great detail but in general terms in this section what the levers and the enablers are in the economic strategy to enable private sector and Government to work together to move forward in developing the economy.
Two of these will be critical pieces of work I think we have done, or are near enough on – one is immigration strategy. A lot is talked about immigration strategy and has been for many years. We’ve been relatively relaxed about the way we go about it. I think it is clear from the discussions in economic development strategy that we will have to be more specific about how we are going to grow the population if we do and engage with the public on that, which I think will be a very active debate.
And the other is inward investment. Again, if the economy is going to grow – if we are going to grow existing industries and new industries, inward investment will be essential. We don’t have sufficient retained wealth in these Islands to be able to invest in all the things that we would like to invest in. But there is an inherent reaction to inward investment here perhaps resulting from previous experiences of land ownership. Perhaps we are still stuck with the Shackleton philosophy that what you should do is buy everything back and not let other people have it. I am not sure that Shackleton ever meant that you should never let anybody ever buy another piece of land, having got it all back. I think what he meant is you should be able to control that process. And that is an important piece of work that we need to do.
Finally, a quick word on the section on good governance – I am happy to say that the bill for the public Accounts Committee is due to be before this house in September at the last meeting of this particular Council and that is a very good piece of news. The Attorney General didn’t quite promise but he did promise to try and work hard to try to see if we could also have the bill for the Complaints Commissioner at that same meeting. And we hope to be able to do so. They are two key pieces of work that this Council has pushed forward in the Constitutional process and form part of the targets of the Islands Plan.
Mr Speaker, I will say no more at this time other than to commend this document to the House and invite my colleagues to say a few words and perhaps I will have a wind-up at the end.
RC: Mr Speaker, Honourable Members, I would like also to commend this document to the House and to the general public. I think everybody should actually read this document and realise it is not a living document. It’s not cast in stone until 2014. It is something which is going to have to be revised and looked at every year as the Honourable Michael Summers said.
I am not going to talk too long but perhaps I should mention one or two of the items which actually affect myself or my portfolio and because the absence of the Honourable John Birmingham I will try to fit myself into his shoes as well. (Although his feet are a lot smaller than mine.)
The first thing which actually comes up in the document is the port facility. There is a huge amount of work yet to be done on this but it is, at the moment, aimed for 2010/2013 to actually have the port facility up and running. There is still a huge amount of work to be done on this and as I say, it’s aspirational rather than cast in stone.
There is a reference to air access and improved amenities because air access is critical for the development of these Islands. We have to actually improve that.
And internally, we need to have an efficient and appropriate internal air service – how that is formed is really not discussed in this paper. It’s just that is what we need and similarly the ferry shipping service – they need to be appropriate for what we need.
And I think Members of Camp (The Camp Constituency) would applaud the aim to continuously approve the road network and I think that is important particularly for the development of Camp.
In Public Works – I think the two items which would interest people more is the alternative energy – to carry on building on our very successful alternative energy system. And, there is a mention of waste management and I think that’s something which we have actually fallen behind on to a certain extent. It’s something which we have to develop into.
Fisheries - which is our most important industry of all – and it’s our largest income earner – it is proposed that we develop the ITQ System and find ways of adding value. And also, interesting enough, it is proposed to try and get the Illex into the ITQ system.
There are a lot of issues on Tourism – a lot of items on Tourism but basically it is to increase the contribution of Tourism to the economy. At the moment, I believe there is a long way to go there and we have to find ways of doing it.
But one of the things which I think you will find when you read this document and look at it is a lot of cross references. One thing can’t happen without the other. And I think that is going to be the problem for the next Council when they look at this and revise it – making sure that one thing is not done without – which affects something else. They will all have to be looked at.
I beg to support the Motion.
AC: Mr Speaker, Honourable members, in rising to support this Motion I would just like to make a few points, please. Firstly I think it is a very welcome event to have this document laid before this House. As my Honourable Colleagues mentioned the Idea of an Islands Plan has been around for some time. It’s taken an awful lot of work. We have had different versions in the past in terms of being more descriptive or numerical and I think that this version is a really good step towards producing some very real targets that I hope we can achieve or in fact that the next government after November can also work on to achieve. We’ve had to put in a lot of work in terms of facilitating the collation of a lot of data in terms of policy, national statistics and so on. I think it’s really good that, that work started and that the unenviable task of establishing the baselines there but once we have those we will be able to be clearer about where we are going to go. And those targets, as mentioned by others, be reviewed on an annual basis to make sure they are still right and fit for purpose for ourselves.
And it is important to mention again – yes it is aspirational to some degree and plan – there are some more day to day, if you like, targets in there as well but not the really mundane business of the Government. And, what is important is its link to the budget. I think one of the key things here is there are some targets in there that will be impacted upon because of available resource and we all recognise that and I just think it’s worth mentioning.
In terms of finance the main section that relates to my portfolio is the inclusion of the Medium Term Financial Plan and the targets within that. I think it would be really good that in that particular section that when reporting back we report back what we were able to achieve in terms of setting the budget but then, what our actual out-turn at the end of the financial year actually are. I think that will be really helpful rather than just one or the other of those figures to see where we are trying to get to and then where we eventually did get to.
Another subject in terms of finance – the tax and fiscal policy report, which is included – obviously we don’t know what’s going to come out of that yet and so as the review process goes on with this document, once that report is completed we will be able, then, of course, to include some targets in terms of tax and fiscal policy, which will be welcomed.
A slightly, perhaps more controversial point that I think I’d like to make about this plan is regarding one particular point on the structure of it. I think the structure that we have is very good and I completely supported the way it was laid out when we discussed it. But having looked at it myself a number of times over recent months, in fact the last year, I think I have come to a conclusion personally that if I was to be involved and I might not be but if I was to be involved in reviewing this document going forward that perhaps some of the elements in the Camp section could be more integrated with the rest. There is obviously a lot of over-lap in this document and you see it when you go through the sections. And personally, I think that we don’t have a Stanley section and we don’t have an MPA section or whatever and personally – it’s my own view – that I would like to see – it is in no way meant to diminish the importance of the rural business sector or of Camp as a whole but it already is picked up in a number of chapters. Education applies to Camp, Tourism applies to Camp and other areas. That’s perhaps one area that might be thought about in the future. But for now I think it’s a perfectly good document.
I would just like to also mention a couple of environmental points which my Honourable Colleague mentioned. I think we have come a long way already in terms of the contribution this country has made to be environmentally friendly, if you like in terms of recycling our waste. We have made improvements on waste. We have more work to do but there’s been quite a lot. But most importantly is our impact or the impact we’ve been able to have in reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. As everybody’s aware, we have three big towers there and they set a most big sign but we have to continue that work because it is very important that we continue to reduce our reliance and it’s good to see that that’s included in the Islands Plan, too.
Sir, I have no further comments to add. I support the Motion.
JR: Mr speaker, Honourable members I would like to obviously support the Island Plan and hope that the public at large can understand precisely what the intention was with this document – to understand that a lot in it is aspirational. We do realise that it’s going to be difficult to achieve some of those – some of the intentions placed in there and it is quite true that some of them are going to require budgetary support and it remains to be seen for that to be politically possible..
Nevertheless in terms of a plan to focus at budget time, I think this is absolutely critical to have some long-term view and some agreed direction is what we need and I think it is what has been lacking in previous years. I am extremely pleased that we have done this and I really have to congratulate all the people who put huge amounts of effort into compiling this document. And obviously as Members have mentioned there is still a long way to go. There is a whole range of baselines that need to be established and so on but I will talk a bit more about that later.
In the absence of our colleague the Honourable Richard Stevens, I would just like to say a little bit about the Education section. In a way, (Well, it’s been described to me by one person) in a way it is a no-brainer. We all support Education and we all want to see it progress and develop but to a large extent, it’s how we do that and how we focus strategies in education. At its most simple level what we are trying to do is to ensure that our children have the right tools so that they can become real value to their community and their working lives and that involves providing basic sound education at primary and at secondary levels. That accounts for all the varied weaknesses and strengths of those individuals in the classroom and we had been talking quite a lot recently about the term, “value added” and essentially what we are talking about in respect of “value added” is the value that’s placed on each child as it progresses through the educational system so it’s not necessarily how high they achieve but how much they progress as individuals from all the way through their years in education.
In addition to that, - fortunately in education is one of the areas we do have a lot of baseline figures and it allows us to compare ourselves to see how well we are doing in relation to other educational systems in the world and in this case in UK but it does help us be able to measure our school and we look forward to seeing progress in that.
It’s interesting – one of the targets relates to increasing pass rates at FE and HE. And again, this is quite sensible and logical that this should be placed in there but something was said at the public meeting the other day that made me realise just how important this is. And there was one student who said that his preferred option at University was not available to him immediately anyway because of his pass rate in certain subjects of GCSE. And it highlights the need to ensure that our children truly understand that their GCSEs are not just a pathway into college or into a training programme or into an apprenticeship. They’re in this competitive day and age actually their password into much education beyond their “A” levels or their NVQ. I think that’s really something that we have to focus on.
A lot of the rest of the section on Education is aspirational in terms of life-long learning and better access for Camp residents to virtual classrooms and so on. I think that we all will achieve that and certainly a new education ordinance which is very sadly out of date.
But one of the issues that I think – certainly I know many civil servants are waiting to see us progress on is in the issue of training and I think that a subject that’s been discussed or not as a result of our review of government. It’s quite clearly something that people are concerned about. People are seriously interested and people do understand that career development compared to decent training is much harder and I think that over the course of the next couple of years that the new councillors really should take this issue onboard.
Mr Speaker I would like to rest for a moment, if you like if I could please and return after some other Members have had a chance to speak about my own portfolio.
KB: Indeed – Thank you.
MR: Mr Speaker, Honourable Members, to the best of my memory this is the first time that we have had a Motion to support the Islands Plan and I think it is a very good idea to do this. |It’s been there in the background for a lot of people in the Islands for a number of years, I think and it’s only the people who are particularly interested who perhaps pick up the document and look at it properly so I would treat this exercise here – this Motion here as something of a marketing exercise as well as a Motion of support for it.. And therefore I think the more that we can talk about it the better and the more inklings we can give to the population in general the better because it will, I think, be a fascinating document for a lot of people to read even if they don’t have any particular interest in the higher echelons of the way things work in Government.
And looking broadly at the whole Islands Plan, with 67 planned outcomes from 16 objectives and 124 performance indicators in total, this is a major piece of work and many officers and colleagues have put in a tremendous amount of effort to produce it.
There is no doubt that this is an ambitious plan and that assessing its progress will be quite time consuming. Nevertheless, it will play a major part in allowing an objective review of progress on all fronts within our community.
I will touch on some of the areas that interest me in particular and the first one is in the Camp and to note that support for Agriculture itself is just one part of this. If we look at the details of agricultural targets we are looking at things like numbers of lambs, fine wool fibre diameter, establishing an organic certification scheme and developing a beef market and these are all important outcomes for farmers as they will generate more income and they will help in achieving self sustainability.
It is particularly important that a rural development strategy is adapted and adopted and that it has buying from the Camp community and as part of this, the long-term future of Sand Bay Abattoir will be crucial.
Monitoring the effectiveness of the air service and the internal shipping service are key elements in maintaining Camp as is reviewing performance of the new Camp telecommunications system and introducing new telecommunications legislation – hopefully next year.
A comprehensive set of outcomes focused on good governance – my colleague Mike Summers has already made some general observations of these but I was just want to include a few more of the details. These include an effective and efficient legislative programme, completing and implementing the review of the civil service, establishing targets for the number of complaints investigated by the hopefully soon to be appointed complaints commissioner, a court focus on how long it takes from arrest to final outcome – we talked about the PAC but in regards to the PAC the number of high priority recommendations from that body accepted by FIG. There are some other performance indicators which I think are purely aspirational which include goals for the number of candidates standing in general elections, the average number of constituents attending public meetings, and achieving reasonable representation of socio-economic groups within the community at general elections. (Quite aspirational)
Four years ago in the build-up to the last general election, I recall having little enthusiasm for the Islands Plan current at that time. In my view it was light-weight in content and scope and I doubt that it played any major part in shaping anyone’s objectives. Whilst there will obviously be changes to it as it progresses to a working document, the Islands Plan 2009/2014 is in a completely different league. And, I am going to quote the famous Crocodile Dundee line by saying “This is a Real Plan.”
I support the Motion.
IH: Mr Speaker, Honourable members, in rising to speak to this Motion, I would just like to touch briefly on my portfolio responsibilities within the Islands Plan. At first glance they appear to be detached from the body of the Islands Plan but it doesn’t mean that they are any less important. In fact, the mention of minerals under 3.1 of the Economic and Fiscal Management section is arguably perhaps the most important aspiration of the whole document.
As far as the Camp section is concerned, of course it is not just what is on page 15 of this plan is there is so much else that means that it is important to develop the Camp economy and sustain the population in tourism, transport and telecommunications of course play a huge part as well as the sustainability of agriculture.
There, of course, will be challenges within this plan. And in under the Camp Economy comes “sustainable population” in the section and speaking of that and not least the development of the rural development strategy, which Councillor Rendell has already touched upon. It is vital that this strategy links all services, communications and agriculture - for it to be of any use at all it must pull everything together and link all these things.
Just to mention briefly – and I don’t wish to repeat what Councillor Rendell has mentioned already but it’s quite encouraging when you talk of the number of lambs potentially available for export and you look at the baseline for that at nearly 12,000. Only thing three years ago the baseline was zero. That’s a very encouraging piece of information.
I don’t believe I have anything else to comment on, Mr Speaker. Apart to agree with colleagues Have mentioned that this Islands Plan is indeed a living document and must be reviewed annually.
Mr Speaker, I support that this House adopts the Islands Plan 2009/2014.
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