St Helena : St Helena: ExCo Report 54
Submitted by Saint Helena Herald (Public Relations Information Office) 30.09.2010 (Article Archived on 14.10.2010)
Yesterday’s ExCo meeting covered a wide range of important issues, and the discussion lasted well into the afternoon. It is for this reason that I am giving my normal broadcast the following morning.
St Helena: ExCo Report 54
Yesterday’s ExCo meeting covered a wide range of important issues, and the discussion lasted well into the afternoon. It is for this reason that I am giving my normal broadcast the following morning.
The first item on the open agenda was a paper presented by the Acting Chief Secretary on the meeting of the Overseas Territories Consultative Council to be held in London in November. A formal letter of invitation from Mr. Henry Bellingham, the FCO Minister with responsibility for the Overseas Territories, was attached. Elected Members advised me that they had agreed that the Hon Tara Thomas should represent St Helena at this important event. There was also agreement that the future relationship between the United Kingdom, the Overseas Territories in general and St Helena in particular, would be a key area for discussion. Council has already submitted a proposed agenda item on the position of the new UK Government on the 1999 White Paper, which deals with this theme.
The second item, presented by the Deputy Chairperson of the Home and International Committee, concerned a proposal from the FCO to accept the right of petition to the European Court of Human Rights by groups or individuals in St Helena on a permanent basis; it had previously been extended for five years. Members welcomed this move by HMG, which has also been accepted by Ascension and Tristan da Cunha.
Members then turned to an item from the Chairman of the Health and Social Welfare Committee, and endorsed the submission of the Public Health (Amendment) Bill 2010 to the forthcoming meeting of the Legislative Council. The Bill, if passed into law, will allow the enforcement in St Helena of the latest WHO International Health Regulations that are relevant here, and also the establishment of a Health Protection Board. This Board will handle the operational side of applying public health measures on the Island, leaving the Committee to concentrate on strategy and policy. This is a good example, in my view, of a sensible division of responsibility between the “political” role of the Council Committees and the “implementation” role of officers and expert stakeholders.
The final substantive item on the open agenda was a paper from the Deputy Chairman of the Civil Society, Tourism and Leisure Committee seeking Council’s endorsement of the St Helena Tourism Development Project. This is a (literally!) weighty document which puts flesh on the bones of the outline Tourism Plan, and its submission to DfID will allow the release of the very substantial funding agreed by them in the Development Funding Agreement earlier this year. I congratulated the Committee, the Tourism Commission, the Strategic Planning and Policy Unit, the Tourism Department and other stakeholders in pulling together this crucial piece of work. Whilst endorsing the Project, some Members pointed out that the plan itself was in many ways a work in progress, and that indeed that some of the details had already been overtaken by events. I accepted that a few consequential amendments should therefore be made. Mr. Michael Dean, the new Tourism Development Executive, was in attendance and was able to assure Members that he would now drive forward the plan in the new environment of potential air access. The benefits for the Island will include increasing the number of seaborne tourist arrivals in the years up to 2015, preparing for the introduction of air access, developing a sustainable tourism industry on Island based on its unique heritage and making sure, as far as we can, that visitors’ experiences of St Helena do justice to the Island’s great potential.
We then moved to the closed part of the agenda. Members agreed, with some qualifications, proposals submitted by the Acting Chief Secretary to issue draft documents to Cable and Wireless as the basis for negotiations for the continued provision of telecommunications and TV re-broadcasting licenses up to 2019. The qualifications expressed, which will be incorporated in the draft documents and covering letter to be sent to the company, reflected Members’ understandable desire to get the best possible services for the people of the Island. At the same time, Members acknowledged the need for faster progress on this issue, not least in view of the importance of enhanced communications to the success of the air access project.
The Financial Secretary then asked Members to endorse Revised Estimates for 2010-11 and a Supplementary Appropriation Bill 2010 to be presented to the Legislative Council next month. In a sense, this is an administrative exercise, as it does not replace or indeed affect the normal, annual exercise of policy prioritization and budgeting which is now also in progress. What it does instead is to allow for a more accurate picture of the Island’s accounts, that is available after the first half of the year has gone by, to be reflected in budget adjustments: such changes, for example, may include higher than expected fuel costs for the RMS and investments needed to implement policies agreed after the initial Budget was passed. Members were generally satisfied by the approach taken, although there was a general feeling, shared by the Financial Secretary and myself, that the whole process would be simpler in future when we had in place a budgetary system based on outputs – in other words, actual results of departmental activity. Members raised questions on a number of points of detail and we agreed to consider the proposals further at the additional ExCo meeting that I have convened for tomorrow.
In view of the length of meeting, Members agreed that confirmation of minutes and “matters arising” also be deferred to tomorrow. There were finally a number of items of “Any Other Business”, including a confidential précis of a report commissioned by SHG relating to the performance of medical and nursing staff in a recent case, which was tabled for information, and which has also been passed to the concerned family.
Andrew R Wells
Acting Governor
29 September 2010
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