Tristan : St Helena EXCO REPORT 82 – 13th September 2011
Submitted by Tristan Times (Public Relations Information Office) 16.09.2011 (Article Archived on 30.09.2011)
This was a full-blooded EXCO with good debate and a wide range of issues. The agenda revealed 14 items, which is well above average.
EXCO REPORT 82 – 13th September 2011
This was a full-blooded EXCO with good debate and a wide range of issues. The agenda revealed 14 items, which is well above average.
All the Council was present except for the Financial Secretary who was ably deputised for by Tony Kilner. During the meeting I thanked Gilly Francis for all the hard work she has put in during her time as Acting Chief Secretary. Owen O’Sullivan arrives on Thursday morning to take up the substantive post and I know that he will be able to rely on Gilly’s professionalism to guide him into the intricacies of our government machine.
Under Matters Arising, Members welcomed the fact that I have asked Julian Morris to look into the issues surrounding the possibility of a fibre optic cable being linked to this island. Our internet access over satellite now seems lamentably slow compared with communication capability in the rest of the world and Councillors are keen that we should miss no opportunity to improve in that area. Julian will be addressing this issue before he leaves the UK to come here as the CEED.
Mrs. Shirley Francis had written to me from the UK raising an issue that has worried many Saints there who are being taxed on their St.Helena civil service pension without any tax-free allowance being taken into account. Having looked into the issue, our Finance Department realised that they have been misinterpreting the law, and so Mrs. Francis, and all those in a similar situation will receive recompense and will get the allowance from now on.
We next studied the undertakings given at the last LEGCO on 2nd September and more attention will now be given to getting that tracker up to date.
As many of you will remember at this time last year the decision on the price of fuel at the pump was removed from EXCO and became a matter of automatic increase or decrease entirely dependent on the cost of the last shipment. In making that calculation the cost of existing stock is taken into account and the actual increases or decreases are only applied some three weeks’ after the delivery. A recent study has shown that the system is working fairly, and a short paper showed that the recent delivery on 14th August has given rise to a small increase in petrol prices but none in diesel.
The next Paper was presented by the Acting Financial Secretary and dealt with the level of fees for licences. This refers to things like vehicle licences, drivers’ licences, dog licences and firearms licences. This matter had been left over from the annual budget and it was agreed that these issues should always be dealt with at the half year in future. This is to try to minimise the impact of having to cope with all the changes at one time during the March/April period. Inflation here is running at nearly 10% per annum and that is the figure reflected in most of the increases. However as it is 18 months since the last rise the actual increase is well below that of inflation. These will come into effect on 1st October.
I am sure that most would agree that SHG pensions are due for reform in the near future and our next paper outlined some of the issues that will be raised in the public consultation of that topic that will begin at the end of this month.
We then went on to deal with the subject of having a Special Fund created to provide more capital to help us deal with Government Landlord Housing issues. This will be looked at in LEGCO later this year.
The next paper concerned the Bank of St.Helena. Our bank is an institution of which I believe we can all be proud. It is both well run and well advised. It has also grown steadily since its creation and the time is now ripe for formalising the situation with regard to its ownership. You may remember that we decided not to proceed with the idea of cooperative ownership a few years’ ago. Now the proposal has the agreement of EXCO that the bank should become a limited company and all the shares should be owned, in the first instance, by the government. The government currently has the ultimate responsibility for the bank as SHG is the lender of last resort. Not only does this proposal formalise that, but it will also make it easier to raise capital in the future. The question will now proceed to public consultation.
Our next item dealt with our future plans for attendance at the Overseas Territories Consultative Council in London in November. It was decided that Hon. Rodney Buckley should be our delegate, but only if Hon. Ferdie Gunnel is not in the UK at the time as he may, or may not, be there in connection with a representative visit to India.
The next document was rather thick, consisting of 50 pages. It is the draft of our proposed Labour Market Strategy and contains a great deal of useful information and planning. It has been prepared by our Economist Owen James and is part of our submission in connection with the MOU. We didn’t have enough time to discuss it in depth and it will receive considerable comment I am sure in the days ahead. In admitting that fact I can almost hear the reaction of some of you – are we not moving too fast? Is this MOU thing creating so much pressure that we are bound to miss out vital aspects of all these policies that are being considered? Should we not be more careful and take more time?
The obvious answer to such concerns is that the whole point of the MOU was to create targets that would be both challenging and helpful in forging our way to the signing of the airport contract. However I do not believe that such an answer is the whole truth. One Councillor gave a far better answer and it was that all the documents coming before EXCO have now been very carefully considered by a Council Committee, or even more completely by INFOLEGCO. He said that Councillors trusted one another in a manner that generated efficiency. They are not all elected to do everything, but the specialist interests and tasks have been allocated so that matters can be considered in considerable depth and yet pass through EXCO in a relatively short time.
Our discussion next focussed on details surrounding the Student Allowances and we confirmed that the only students not receiving the allowance will be those where the household income is above £11,000 per year. The actual money received by the student will not count towards that household income as it is specifically intended for the student and not as a welfare payment.
Under Any Other Business I raised the issue of a Trade School. Recently quite a few people have mentioned to me the success enjoyed by the Trade School in the past and that they would welcome its return. I have asked the new Chairman of the Education Committee to consider this proposal.
We managed to get through the business and the meeting closed at 1.15 pm.
Next Tuesday’s EXCO will of course be my last and I hope to be able to broadcast a Farewell Speech to you all along with my account of that meeting.
Andrew Gurr
Governor
13th September 2011
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