Submission to the Electoral Commission following the publication of the interim recommendations

Here is my submission to the Electoral Commssion -

Submission to the Electoral Commission following the publication of the interim recommendations

Dear members of the Electoral Commission,

I write following the publication of your interim recommendations to convey both what I am pleased with and what I am concerned with, as well as further comments on the matters you have not fully settled on yet.

Firstly I would like to congratulate the commission on making a series of recommendations that have certainly exceeded my expectations.  Obviously I am delighted that the commission has adopted, almost word for word, the three principles that we in Reform Jersey have been arguing for. And of course, the addition of a fourth principle (“A candidate should generally require a significant number of votes in order to be elected to the Assembly”) is certainly most welcome and I agree wholeheartedly.

I find it impossible to imagine a better set of democratic principles to base reform on and the commission has to be commended for adopting them.

I particularly liked the line “With thriving debate, and greater public participation, Jersey’s government will have a better claim to be founded upon the bedrock of popular consent” which I think really gets to the whole point of what electoral reform should be about.

A “Workable Solution”

One of the solutions on the table, 42 Deputies in 6 super-constituencies (which I will call “Option 1”), is a good workable solution that I am happy to endorse. It is not what I would call an “ideologically perfect” solution; however it is clearly tailored to what will be acceptable to the public given Jersey’s history and culture and is such a significant step in the right direction that I believe it is imperative that the people of Jersey adopt it. So it could be described as “practical perfect” solution, in that it is probably the best Jersey could hope for.

I also believe that a situation where all of our States Members are elected on equal mandates, none of whom will be elected unopposed, will do immense good for the political culture of Jersey.

All one has to do is engage in a 5 minute conversation with the average person in Jersey to realise how unpopular politics is, how little trust many people have in our leaders and, most importantly, how they feel they are unable to influence their government by taking part in the current political process.

As has been shown in Guernsey with their similar styled reform, I believe the new States will lead to a greater participation from the people of Jersey because it will repair much of the voter disparity across the island, meaning for the first time in Jerseys history voters will actually be all, more or less, equal.

However, unlike Guernsey, I also hope that a political system that is equal across the whole island will make it easier for political parties to form and fight elections. This will be the next important step that Jersey would need to take to improve its democracy. But as I said in my interview with the commission, that is something that will only occur naturally through grassroots movements, so it is right that the commission does not seek to make recommendations on it.

I understand that at the commission’s public meeting in Trinity, some parishioners expressed concern at being amalgamated with St Saviour for their electoral district. I am also aware that some have expressed concerns about some districts returning Deputies that all reside in one Parish, rather than be spread across all of them. I think such concerns are unnecessary. The States of Jersey is our national parliament; it debates national issues that are the same across all parishes, so where a Deputy lives is not really of any relevance. As it stands, many Deputies are currently elected in districts that they do not live in and it does not in any way inhibit their ability to represent that district. But for the joined up Parishes, I find it very difficult to believe that someone would stand as a Deputy intending to only be a representative for their Parish. Aside from the fact that it will not be in the job description, it would be a very bad strategy electorally when they should be campaigning for votes from all of the Parishes in their districts. Any candidate that ignores a large part of their electorate is less likely to succeed.

Though I have to say that Trinity’s opposition should be most surprising given that Trinity is currently a “rotten borough” that will only be able to have elections if it is joined with other Parishes. You would have thought they would be elated at this idea. That just demonstrates the political culture in some parts of Jersey that needs to be overcome.

Some who are upset at the removal of the Senators have also been upset at what they believe is a system that offers them less of a say over the whole assembly. For some in the island, this is correct, but only because they would have been living in a constituency that had several Deputies before where they had votes for a large number of States Members. In the old system, if you lived in a Parish with a single Deputy and Constable, at each election you were offered a say over 8 of the 53 Members of the States. That works out as 15.1% of the total. Whereas, in this new Option 1, they will have a say over 7 of the 42 members, which is 16.7%. So actually for people living in those Parishes, their proportion of a say is going up. Admittedly it is going down for those in the more urban areas, but it is not right for different parts of the island to have a different level of say, so this is a sensible compromise.

Option 1 has the backing of Reform Jersey and would like to enthusiastically campaign in favour of it in the run up to the referendum, but only if a few concerns are addressed.

Minor reservations

Even though I have endorsed Option 1, and would like to campaign in favour of it, it is worth pointing out the current problems there are with it in case solutions can be found to them before the final report.

The commission’s research by Professors Ron Johnston and Iain McLean outlined the percentages of deviation from the average number of voters per States Member in each constituency. Here is what I have worked out is the case for the new districts in Option 1 -

District	No. of eligible voters[1]	Option 1 – No. of voters per Deputy	Deviation from average
St Helier No. 1	13,960	1,994	8.07%
St Helier No. 2	12,900	1,842	-0.16
St Clement, Grouville, St Martin	14,010	2,001	8.45%
St Saviour, Trinity	12,960	1,851	0.33%
St Lawrence, St John, St Mary, St Ouen	11,100	1,586	-14.04%
St Brelade, St Peter	12,600	1,800	-2.44%
Total/ average	77,530	1,845	22.49%

From this you can see that only one constituency goes outside of +/- 10% from the average, and that is the 5^th district. This is obviously not desirable, however in the current system 8 of the 12 parishes are outside of the +/- 10% deviation, so this is a huge improvement. But it has to be said that changes in population are likely to only make this worse over time.

The difference between the largest and smallest constituencies is only 22.49% of the average population, whereas in the current system it is 95.5%. Again, a huge improvement.

I suggested in my original submission that the best way to ensure no voter disparity would be to have an independent boundary commission establish borders based solely on population, and could more easily alter them if the demography changes. I still maintain that this would be a better way of doing it, but a system that is based on the parishes like you have suggested is probably one that will be much easier to win in a public referendum.

One relatively minor point I might make is that perhaps the new members should not be called Deputies. Simply because they are not Deputies as they currently are. You have specifically (and rightly in my opinion) aimed to create a hybrid of the qualities of the current Senators and Deputies to make them better equipped to act in a national parliament. Some people are not fond of the Deputies as they are (for reasons like their small electorates or that they might spend much of their time only pushing for their particular constituents interests in their areas), so may find it hard to accept a States made up of just “Deputies” given the connotations that word may have to them.

Referendum v Referendums

I have real concerns with the commission’s suggestion of a referendum on the Constables both on issues of principle and practicality.

The public are not often offered a referendum for the simple reasons that they are incredibly difficult to get right and are not always the most democratic option. All one has to do is look at Scotland’s debate on independence where the SNP administration and coalition government had to wrangle to come up with an agreement on the terms of the referendum. They had to argue over how many questions there could be, when it would be held, who could vote in it etc.

There is an art to getting a referendum right. The best way to do it is for there to be one simple yes or no question on a straightforward issue. This is the only way to ensure an unambiguous answer that clearly shows a public endorsement. It is also important that there is no possible justification for a legal challenge to the answer. I therefore strongly recommend that the commission should only recommend one referendum.

A referendum with more than one question is far more difficult to get a clear endorsement that does not leave it open to room for interpretation. When there are two questions, if both are only won by a small margin, it will be very difficult to say that the public clearly believe in one thing over another.

But, most importantly, how can the public vote to endorse your recommendations when they do not actually know which of the two options they are being asked to endorse? Their vote in one question may be dependent on the result in the other question.

I asked at the St Helier meeting for clarification and was told that the first question would be asking to endorse the commission’s recommendations, then the second would be whether the Constables should be a part of that or not.

As I have said, I would like to vote for Option 1. But I do not like Option 2. In fact I think it is worse than what we currently have. So I will vote in favour of the recommendations, and then against the Constables. But if that second vote is lost, I will then have inadvertently voted for Option 2 by my yes vote to the first question, even though I absolutely do not endorse Option 2. I would have rather had voted against the recommendations than accidentally voted for them.

I, and possibly many others, will then be part of a statistic that is used to justify the changes, when I do not support them whatsoever. This situation is completely unacceptable.

It also means that people will be going into the polling station working out the chances in their heads and deciding on how to vote tactically. If in the days leading up to the vote polls show that the public are likely to vote for keeping the Constables, I am going to have to vote against the entire reform package, even though I do actually support one of the reform packages.

Two votes mean people are going to have to vote with their heads rather than their hearts. Fewer people are going to go in voting for what they actually want.

The only possible way that some of this may be avoided would be to have one question, but with 3 options (Option 1, Option 2 and the status quo). However, in that situation it must be imperative that it is done with a first and second preference vote, so that if no option receives 50%, the second preferences can be taken into account.

At the public meetings I attended, Senator Farnham and several others were irate at there being no referendum on the Senators as well. I do not feel that the commission made the point well enough that the new Deputies are intentionally designed to have all the qualities of the current Senators that made the public so fond of them (which is also why the name “Deputy” does not help). But it must also be known that referenda on the minutia of reform will only lead to a package that is incoherent and not led by an overriding thought out context. It will just be a conglomeration of various views trying to make everyone happy but inevitably leaving no one happy.

If the referendum process is flawed, as it is currently being set up to be, I will vote against the entire reform package because I do not want my vote to stand any chance of being used to back up a new system that I believe is less democratic than the current system.

Is a referendum democratic?

The practical problems with having two referendums are obvious, and in my opinion should be enough to deter you from having two referendums. However there are also the issues of principle behind it.

The worst part of a referendum is that it accepts the principle that issues should be decided by the majority. That is not democracy. Democracy is about much broader principles than just doing what 51% of people want.  It is about inclusion, freedom and choice. Having a referendum on a specific constitutional amendment can make sense, but some issues are not democratic just because they have been endorsed by a majority in a public vote. A system worked on just doing what the majority want is not a democracy; it is a dictatorship of the majority. A vote to endorse something that is undemocratic does not make it democratic.

For example, if the public voted to disenfranchise left-handed people, that would not be accepted because it is not compatible with our wider democratic principles of equality and choice, despite being endorsed by the majority. I would wager that if a public vote was held on reinstating the death penalty it would probably be won. But we do not accept it because it is not a democratic practice for the state to be able to have the power to end the lives of its citizens.

Voting to keep the Constables in the States is not democratic because it creates an arbitrary rule that all Parishes must send their Constable to the States and leaves no room for choice on the matter. If 5 out of 12 Parishes decide that they do not want their Constable in the States, why should they be forced to just because the other 7 Parishes do want theirs? The Constable and Parish administration is only the business of their parishioners and it should not be the business of any other parish, or the island as a whole to tell them that their Constable must be in the States.

The only democratic way around this is to accept that no Constable should be automatically in the States and that if a parish wants their Constable in the States, they can nominate him or her to stand as a Deputy and they can be elected through that manner. That way everyone has a choice and it completely does away with all of the current undemocratic elements.

Those that argue that the Constables should remain automatic members of the States often defend this position by praising the Constables wisdom and experience and the role in general. But it has to be said that this must be a totally disingenuous argument, because if an individual happens to possess all of those qualities, why would they be so fearful of them having to face another election? If it is widely accepted that the individual would be an asset to the States, they will easily win an election. There is no need to fix it so they are automatically in the States.

The real reason they make this argument must be because they are worried they would not otherwise get in. Such reasoning is from an undemocratic way of thinking.

A peculiar “Option 2” of 30 Deputies and 12 Constables

To put it bluntly, Option 2 does not make sense. It is clearly just a compromise to avoid the politically difficult (but necessary) decision to end the automatic right of the Constables to be in the States.

In the commission’s interim report it laid out four principles that it said were fundamental to reform, yet you have recommended the possibility of an Option 2 which is simply incompatible with those principles.

The commission says that “all electors should have the same number of votes” yet many Constable elections end up being uncontested. So those in Parishes with an uncontested election will have 5 votes, yet the rest will have 6. In Option 1 all elections will be contested and everyone will have 7 votes.

The commission says that “Constituencies should as far as possible be of broadly equal size” yet this is obviously not the case if the Constables are kept as each Parish has a very different population. In Option 1, all constituencies have a similar population.

The commission says that “a candidate should generally require a significant number of votes in order to be elected to the Assembly” yet some Parishes have very small populations, so even in the unlikely event the elections are contested, they will still barely get any votes. In Option 1 all candidates will likely receive a large number of votes (especially if the commission also recommends the STV voting system).

The commission says that “the electoral system should be simple, fair and easy to understand” yet this option will mean two types of States Member with different jobs and different mandates. Option 1 is far simpler.

Option 2 is totally incompatible with every single one of the commission’s principles.

But worse than this, even the commission has admitted that Option 2 is actually less democratic than the system we currently have. All it does is perpetuate the current overrepresentation of the country Parishes at the expense of the urban ones. It really is strange for the commission to have left an option on the table that is a backwards step in Jerseys democracy. If there was to be an Option 2, the commission should have come up with a completely different arrangement that kept the Constables but was not as undemocratic as what you are actually suggesting.

Under the current system, St Helier has 11 representatives and the District 5 Parishes have 9. This will remain exactly the same under Option 2. It also means that St Helier as a whole will only have 2 more representatives than District 5, despite having twice the population. Since the current systems biggest fault is the unevenness of representation, a new system that does not even come close to addressing that is doomed to failure and will only result in another 10 years of debate on reform.

As with Option 1, I have worked out how the Option 2 constituencies vary in their representation -

District	No of eligible voters	Option 1 – No. of voters per Deputy	Deviation from average	Option 2 - No. of voters per D + C	Deviation from average
St Helier No. 1	13,960	1,994	8.07%	2,538	32.19%
St Helier No. 2	12,900	1,842	-0.16	2,345	22.14%
St Clement, Grouville, St Martin	14,010	2,001	8.45%	1,751	-8.8%
St Saviour, Trinity	12,960	1,851	0.33%	1,851	-3.56%
St Lawrence, St John, St Mary, St Ouen	11,100	1,586	-14.04%	1,233	-35.78%
St Brelade, St Peter	12,600	1,800	-2.44%	1,800	-6.25%
Total/ average	77,530	1,845	22.49%	1,920	67.97

As is obvious from this chart, Option 2 is far less democratic than Option 1 and still leaves each district with a disproportionate and unequal level of representation.

But just looking at the Constables constituencies on their own –

Parish	Eligible voters[2]	% Deviation from average
St Mary	1,227	-76.21
St John	2,029	-60.66
Trinity	2,054	-60.18
St Martin	2,728	-47.11
St Ouen	2,990	-42.03
Grouville	3,424	-33.62
St Peter	3,529	-31.58
St Lawrence	3,733	-27.63
St Clement	6,167	19.56
St Brelade	7,637	48.06
St Saviour	8,373	62.33
St Helier	18,000	348.97
Total	61,891 – average - 5158	425.18

In the Parish constituencies, not a single constituency falls into the -/+10% area. In the 21^st century, this as an arrangement of constituencies in a national parliament is totally unacceptable by any democratic standards and it just simply cannot be used as the mechanism by which Constables are put into the States. The only way that the Constables can be in the States in a democratic way is to have them stand as Deputies with the rest of the candidates in the Option 1 districts.

This Option 2 does not even come close to addressing any of the problems that this commission was set up to solve. I therefore urge the commission to either ditch it, or have a serious rethink on it and come up with an Option 2 that looks very different to this one and does something to address the issues with representation. Perhaps each super constituency could have 7 Deputies, minus the number of Constables that that district has. So District 5 would have 3 Deputies, each St Helier district would have 7 etc. That way each constituency would have the same number of representatives.

Further Issues

On whether Jersey should have an STV type of voting system, I will not repeat the arguments because they are well rehearsed. But I will say that the First Past the Post System is acknowledged in most democracies across the world to be inadequate and I think Jersey should not lag behind and be at the forefront instead. Form Senator Pierre Horsfall made a good case for STV in his submission and I endorse it.

The only thing to balance that with is whether it would make the reforms too radical that it would make it harder to win it in the referendum. I would hope that STV would be uncontroversial, but it’s always hard to tell in Jersey.

On an upper chamber, if the commission believes there are an appropriate number of members in the reformed chamber, then why would there be a need for an upper chamber? It seems to me to be a waste of time.

Conclusion

A brief summary of my points are as follows –

1. Option 1 fits the democratic principles of reform almost perfectly and is capable of being won in a referendum.
2. Option 2 does not fit any of the democratic principles and its mere existence creates a flawed referendum process.
3. STV should be adopted.
4.  An upper chamber is unnecessary

I thank the commission for the opportunities I have had to speak at several public meetings and submit this analysis of the report to them. I hope you have found it useful and I am happy to be contacted for any discussion on the points I have made if you seek clarification.

Many thanks,
Samuel Mézec

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[1] I used the same figures used on the interim reports chart for this calculation.

[2] For this calculation I used the same figures used in the charts in Professors Johnston and McLeans report, Table 2.2, which appear to be different to those used in your report.

A rebuttal to JEP propaganda 2 Re: the Electoral Commission meeting

It appears that I may be starting up an irregular series of blog posts essentially disseminating individual articles in the Jersey Evening Post. It's no secret here that I'm not a fan of the Jersey Evening Post (but then again, I'm not a fan of any printed newspaper to be honest) because I regularly attend events, meet people, listen to the States etc and then end up reading an article in the paper about it that doesn't even vaguely come close to what I witnessed.

It ranges from silly little things like seeing JEP journalists on twitter, tweeting the exact opposite of what has just happened in the States, to opinion articles like the one I tackled here which were based on things that were just plain untrue (in that case that Senator Bailhache had leaked details of the Electoral Commissions report to him). Call it conspiracy, call it just laziness, whatever it is, it's incredibly annoying.

Thankfully there are lots of good Jersey blogs out there (some partisan, some balanced) that often do a very good job at countering this and putting forward another way of looking at things or doing full reports on events that are often far more comprehensive and reliable than the JEP.

So today I'd like to draw the readers attention to this article here - http://www.thisisjersey.com/news/2012/11/15/states-reform-meeting-ends-in-farce/

It's a report from the Electoral Commissions public meeting at Grouville. It starts out by naming and shaming someone for launching an anti-immigrant tirade against the Vice-chair Colin Storm, on the basis that his views were irrelevant because he is not a proper Jersey person. His definition of "Jersey person" being one that was not only born in the island (as Storm was) but had Jersey roots too. So I suppose I'm not a real Jersey person either given that my roots are Breton.

Some might say it was irresponsible to actually name the person, but I find myself actually quite glad. Simply because I think bigoted views like those that this man was expressing need to be attacked as being unacceptable. I think racism needs to be challenged for it to be overcome, not just ignored out of politeness.

What is either funny or sad (can't make up my mind which) is seeing the people queuing up on the JEPs website to celebrate his petulant contribution. He called Mr Storm an "immigrant" even though he was born in Jersey. I wonder if these people realise how ridiculous they look.

But anyway, the part of the article I wish to focus on is this bit -

"The heated meeting was also effectively hijacked at a number of points by two failed Senatorial candidates and St Helier residents, Nick Le Cornu and Gino Risoli, who gave long-winded speeches that led to several people walking out."

This is a typical case of JEP bias.

Firstly, the fact they are both failed Senatorial candidates is not relevant to anything. In a democracy every single person is entitled to hold views and to express them (even the bigoted views the JEP reported on). The fact those people have not been elected before is not a reason to belittle them and make it out that somehow their views are not important because of their past failures.

In fact, Winston Churchill, the greatest Prime Minister we have ever had (and I have no problem as a Socialist saying that), failed on several occasions to get elected as an MP. He failed in by-elections in 1899 and 1908. He lost his seat in the October 1922 general election where he famously said that he left Dundee "without an office, without a seat, without a party and without an appendix". He then lost again in the 1923 general election and another by-election in 1924. Though he kept his seat, as leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister he lost the 1945 general election in the biggest landslide of British parliamentary history.

My point is that failing to win an election does not de-legitimise someone. Why did the JEP choose to describe them as that? Would it not have been better to say "local businessman" and "local social justice and human rights campaigner"?

How about also pointing out they are St Helier residents? How is that relevant either? It was not a Grouville Parish Assembly, it was an Electoral Commission meeting. The Electoral Commission is holding these meetings to find out more views from the public about their report. If people from outside the Parish wish to go and speak, the meetings chairperson has the discretion of whether the person speaking is offering something they find useful to hear. I attended three meetings, none of which were in my Parish, and was allowed to speak at all of them (and even being quoted in the JEP, though it didn't make a point of me not being a Parishioner!), presumably because the commission thought there was some value in letting me put my views across because it was more that they could take into account when they come up with their final report.

But the worst part is them using the phrase "effectively hijacked". I think it can be objectively decided if a meeting was hijacked or not. The best way to work that out would be to ask the chairperson, who has the responsibility to make sure the meeting stays on topic, and can judge if individuals did their best to take it in another direction. But using the word "effectively" makes it subjective, and when reporting the news being subjective like that isn't really appropriate.

Gino (whom I have no personal problems with, he is a nice guy) attended the St Helier meeting I was at and started banging on about "financial accountability" in States departments and gave a passionate speech on it. But he had to be stopped by the vice-chair (which he did his best to ignore and carry on, under the guise of "freedom of speech") because what he was talking about was totally irrelevant to what the meeting was about. I think this could objectively be called hijacking. It was irrelevant and he refused to be silenced by the chair. If he did the same at the Grouville meeting, then the JEP was probably right to have said he tried to hijack it.

However Nick Le Cornu, on the other hand, has been to many of the meetings and actually made excellent contributions that the commission were evidently interested to hear. His submission to the commission (which can be read here) is one of, if not the, best one they received. His speeches are well thought out, relevant, often cover things that other people have not thought of and he uses historical and legal examples to back up what he is saying. The only criticism that could be made of him is that his speeches are often very long, but when he is asked to sum up, he does so. Whether you agree or disagree with Nicks politics, you cannot deny that he makes very important contributions to public debate that are certainly worth hearing.

To put Nick's contributions on the same page as Gino's is just frankly ridiculous. Turning up to a meeting to make a speech concisely on the topic in question cannot under any stretch of the English language be called "hijacking".

But there was an example of hijacking that the JEP didn't cover. At the St Peters meeting, the meeting was hijacked by the Constable, who ran the meeting as if it were a Parish meeting (which it isn't) and then proceeded to try and decide who could and couldn't speak, and even went up to the podium to deliver his views at the end of the meeting. At an Electoral Commission meeting, the Constable is just an ordinary member of the public like anyone else and should act like it. How he took control of that meeting was well out of order (though some blame must lie with the commission for not having the backbone to steer the meeting back to how it should be). But the JEP did not report a word of it. In fact we only know it happened because of Nick Le Cornu's blog on it!

I could also mention how the commission itself was hijacked by States Members after it was originally going to be totally independent, but that would just be repeating myself. But no mention in the JEP of that either.

This whole reform debate is going to lead to a referendum, and with a referendum you need a proper public debate and proper media coverage allowing the public to accurately hear both sides in a balanced way. Little things like the JEPs attempt to belittle Nick Le Cornu go completely against the spirit of a democratic debate.

We need and deserve better than this. Rest assured, as the debate goes on, I'll be doing my bit to hold them to account.


Cheers,
Sam

P.S. My Electoral Commission submission will be posted in a few days. It's taking longer than I thought it would because I'm being fairly comprehensive (about 8 pages so far) and using charts and calculations to back my points up.

Making a bad situation worse for student funding in Jersey

I came back to Jersey for a few days this week to attend some of the public meetings with the Electoral Commission as well as an interview with Channel TV (which I'm working on trying to upload to the "interviews/ media" page). Since when I'm normally in Jersey the States is in recess, I though I'd pop in on Tuesday just to see if any drama kicked off. The session was reasonably tame, though I ended up having to listen in horror to an unexpected statement by the Education Minister Deputy Ryan and his plans to butcher the university grants system then followed by a not terribly impressive defence of the statement under questioning by his fellow States Members.

The statement can be read here - http://www.gov.je/News/2012/Pages/ChangesStudentGrants.aspx

The basic gist is that, unlike the current system, when a single parent cohabits with a new partner, that partners income will now be treated as a part of the gross household income for the purposes of working out how much of a grant the student gets. Account will also be taken of maintenance paid in or out.

Of course I should start by declaring an interest in this subject. I am the recipient of a student grant and I am from a single parent household. The majority of my university fees are paid by the States (though not all of it) and I am given around £4,500 a year for living costs (which in central London does not get me very far). The rest of my funding comes from the work I do in my holidays, the odd jobs I can get here and there during term, the generosity of my parents and a substantial amount of debt I am in with two different banks. And I'm one of the relatively lucky ones!

Whenever education funding is brought up, I instinctively get worried for the simple fact that the current system is completely undesirable and is already very unfair and inconsiderate for many people, that any change could well make a bad situation even worse. The problem is almost every households circumstances are completely different, so arbitrary rules across the board inevitably lead to injustice for many people, whether some are given too little or some too much.

These changes, like the previous system, will be no different in that some people will receive a more appropriate amount, and some will receive a less appropriate amount. Some people will say that the changes are entirely fair, on the basis that undoubtedly some families who can pay already but still get grants, will no longer get them. But some families will get less because of an extra person in the family who will now be expected to contribute. I am almost certain that the majority of those that will be worse off are going to be those from poorer families and those from broken families, and I find it reprehensible that these people should be the ones to bear most of the brunt.

Of all the students that go to university from Jersey, 70% of them receive a grant, 38% of them are from households with a single parent. Compared to the rest of the UK, we also send an above average proportion of our young people to university.

One thing that I think is just so insanely illogical is this idea that the grants should be worked out on the households "gross income". That is surely the worst way of working it out. Just because you have a reasonable gross income does not mean you are more able to afford to send your kids to university. It should be measured by "net income". What if as a family you have a reasonable household income, but you may have elderly parents that you have to support, or perhaps even a disable child that might require substantial care. If you have those costs, you might not have enough to send a kid to university.

Or also what about a family that has several children who are ambitious and talented and could make a lot for themselves out of going to university, but the family can't afford for all of them to go. It would be just as unfair to not let any of them go, or to just let 1 or 2 of them go.

But equally there are circumstances where a single parent may have moved in with someone who has a substantial income and doesn't have a problem with contributing, but the current system does not take them into account, so the government is giving more money than they have to for that students grant.

But forget the money for one moment and look at the social impacts. This idea of counting the new partners income can be hugely detrimental to family relationships. Firstly, a lot of step-parents just don't get on with their new partners kids. There's all sorts of reasons for this. Sometimes it's a marriage after the death of the previous partner which some kids find very difficult to accept, or sometimes it's just conflicting personalities. Just because the new partner now lives with them, does not mean that he or she is an active part of that child's life.

Or what about a partner who is relatively new to the family and who does not know that the relationship is destined to be very long term, is now going to have to contribute to the students fees? This would do nothing but add tension to the relationship.

We will end up with a situation where single parents, who may well have gone through a troubling time (a messy divorce, perhaps even domestic abuse, etc all sorts of things), are now having to weigh up the financial implications of starting a new relationship with someone. Their kids will be seen as a liability by potential partners who would not want to be supporting their partners kids right away. The fact it will cost them more to send their kids to university will affect how people form their families and seriously impact on their happiness. Most parents will always choose their kids above their partner, and I would have felt so bad if for example my mother had decided not to have a new partner because she was worried about not being able to help fund me going to university.

Whatever you believe the role of government in our society should be, surely no one believes the government should be doing things that will so blatantly affect personal relationships so badly?

I've spoken to a lot of friends and young people about what they think this means for their circumstances. One friend told me about how his step-father had a real problem with him going to university for some reason. But his mum was adamant that if he wants to go, he should go, so she is even considering selling her house and finding a smaller place to get the money to send him. Why should his step-dad be a part of the equation? He isn't supportive of the idea and should have no right to adversely impact on someone's future who is not his child, yet if the changes go ahead, his income will be counted.

The point I'm really making here is that there is no perfect way of funding students within the current framework. You will always have a system that unfairly perpetuates inequalities and offers help to those that don't need it, whilst leaving out those that do. The only way within this means-testing framework to achieve a fair result across the board is to judge each and every student on a case by case basis taking into account all of their circumstances, but this is just obviously impractical.

So I'm going to suggest something radical that I believe is the only way to fairly fund students. The parents have to be taken out of the equation. When a someone turns 18 years old, they are an adult. They are technically legally independent. So why should their parents income be taken into account? I say, the only person whose income should be judged is the student themselves. If they happen to have a substantial income, or if they inherited some wealth from somewhere, they can and should fund themselves. But for most students, their income is close to nothing so they should be funded 100%.

That is the only way to fairly fund students. But it's radical and it's expensive. Perhaps the answer is that fewer people should be going to university.

For me, because my passion was for law, not going to university was never really an option for me. But that wasn't the case for many people I was at school with. During 6th form when we were being encouraged by the school to apply for university, I felt that many of those that were not going to university or were on the fence about it were sort of being pressured because it was "the thing to do". This attitude has to change. One of the reasons that higher education has become so expensive and governments are less able to fund it is because of the sheer volume of people deciding to go. University should not be considered the zenith of educational opportunities for young people. Some people are just better suited to other ways of taking their life forward. Plenty of my mates who left school at the same time I did to get jobs are doing really well for themselves, some are working in finance, others have apprenticeships etc and that was right for them. The choices they made should not be denigrated over choosing university.


But back to the proposed changes, you have to ask yourself what the actual purpose of them is? Why is the minister doing it?

If you'd seen the report on Channel TV on Wednesday night you would gather that he was just trying to make the system fairer so that the money saved could be "ring fenced" and redistributed to everyone equally. Doesn't sound so bad. But then the next day he was made to apologise because this is not the case at all. The money being saved is going straight back to the treasury. It's a cut.

Quite how he made such a fundamental mistake is beyond me. The whole motivation behind the changes is to implement a cut. That's it pure and simple. The government is wanting to save money, and so as well as not giving people like nurses, teachers and firemen a pay rise, they're also seeking to extract some savings out of students. After three years they will save £500,000 a year. How he can talk about the changes as if they were part of a totally different context with a totally different motivation is disgraceful. I'd call it spin, but it's not, it's just a lie.

That'll be half a million pounds every year that isn't being invested in the future of the island, for a system that is not fairer. This is the real issue here. Students are being made to accept austerity when they, more than any other section of society, are not to blame for the causes that have led to this economic situation.

In the UK when the coalition government decided to scrap the Education Maintenance Allowance and raise university tuition fees, the Nation Union of Students got tens of thousands of students onto the streets to protest against it and make their voices heard. But no such movement exists in Jersey... Yet.

Students (and by extension, their parents) are being asked to accept an unfair and unjustified cut. They are not organised and will have no way that they can have their voices heard in any meaningful sense. They won't be getting in the media to make their case, they won't be attending scrutiny meetings or negotiating with the government. Students in Jersey need a group that will advocate for their interests. They need to organise themselves because together their voices will be strong. They need a Jersey Union of Students to put their case across. The reason that Jerseys government gets away with things like this is because the people aren't willing to stand up to them.

Over the next year Jersey is going to face unrest. We've already seen it with the bus drivers strike and we are soon going to face it with the teachers and nurses going on strike. Students are facing attacks too and need to be part of that struggle.

I'm going to do my best to encourage students in Jersey to make their voices heard and oppose this cut. You should show them solidarity too!


More will follow on from this, I am sure of it.

Sam