Manx Radio's Political Correspondent has the full run down of what happened during June's sitting of Tynwald
Manx Newscast
Miss any of June Tynwald?
It was an interesting June tenement, there were lots of questions as ever, some interesting answers given, but in terms of the main paper, the main order paper, we had government efficiency and progress, a statement from the Chief Minister. Now, we've heard of the need for government efficiency, and we've also heard the need for progress. So, was the Chief Minister's statement revelatory? Well, yes and no. Certainly the Chief Minister has asked all the departments and boards of government to look again at their budgets and see whether a 5% saving can be made. Of course, the reason to do this is that we cannot continue to afford to pay for health services if further efficiencies aren't found. That's the view of the Chief Minister, and presumably the Council of Ministers share that view. Certainly, it would appear that the amount of money coming in hasn't increased sufficiently to cover the substantial further increases required to continue to have the good health services that I think we all want. So, that's one of the areas that's going to be looked at. The government headcount is that the Chief Minister is describing this as getting a grip of the government headcount, and many of you listening may think, "Well, for goodness sakes, how can they not know how many staff they've got?" I have some sympathy with the Chief Minister having been on the other side myself and know that in the past. By 2016, when I was about to be booted out of my role in the case, we just about, we thought, got a grip of the government headcount. Well, obviously things have moved on since then, and again, the government is trying to get a grip of what is actually quite a complicated area, because there are various roles in government which are kept open, despite there being nobody filling those roles, primarily because they can't afford to pay, because they haven't got enough budget to fill all the roles. So, are those roles classed as being actual real jobs in the government headcount? Are they classed as not being real jobs, even though they are kept open and maybe filled if the money was found? And then you have the issue of contractors coming in. Are these contractors part of the headcount? Are they just providing a short-term contract fill so aren't? They therefore aren't covered. It can be quite complicated. So, a little sympathy there for the Chief Minister. And then, of course, the other thing that the Chief Minister is going to do is have a very robust conversation about transparency on pricing with the Arms Length Isle of Manstein packet company. The whole purpose of it being an Arms Length Company, we were told, was that it would set its own policies, particularly in relation to pricing. But it now appears that perhaps the Arms Length is getting a little shorter than it was. And who knows what will come of the robust discussions that will take place between presumably the Department of Infrastructure and the Isle of Manstein packet. That's the main route in in terms of the various agreements that take place. But maybe the shareholder, the Treasury, will be part of those conversations and possibly even the Chief Minister himself. Next item was the Tenmold Policy Decisions report. And the Chief Minister didn't get it all his own way. He rather foolishly perhaps had asked for Timmold to approve the Tenmold Policy Decisions report. And many Timmold members having read through the Tenmold Policy Decisions report, 2023, felt that maybe there were some errors in that report, certainly things that were classed as being complete. A number of people felt perhaps complete was very much in the eye of the beholder. So instead of accepting or approving the report, it was agreed that the various standing committee, scrutiny committees of government, would scrutinize the report and see whether they agreed with government that all these actions were either complete or the actions reported were accurate. Then we had a bit of a damp squib sort of announcement in relation to regional polls. This is a policy of Isle of Man government. I think going back, certainly more than I think it was 18 years. I think it was 2006 was mentioned. But it's still an aspiration. Basically regional sports hubs and regional pools being part of those regional sports hubs is still an aspiration of government. But effectively, the view seems to be that we can't really afford to do it. Then we moved on to the climate change transformation program annual progress report. A number of members felt that there needed to be more in the report about how the climate change could be impacting on people. They felt that the report needed to focus more on people's real experience and how that real experience could be improved as a result of some of the work of the climate change transformation program. Then we moved on to the carers strategy where there was a very impassioned, possibly the best speech that I've heard for a long time in Tenmold from Julie Edge in relation to the carers strategy and indeed the Minister for Health and Social Care didn't disagree with many of the points that Ms. Edge actually made during that impassioned speech. Mank's care, restoration and recovery. This was basically a report on how well the extra money that had been given to Mank's care to try and catch up with some of the waiting lists, how well that had actually gone. And it had, to be fair, on Mank's care, gone pretty well. The objective assessment of housing need was then discussed. This is one of these little tricks that Timmold seems to have adopted whereby they discuss the report. The Chair of the Housing and Communities Board gets to find out what members think and then they come back to the October setting when Council of Ministers will submit a policy response to the assessment. A clever way, I think, of finding out what members think so that what is then put in the Council of Ministers' response better aligns with what Timmold members actually feel. Then we had this whopping big 32 recommendation report from the Select Committee of Timmold on poverty. The first report for the session 23-24 housing and homelessness. What a shame, I felt at least, that this report hadn't come in smaller chunks. 32 recommendations was quite a job to manage to steer through. There were significant numbers of amendments mainly from David Ashford, who is, of course, the Chair of the Housing and Communities Board. These were, in essence, the Council of Ministers' amendments. They pretty much all went through. In fact, I think they all went through. There were attempts at other amendments one from Mr Thomas. I can't now remember. But there were other amendments. Certainly, one would have included a 33rd recommendation, but that failed to carry. The Information Commissioner was appointed as was a member of the Board of the Road Transport Licensing Committee. Then we moved on to a motion by the Speaker, Freedom of Information Responses, and the Speaker was of the opinion that all Freedom of Information Responses should be published unless there are good reasons for not doing so. In which case, those reasons should be published, which seemed like a fair debate, a fair question to put on a fair opinion for Tenmull to have. Then the next two items, Development Viability Study and the Premier Advisory Group Independent Review, one into the Development Viability of various properties around the island and the other into the Review of Funding for Schools carried out by the Premier Advisory Group, of which we heard quite a lot on perspective a couple of weeks ago. Both of those motions were withdrawn because there didn't seem to be an awful lot of point because the reports have been published miraculously the day before Tenmull'd sat. Then the Housing Policy Select Committee, Mr Callister, attempted to establish this, but he didn't meet with much success on that one. There was an attempt then to amend Schedule One of the Freedom of Information Act to include the Isle of Manstein packet Group Limited and the Manx Development Corporation Limited. Now remember, I think that was amended, but effectively government seems to be moving in that sort of direction. Then we had the Strategic Transport Decarbonisation Review, which was another of those reports that the policy group anyway, the new group which includes Chris Thomas, Julie Edge and Claire Christian. That was another report that was called for which miraculously appeared so that motion wasn't moved. Then we had a range of other items on the order paper, orders and bits of secondary legislation, all of which seemed to go through without troubling Tenmull too much. A number of orders give effect to the adoptions legislation and the Minister for Health and Social Care was particularly pleased that these are now in effect thanks to these orders that went through regulations that went through. So yeah, fascinating Tenmull as ever, lots of things were said, the best and most juicy bits of the stuff that you find out when the microphone is not switched on, but we try our best to let you know some, at least, of the skeet that's going on, certainly all the stuff that we're allowed to. So there we go, that was two in Tenmulled. Thank you for making it to the end of the Manx Radio newscast, you are obviously someone with exquisite taste. May I politely suggest you might want to subscribe to this and a wide range of Manx Radio podcasts at your favourite podcast provider, so our best bits will magically appear on your smartphone. Thank you. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]