“The only way we can stop this project is by getting rid of the Council of Ministers”

Friday 12 January 2018

A vote of no confidence against the Health Minister is brewing after the £466million future hospital proposals were rejected - but one politician thinks that the whole Council of Ministers must go if the project is to be made a success.

Constable Chris Taylor has hit out at the Council of Ministers, arguing that Ministers wasted £23million of public money by pressing ahead with plans to build the hospital against evidence that it was the wrong location.

Proposals for the new hospital – a project on the equivalent scale to the UK’s HS2 – were rejected by the Environment Minister following a damning report from an independent planning inspector that found the site to be too large and not in keeping with its surroundings.

In the aftermath of the rejection, Health Minister Senator Andrew Green said that he was “disappointed” with the situation, but maintained that the planning inspector had “agreed” that the chosen location was correct. 

I’m disappointed the outline planning application for a new hospital has not been approved. The independent inspector agreed it was the right location, but the proposed site was too small for the size of the building needed. I will take time to study the report & plan next steps.

— Senator Andrew Green (@andrewgreenjsy) January 9, 2018

But this has been strongly disputed by former Jersey Architecture Commission member Christopher McCarthy, who wrote to the Environment Minister this week on the matter, as well as Constable Taylor, who had previously lobbied for the hospital to be built on the Waterfront.

He told Express that he was “extremely angry” about how the planning process had been handled, and was even more disappointed by the amount of money that had been spent so far on the rejected plans - £23million, close to the cost of the new police station.

“The inspector says that it is not the best site at all – he says it’s a possible site, if the scale and the mass are within planning guidelines. You’ve got the beautiful opera house right opposite, you’ve got the old granite building and they are two iconic buildings – both of which are listed. Quite frankly, you can throw away listing buildings altogether if you’re going to allow a hospital of that size to be built,” Constable Taylor said.

He accused the Council of Ministers of proceeding without an “acute policy” based on evidence from consultants – something supported by a recent report from the Comptroller and Auditor General.

Pictured: The planning inspector concluded that the hospital plans would not respect the heritage of the surrounding area - a facet Constable Taylor felt had been ignored by Ministers who chose to push ahead with developing the current site.

“The whole issue has been a catalogue of decisions made on the hoof of what they [the Council of Ministers] would like to do as opposed to evidence-based decisions,” he said.

He expressed regret at the pressure that had been placed on the States officers and design team, who worked long hours and sometimes weekends in the run-up to the plans being submitted, and feared that they would bear the brunt of the blame for the failed plans.

“They have worked exceedingly hard on working to the guidelines given to them by their Minister. They’ve been trying to make too much fit on too small a site, and the Minister just would not listen.”

There is now a growing feeling among States Members that the project as it stands should be set aside entirely, rather than modifying the current design before resubmitting plans. “They’re flogging a dead horse, and we all know you can’t flog a dead horse because it’s dead… We have to start from scratch There is nothing worth salvaging from what they’ve done to date.”

Pictured: Constable Taylor said that starting from scratch on the hospital meant that a Ministerial rethink should also be on the cards.

But starting from scratch, in the view of a number of States Members, means forming a new Council of Ministers too.

“This is the big problem. Because we have a Council of Ministers not capable of a proper evidence-based decision process, we’ve got into this mess. We need to get rid of the Council of Ministers. The only way we can stop this project is by getting rid of the Council of Ministers, and I stand by that. We’ve got to move forward,” Constable Taylor said.

The first step in that process will be supporting a vote of no confidence against the Health Minister being brought by Deputy Tadier, who needs the support of ten other States Members to force a vote.

He contacted several this week in the wake of the Hospital decision via email, writing that it was “a shame that Andrew (Senator Green) is yet again having to carry the can for the Council of Ministers' incompetence, arrogance and 'spin' over the hospital saga” but that he had also been a “willing conduit.”

Pictured: Deputy Montfort Tadier is currently seeking supporters for a vote of no confidence against the Health Minister.

But he said the vote of no confidence went deeper than the “bungling and broken” hospital debacle. For him, it also related to a number of “broken promises” over introducing medicinal cannabis, which he says could help islanders suffering from a variety of conditions from cancer to MS and chronic pain. 

“How long must people be denied effective medication and be made to suffer or even self-medicate? 

“In a sense, this is a more unforgivable political transgression than the hospital debacle. The latter is a matter of collective incompetence on the part of the CoM [Council of Ministers]. The failure to act on medicinal cannabis lies firmly at his door,” he wrote.