Likely No Confidence Vote In P&R

Monday, 23 October 2023 00:05

The chance of deputies calling for the senior committee to be removed 'have gone up dramatically' according to deputy Carl Meerveld.

For the second time this year there's a wide political gap between P&R's plans for GST to fund investment, and deputies' appetite to approve the consumption tax, with a vote of 24-15 against at the end of last week.

In the hours afterwards, deputy Peter Ferbrache described the Assembly as being at a 'complete impasse.'

The suggestion is that his committee may call for an election earlier than the one scheduled for June 2025.

Deputy Carl Meerveld - who heads up the committee which would organise that - spoke in a personal capacity, condemning any move of that sort:

"I think it’s bizarre. It comes across as petulant, throwing toys out of the pram. They’re almost saying, because they didn’t get the policy they’re pushing through, they’re going to ask the Assembly to fire themselves."

He believes that deputies may coalesce around a vote of no confidence in P&R:

"I think that now it increases dramatically the probability of a motion of no confidence, and the Assembly saying, if you think we should go, because you’ve lost your policy initiative, no, we will remove you.

So I think the probability of a motion of no confidence, and it being successful, has gone up dramatically."