Archive for August 27th, 2009
Peer questions UK oversight of territories
(CNS): Too much money and too few people is a recipe for bad government, so says one member of the House of Lords about the UK’s Overseas Territories. Liberal Democrat peer William Wallace has said that while the action to force tax havens to loosen their bonds of secrecy is to be welcomed, it is important for the UK to remember many tax havens, like the Cayman Islands, as UK dependent territories benefit from Whitehall’s relaxed oversight regime. Theliberal life peerpenned his views in a letter to the Guardian one of the UK’s leading quality dailies in response to an editorial regarding tax havens.
Wallace, who served as Director of Studies of the Royal Institute of International Affairs for twelve years, said many of the world’s leading tax havens fall under the British crown.
"Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Gibraltar, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos are all significant offshore financial centres. All benefit from the British system of law, from the expectation of offshore investors that British oversight guarantees higher standards than competitor centres – and all have benefited from Whitehall’s relaxed oversight regime,” Wallace wrote.
He noted the strong evidence of systemic corruption in the Turks and Caicos Islands, which has forced the UK government to impose direct rule, and questioned if the current model for autonomy in overseas territories is sustainable. “Too much money in communities with too few people is a recipe for bad government,” he wrote.
Wallace said that the situation in the Crown Dependencies is better but noted that Jersey and Guernsey have only partially, and reluctantly, lifted secrecy on offshore accounts, and continue to offer incentives for corporations and wealthy individuals whose main business is onshore to relocate on their islands.
“Any thorough campaign against the large-scale tax avoidance and evasion constituted by offshore secrecy must therefore raise the question of how the British government oversees its own dependencies, and what changes in the relationship between the UK and its dependencies may be needed,” Wallace stated.
Anglin-McLaughlin face off
(CNS): Minister of Education, Rolston Anglin, and the former education minister, Alden McLaughlin, faced off in the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday (26 August) over education policy, the Education Modernisation Law and the situation with the new schools. While the former minister accused the new minister of abandoning the positive policies he had put in place, the new minister accused the former of building monuments to excess.
As Anglin lamented the problems he faced dealing with the development of the new schools, McLaughlin challenged him to release the latest exam results. The heated exchange between the two politicians is unique in modern parliamentary political history as Anglin is the first sitting education minister facing an immediate predecessor in opposition.
Answering questions regarding his commitment to the implementation of the International Baccalaureate, Anglin admitted that teachers and educators said it was a step in the right direction but he would not commit to its adaptation. He added that when he arrived in the ministry there was no formal research to justify its adoption and he was undertaking a cost analysis and review of its implementation.
Following questions from his opposition counterpart, the minster made three statements on education issues — the first justifying the delay in the implementation of the education law, the second regarding the current situation with the school development projects, and the third on the need for a systematic review of the scholarship process.
Anglin said that the former minister was misleading the public about the decision to delay the implementation of the new education law with his emotional outbursts to the press. The new education minister said he was committed to implementing the previous education minister’s law but he would not be intimidated by "political posturing” to implement it before the necessary work was done.
“The former minister has reportedly told the press he is devastated,” Anglin said. “But these emotional outbursts are about ego. Well, I have a word of advice for him: education reform is not about him it’s about our children,” Anglin said, asking him what successes he had actually enjoyed during his four years.
McLaughlin responded by asking the minister if he was going to publish the exam results for this year, which he said were the best Cayman had ever seen since it started to record examination results and suggested that was at least one success indicator. CNS understands that this year’s results for those leaving the public school system were more than 10% better than previous years. Historically only around 22-23% of Cayman students have averaged five passes or more at O’ level and equivalent examinations since records were kept. However, passes for 2009 may be as high as 38%, offering a significant improvement in 16 plus exam results. Anglin said he would be releasing the statistics and was pleased that they were positive.
The new minister reserved his major criticisms of his predecessor for his statement on the update of the school development projects at the John Gray Campus and the Clifton Hunter site.
“An inordinate amount of my time and that of my chief officer has been spent on putting these two projects on a stronger footing,” he said. He condemned the former minster for not having a project manager in place and for the excesses that had arisen because he did not set realistic budgets but told designers to build to meet an “educational vision".
Anglin said he was recently forced to go to Cabinet to secure an extra $6.83 million that was needed to pay for works that had been completed over and above work budgeted for in this financial year, which he said was typical of the challenges he now faced in managing the projects.
He also warned of further problems ahead in that Caymanian teachers were not prepared to succeed in the new teaching environments the schools provided and that that there hasbeen no budgetary provision for the furniture, fixtures and equipment, or maintenance and operational requirements for the two new schools. “While I have taken some urgent action to bring some measure of stability and to staunch the flow of blood on these projects, we still need a cure,” the new minister told the Legislative Assembly.
Miller won’t block AG reports
(CNS): Fears that the public release of the auditor general’s reports will be delayed by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) may have been alleviated following proposals formalising the process of their presentation to the House by Ezzard Miller, the PAC chair. Miller has suggested that the AG’s reports be formerly tabled in the Legislative Assembly as soon as possible after the AG has given a report to the speaker before they are released for public consumption. Miller assured the people, however, that the reports would not have to wait on the PAC review before becoming public documents.
In a position paper presented to the LA on Wednesday afternoon (26 August), Miller stated that the current procedure for handling the AG’s reports was not defined and he proposed to formalise the process by amending standing orders to require the reports be laid on the table of the House at the first available sitting after the AG has handed his report to the speaker. Thereafter, he said the reports would become public documents and he proposed placing time limits on PAC to lay its review of the AG’s reports — within three months — and then for government to lay its minutes (or comment) within a further three months, ensuring that all of the AGs reports would be addressed within six months of completion.
Miller told the LA that because the last PAC did not complete a single review of any AG reports, the Standing Orders had been changed so that they could be made public without waiting on a PAC review. However, the independent MLA for North Side said the process had not been formalized and he could find no precedent which supported the current procedure of the AG merely handing his reports to the speaker and then them becoming public documents two days later.
“The long established parliamentary procedure to make any document, report or other matter that is owned by parliament public is through the act of laying it on the table of the House,” he said.
Ezzard suggested that a media circus had ensued in recent weeks over the question of the reports, with the AG seeking to recruit people, such as the Information Commissioner, to his corner, but he said as chair of PAC he had no intention of preventing the reports from becoming public but was merely seeking to reinstate proper procedures.
Questions over the public exposure of the AG’s reports were raised following various comments made by one of the committee members in the press. Former talk-show host, Ellio Solomon, the fourth elected member for George Town and a one time advocate of transparency and accountability, had suggested that the AG’s reports should not be released for public consumption until the committee had the opportunity to review them. The suggestions raised serious concerns in the AG’s office and the wider public domain that blocking the reports would be a backward step.
Miller told the LA that he had received a call from the country’s highest executive who had threatened him with his constitutional powers despite the fact that the issue was a parliamentary one and not one for that particular person’s office. Miller was called up by the speaker when he suggested the “highest executive” had no business interfering with parliamentary matters.
Following his presentation in the House, Miller told CNS that he never had any intention to hold back the AG’s reports and thathe was the person driving to have all of the reports examined and reviewed by PAC following five years of inertia. “If these proposals are approved there will be no more argument about procedure and protocol’” he said.
Auditor General Dan Duguay said that, although he had not yet had chance to see Miller’s proposals, on first review they seemed to be a step forward rather than back. “My goal has always been to ensure that the reports from the Auditor General’s Office reach the public in as timely way as possible,” Duguay said. “Following consideration of the proposals and any possible loopholes that these procedures may reveal I hope we can continue to move forward with the public scrutiny of these reports.”
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