Office of the Chief Executive
Ministerial Decision
Goods and Borders Cluster Government Plan funding transfer
Purpose of the Report
For the Minister to approve the transfer of £131,500 from the budget of OCE (NCR012) to GHE which represents the proportion of the £450,000 Goods and Borders Cluster Government Plan funding that was allocated to support the Environment and Regulation functions within GHE and to ensure the allocated funding is in the right place to allow for the continued delivery of GHE relevant roles and responsibilities during the post Brexit transition period.
Background
There is a requirement for the Government of Jersey to engage with the UK and the EU to negotiate appropriate arrangements within the UK/EU Future Economic Partnership (FEP). The FEP will be negotiated following the UK’s exit from the European Union, regardless of whether this is an agreed withdrawal or a No Deal Brexit, albeit that the negotiations will be within different structures and timescales according to whether they take place in a deal or in a no-deal scenario. To this end, the UK is currently preparing its negotiating positions, and Jersey must do the same and should be appropriately resourced to do so.
External Relations proposed three negotiating clusters, these being ‘Goods and Borders’, ‘Services and Digital’ and ‘Security’ and 2019 departments were asked to consider the necessary resource.
After a bid from GHE, the Government Plan allocated £450k to Economy to manage the Goods and Borders Cluster. At a broad, cross-departmental level, the work involves analysis of the structures and architecture within free trade agreements and the UK-EU future relationship, to better understand how these might bind Government’s options or present opportunities; and it includes identifying and articulating the overarching priorities for the Government of Jersey within Jersey-UK negotiations.
Details
To achieve the required complement of expertise the Goods and Borders designed a team of technical experts. The team was developed to provide a blended team comprising economy, environment and regulatory officers to give a cross GHE response.
However, now that Economy has been transferred into the OCE the funding needs to be re-allocated to ensure correct resourcing within both OCE and GHE and to provide GHE with its ‘share’ of the Government Plan funding pro-rata for 2020.
It has been calculated that the GHE share for 2020 is a total of £131,500 to deliver the required coordination and project management functions to ensure requests by the UK Government are dealt with and considered appropriately – see below. Many of the negotiation positions require insight from a technical policy position but also in respect of trade and the domestic economy. It is therefore vital that that this coordination continues to ensure all responses are in line with the Government of Jersey policy positions.
Goods and Borders Cluster funds to transfer from the £450k allocation:
- Contractor – May to Dec 20 – 171 days (taking away Bank Holidays but not including any leave) @£500 per day = £85.5k. He transferred to GHE 1st May.
- Marbral – Transferred to GHE 15th May to Dec 20 - (approx. 141 days @£325 per day ) £46k.
Total to transfer £131,500.
Recommendation
The Minister approves the transfer of £131,500 from OCE to GHE.
Written by: | Group Director – Economy |
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Approved by: | |
Ministerial Decision Case Ref: