Ministers' conflicts of interest withdrawals from meetings (FOI)

Produced by the Freedom of Information office
Authored by Government of Jersey on behalf of the States Greffe and published on 28 December 2023.
Prepared internally, no external costs.

​​​Re​quest

In Hansard recently, an exchange took place about withdrawal on the basis of conflicts of interest from meetings of the Council of Ministers or in other forums where discussing policies.

Deputy Moore said that such conflicts arise relatively frequently. She did not say how often after discussions, members of the council actually withdrew from meetings. Please advise how many meetings in which members of the Council of Ministers withdrew from meetings, and the number of members who withdrew.

Deputy K.L. Moore:

As I outlined in my earlier answer, declarations of interest and questions about conflict arise relatively frequently. Those are logged in the relevant minutes of meetings and people take decisions and actions that are relevant to the circumstances, whether that may be to withdraw for some discussions or whether that is just to simply declare the interest and to remain in the meeting. But that is very much a case-by-case decision.

Deputy L.V. Feltham:

Sorry, Sir, I do not think I got an answer because I asked whether Ministers had withdrawn from conversations in the past year.

The Deputy Bailiff:

Well, I think the Chief Minister said it happened relatively frequently, so I think the question was answered.

Response

The minutes of the Council of Ministers (CoM) have been reviewed for the period July 2022 (formation of the current CoM) to December 2023.

There were two meetings of the Council from which Ministers withdrew; one Minister on each occasion. On a third occasion, a Minister was not present due to being conflicted with respect to a particular matter – the Minister therefore did not ‘withdraw’ in this instance but was not present due to a conflict of interests.​

This response has been issued on behalf of the States Greffe. The States Greffe is responsible for the information held by (and on behalf of) both itself and the States Assembly.  Neither the States Assembly nor the States Greffe form part of the Government of Jersey and the Government was not involved either in the examination and retrieval of any information required for this response, nor in the drafting of the response itself.​​