Written evidence from Andrew Pearce[1] (SOT67)
Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee
The Status of the UK’s Overseas Territories in the 21st Century inquiry
I served as Governor of Montserrat from 2018 to 2022, my last posting in a career with the (then) Diplomatic Service. My family and I found the people of Montserrat kind, friendly and supportive, which we deeply appreciated. I found my job on this beautiful, peaceful island engaging and fulfilling.
Montserrat’s wider relationship with the UK was also positive. Naturally, Montserratians had not forgotten the deep wrongs committed during the era of Caribbean plantation slavery, but I felt they recognised that the British people of today had no personal part in it. They saw Britain now as a more enlightened and genuine partner and were ready to work closely with us. The closeness of the UK/Montserratian relationship I think reflects that it has been forged through the stress of the hurricane and volcanic disasters of the past three decades.
There are however also areas of deep frustration, on both the Montserratian and UK side, and underlying problems which are building significant liabilities, financial and reputational.
Now retired, I offer some thoughts on this Montserratian situation on a personal basis, in the hope that they may be helpful to the parliamentary review and may have some relevance to other Territories.
I found the 2010 Montserrat Constitution worked effectively in many areas. It was designed to foster a delicate balance of powers and responsibilities between the UK and Montserrat Governments and broadly did that. But I found three significant weaknesses:
(i) The constitution and its supporting legislation create a complex legal and executive framework. Indeed they cover much the same ground as would be standard in a sizeable, developed, independent country. But Montserrat is the size of a village, with around 2000 adults of working age. Filling all the bodies and functions mandated by the constitution would take a majority of this population, even if individuals could be found with the demanding legal, financial, administrative and executive skills required. This imbalance between the structural ambitions of the constitution and the ability of the tiny Montserratian society to deliver them creates a permanent tension. A good example of this is in the area of checks and balances on public standards, where the constitution and supporting legislation provide for a Complaints Commission, an Integrity Commission, a Public Service Commission, a Financial Services Commission and a Financial Conduct Authority or equivalent. This is too much for a village-sized community to sustain. The Integrity Commission is moribund and there have been frequent gaps and strains in the Complaints Commission and Public Service Commission. People turn to the local radio to air their grievances and concerns. I have no perfect solution to this problem, but I believe that a simpler, single body with power to investigate alleged abuses and injustices in all fields would serve Montserrat and the UK better. Because of the close relationships between people in such a small, island community, I also believe that the head of this body should be an outside individual, so there can be no pressures and influences brought to bear by any interested party. There are a number of other examples in the constitution where simplification would galvanise community engagement and raise government performance.
(ii) The constitution places a great many responsibilities on the Governor. These include: foreign and defence matters; internal security; disaster preparedness - including for hurricanes and volcanic eruptions; supervision of international financial services (in practice nowadays almost all financial services); supervision of the Police; supervision of the Directorate of Public Prosecutions; supervision of the Office of the Attorney General; supervision of the entire public service; supervision of the small Defence Force; a raft of top appointments - the Attorney General, Financial Secretary, Chief of Police, Director of Public Prosecutions, Chief Magistrate, Deputy Governor, Financial Services Commissioner, Chair of the Public Service and Electoral Commissions - and line management of most of these individuals; oversight of the Prison Service; approval of residency and nationality applications; receiving and considering reports and recommendations from the Complaints and Public Service Commissions; and reviewing all legislation in case elements conflict with UK laws and policies (disallowance). That is in addition to the core tasks of chairing Cabinet and approving all Cabinet minutes and decisions. It is a huge load. In 2010 the Governor was supported by a more substantial Governor’s Office, but in my time the office had been allowed to shrink to only 1-2 UK-based officers of middle rank and a small, local, corporate and secretarial service team. I received no response to my requests for reinforcement. I appreciate the huge range of other priorities faced by our foreign service, but I strongly believe that either the constitutional load on the British Governor needs to be reduced radically or the Governor’s Office needs major reinforcement if the whole administrative and governance system is to work properly.
(iii) The balance of powers between the UK and Montserrat needs to be re-set and unambiguously defined. The constitution was skilful in prescribing a subtle balance of powers in 2010. The backdrop was the need for major flows of UK capital and development aid for a territory reeling from volcanic devastation. The structural need for UK aid remains and will do so for many years to come, even with the most optimistic levels of growth. But political mood and expectations in Montserrat have moved on and there is increasing frustration with what can be seen as a clash of political will and even values (for example on issues like gay marriage rights) between the UK and Montserrat. On some outwardly “domestic” issues, for example concerning cannabis legalisation, where UK international obligations are engaged, or appropriate use of public funds, where some come from development aid, there can be need for intervention by the governor of the day, which can sometimes be seen by elected government as obstructive. The constitution leaves a degree of ambiguity about ultimate decision-making responsibility in such situations, and about the status of Cabinet votes on such decisions. This ambiguity can lead to political frustration and impasse. A sharper re-definition of the constitutional balance of political power would help tackle this, but it would need to be accompanied by clarity on the UK’s ultimate right of decision over UK development funds and by modern levels of transparency.
I know from my diplomatic career how thinly stretched FCO resources have been and how few staff are employed in FCO HQ in London specifically on Overseas Territories matters. The great majority I know try energetically and creatively to help “keep the show on the road” and where possible make improvements. But the stretch has become so great that for Montserrat at least I felt there was little or no FCDO or wider UK civil service capacity for strategic change and areas of weakness which were risking significant liabilities.
I also found that the system for determining what development funding to give Montserrat, for what priorities and with what conditions, carried on with little consultation with the Governor and little regard for his/her views. This not only meant a lost opportunity for the injection of top-level knowledge and advice into UK aid policy formulation, but caused confusion amongst Montserratian leaders as to who to deal with on the UK side. The amalgamation of the FCO and DFID may hopefully address this problem over time, but there was little sign of a change in the first eighteen months.
During my period as Governor I had reason to raise concerns about possible financial fraud of various forms. It would not be appropriate to give further detail here. Certain initial action was helpfully taken. But I was concerned that I did not receive any substantive response to a number of subsequent, related reports I sent to the UK. There are I recognise sensitivities in handling such matters, the details of which are for the Police to investigate and if necessary in due course the courts to determine. But the lack of response to such reporting was out of character with what I had experienced elsewhere in my diplomatic career. It seemed to indicate a lack of UK engagement with this aspect of life in Montserrat.
How to ensure a local police force in a tiny island community like Montserrat has the will and capacity to investigate rigorously all main fields of crime is also a key question in the context of integrity and good governance. I don’t have the full answers but it cannot be achieved just by gubernatorial supervision. For such a tiny, closely related community, I think some sort of external, expert oversight and calibration is needed, albeit that this may appear to be against the general grain of progressively increasing independence.
Some other thoughts and examples:
(i) Governors, like myself, are usually appointed without any substantial background experience in Overseas Territories affairs. But this is a deceptively specialized field engaging particular responsibilities and knowledge quite distinct from those in a typical diplomatic or mainstream public service career. It takes time, in my experience at least a year, for governors fully to command their roles. The typical 3-4 year posting period felt too short. Six years would make better use of the learning curve and there would I believe be merit in establishing overseas territories work as a distinct specialism or career “anchor” within the FCDO.
(ii) In my time as Governor, only one UK-based DFID officer, a generalist, was based with my office on Montserrat and for much of the time that role was vacant. With UK aid to Montserrat running at over £30 million per year and capital investment of a similar order, I felt this staffing level was deeply inadequate. In the hurricane zone and with a still-active volcano, Montserrat faced severe and complex infrastructural challenges, with power, sewage and water utilities parlous, transport connections tenuous and school and hospital buildings deteriorating. Dealing effectively with such challenges requires a stronger development expert presence on island, to understand the situation and ensure UK money is spent well to make lasting improvements. The posting to Montserrat of an infrastructure expert would make a big difference; and if crucial public sector reform is to make real progress a team of UK or external experts will be needed to help guide and implement it. The Governor, Deputy Governor and HR Department cannot do such radical reform on top of their day jobs.
(iii) On health matters, the FCDO and Department of Health gave crucial and generous support to Montserrat for local testing and vaccination programmes for Covid. But there were important but less prominent areas where support and understanding were less good. There has been long reluctance to conduct a review of the NHS quota system for the Overseas Territories. Under this system, Montserrat is allowed to send up to four patients per year to the UK for specialist medical treatment not available on island (cancer, diabetes etc). But this quota is widely held to be too low and there is inadequate provision for support with associated costs, such as accommodation and transport etc. Separately, as another example, I was unable to get clear, real time advice from the UK civil service on whether Montserrat’s emergency stock of volcanic dust face masks would be effective against Covid. I eventually got excellent advice from a UK expert at a university, advice which was crucial as Montserrat had no other masks available at that time, and the virus was spreading. I appreciate the huge pressures on civil service colleagues back in the UK at that time, but it did not seem that the UK ‘s responsibility for one of its Overseas Territories in this critical situation was fully appreciated. There was a similar impression in the difficulty we faced in getting the Department of Health and NHS to recognise Montserratian Covid vaccinations (using UK-supplied vaccine) for inclusion in official UK national patient records and entry requirements etc. This was eventually, happily, resolved, with the intervention of FCDO senior officials, but the challenge in doing so again illustrated a certain lack of awareness in parts of the UK public service of the UK’s obligations to our Overseas Territories and of the Territories’ unique situations.
(iv) The stretched interface between the Governor’s Office and UK public service also lay at the root of huge problems with the UK Government estate in Montserrat. The detail is not appropriate for this forum, but suffice to say that serious structural problems with the Governor’s Residence were not addressed until it had to be suddenly evacuated. Numerous, unsatisfactory, short term rentals of temporary accommodation followed, including at one stage myself, my wife and our two cats squeezing into a one room bed-sit to much local bemusement. Five years on I understand that a new Governor’s residence is still not ready. This dysfunctional and distant estate management has high financial costs for the UK, but also damages our country’s standing in Montserrat. The lesson is that much better UK estate management needs to be brought to bear in the UK’s Overseas Territories, with a clear risk-owner or stake-holder appointed and answerable in the UK government.
The UK Parliament seemed in general to have limited pro-active interest in Montserrat, perhaps inevitable given the huge range of contentious political issues on the UK parliamentary agenda. A small friendship group, however, was well-informed and appreciated. Closer relations would be of benefit to both the UK and Montserrat parliaments. Perhaps a high level debate on the OTs could be scheduled each year, or a parliamentary committee for the Overseas Territories formed, with parliamentarians from the Overseas Territories invited to join on some sort of rotating basis, to help enhance understanding of the respective challenges and constraints.
In my experience in Montserrat, the island’s own MPs mainly generated legislation themselves, with little consultation with the UK Government or Parliament. The exception was legislation in certain areas where new measures were required as part of a package for reforms supported by development funding eg procurement law. Consultation in these areas could be close and intricate, sometimes leading to frustration with long delays. On a few more sensitive issues planned legislation occasionally had to be suspended due to conflict with UK international obligations or positions being found at a relatively late stage in the process, but that was uncommon. My main concern was the lack of resourcing for rigorous, real-time “disallowance” checks by the UK on Montserratian legislation.
Montserrat was well-represented in the UK by its excellent London office. But there wasn’t the funding or perhaps depth of economic and tourism interests to set up offices elsewhere, other than the US. With the economy still recovering and re-booting after the volcanic eruptions and Covid, overseas representation is not I think a current high priority for the Montserrat Government or people.
This question is partly addressed by my answers to questions 1 and 2 above. Most fundamental rights are I believe reasonably robustly protected in Montserrat.
I did observe that the right of citizens in Montserrat to appeal Eastern Caribbean Supreme court rulings ultimately to the UK Privy Council, appeared to lead to some extraordinarily drawn out legal cases, often building tensions between the legal protagonists on island and creating a sense of inertia in the areas concerned. Some reform to reduce the scope for endless legal appeals on island would I believe help reduce the litigious tensions which can overshadow aspects of life on the island.
September 2023
[1] Andrew (Andy) Pearce, Governor of Montserrat from 2018 to 2022, now retired.