Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party

We are the oldest active political party in Gibraltar. You will find in our about us page information of how we came into existence, of our trade union roots, of our involvement in the struggle for self-determination and decolonisation, and of our participation in raising the standard of living of our people.

The defense of Gibraltar and its people and the achievement of a secure political and economic future for our country has been the guiding light of our philosophy throughout our existence.

We hope you will enjoy finding out more about us, about our history, our country and our people.

I extend a warm welcome to all visitors to our site, but especially to fellow socialist the world over and to friends of Gibraltar of all ideological persuasions.

Contact us, and give us your views and ideas on anything to do with Gibraltar or with the way ahead as socialist.

Fraternal Greetings to you all.

Joe Bossano “Party Leader”

The Government is once again trying to cloud the issue and mislead the public over the reasons why it took a policy decision to deny information to Parliament about the payments outstanding from Andalus airlines. The central point is that the Government has readily supplied this information in the past that it is only now that it is refusing to do so.

The Opposition has no interest in the tax affairs of thousands of ordinary citizens or of hundreds of companies where there is no public interest issue at stake. The difference between these ordinary cases and Andalus airlines is that there is a clear public interest in monitoring the payments due because there is public money involved in the operation. In terms of revenue, there is the landing charges and the passenger tax that has to be paid and in terms of expenditure there is the £50,000 marketing subsidy which the airline was supposed to match, the free overnight parking that it has received and the cost of the airport bus service to ferry passengers to and from La Linea.

It is the duty of the Opposition to monitor the extent to which public money and the non-payment of dues on time is keeping this venture afloat because this could amount to an indirect, hidden subsidy of the operation.

The Government told Parliament in October in answer to questions from Shadow Minister for Civil Aviation Dr Joseph Garcia that the airline had not paid any landing charges at all since they started flying to Madrid in April 2009, but that since the answer to the question had been drafted they had paid April and May. They also informed Parliament that an agreement had been entered into to repay the arrears. It is logical, given that this information was supplied in October, that at the next question-time four months later Dr Garcia should seek to establish the position at this time.

That the Government should say that good Governments simply do not act in this way is nothing more that a transparent and self-serving excuse to deny the information requested. Indeed, if it is not good Government to behave in that way then it begs the question as to why the present GSD Government have supplied such information in the past and not only about airlines.

Moreover, it is totally absurd for the Government to claim that they have no policy interest to protect in the case of Andalus airlines. They have a £50 million new air terminal building which they expect to open this year and which they hoped would eventually pay for itself through increased use by airlines. This decision to relocate the air terminal and construct a new one on the basis of increased use is a glaringly obvious policy interest that they will want to protect particularly in the run-up to a general election. It will be recalled that Easyjet has already announced that its summer schedule will be cut by about 50% from what it was last year. In this context, the last thing the Government will want is for the Andalus operation to collapse or to be reduced as well.

Commenting on the matter, Shadow Minister with responsibility for Civil Aviation Dr Joseph Garcia said:

“It is therefore in the political interests of the Government that Andalus should continue to fly to Gibraltar, even with low load factors, in view of the hugely expensive new air terminal building. In the absence of any other information, it can only be assumed that this the real reason why they have been allowed to accumulate arrears of passenger tax and landing charges and why the Government has this time refused to supply detailed information about the amounts due to the Parliament and the people of Gibraltar.”

Dr Joseph Garcia

The Opposition considers that the response from the Council of the European Union to Liberal Democrat MEP Graham Watson regarding the Guardia Civil incursion into Gibraltar last December confirms that it was an illegal act. This latest information only serves to underline the very serious nature of the incursion for which nobody was taken to court and tried.

It will be recalled that four civil guards entered the Port of Gibraltar and disembarked in the area of Harbour Views to continue chasing suspects on foot. They were detained by the Royal Gibraltar Police and taken New Mole House. The Spanish Interior Minister declared in Spain that he would do his utmost to ensure that the Civil Guards would not have to spend a night in Gibraltar away from their families. Mr Rubalcaba also telephoned Mr Caruana and after that conversation took place the Civil Guards were released in a couple of hours without being charged for any offence.

In his question, Mr Watson had asked the Council and the Commission of the EU to condemn this “illegal act” and whether they agreed that cross-border pursuits require clear procedures “so that Member States’ sovereignty is not infringed.” The Commission has not yet replied. However, the Council, of which Spain has the rotating presidency, has said that it was not informed of the Guardia Civil’s intervention in Gibraltar. It is obvious that the Council was not informed because the United Kingdom chose not to complain.

The response from the European Union also says that the “legal basis can be Article 41 of the 1990 Schengen Convention, Article 20 of the Naples II Convention (which is limited to infringements of customs provisions) or bilateral agreements.” Given that Article 41 of the Schegnen Convention does not apply to Gibraltar and that Article 20 of the Naples II Convention does not apply either, it therefore follows that there is no legal basis for the incursion and that therefore it had to be an illegal act.

Therefore the claims made by politicians in Spain that the act was covered by international obligations in relation to hot-pursuit of suspects is complete nonsense, given that those specific international obligations do not apply to Gibraltar. Moreover, this latest information will only serve to fuel the angry reaction which existed at the time at the fact that those who invaded our Port and our land were then let off scot-free as if nothing had happened.

MEP Graham Watson

The Government is keeping information from Parliament and from the public in order to hide the shortcomings of their policies and in this way protect their own political interests. Their refusal, for example, to supply precise information on the amounts due by Andalus airlines in respect of landing charges and passenger tax can only lead to the conclusion that Government have something to hide. Indeed, there are grounds for believing that an indirect subsidy is being provided to the airline by allowing them to delay these payments.

The Opposition clearly has a particular interest in monitoring the performance of Andalus airlines given that there is public money indirectly involved in the operation, both revenue and expenditure. This takes the form of the landing charges, the passenger tax, the £50,000 marketing subsidy, free overnight parking and the use of the airport bus to ferry passengers to and from La Linea.

Commercial airlines landing at Gibraltar airport are charged depending on their Maximum Take-Off Weight (MTOW) which can vary if different types of aircraft are used. Parliament was told last year that until then Andalus had been charged £106.20 or £111.51 or £116.82 for each landing. The Government have had no difficulty in providing the amounts outstanding in landing fee charges by this and other airlines in the past. In October Parliament was told that Andalus had not paid any landing charges at all since they started flying in April, but that they had settled the amounts for April and May since the answer to the question in the House had been drafted. The Government added at the time that repayments had been agreed with Terminal Management in order to bring the payment of these fees up to date. It was also pointed out to the airline at the time that they had to keep up with their monthly payments even though this strict system of paying on time was not the one that they were used to in Spain.

At the last meeting of Parliament, Shadow Minister for Civil Aviation Dr Joseph Garcia tabled another question in order to follow-up the information on the matter that the Government had supplied last year. Dr Garcia was told that the Government “no longer considers it appropriate to provide details of sums due” by named commercial entities. The Government did advise that a total of £247,510 was owed in departure tax by all the commercial airlines that used Gibraltar airport and a total of £88,496.09 was outstanding in landing and parking fees. When pressed further, the Minister with responsibility for Civil Aviation provided a breakdown of these figures by airline without identifying the name of each carrier. However, he hinted that Andalus were still not up to date in respect of the payment of landing charges or passenger tax.

Commenting on the matter, Shadow Minister for Civil Aviation Dr Joseph Garcia said:

“The Government have now taken a policy decision to deny updated information to the Parliament and to the people of Gibraltar because it is not in their narrow, partisan political interests to provide this information, even though it has been given in the past. The plain fact is that they do not want the Opposition to use the data which they supply against them in the run up to a general election, particularly when this data may expose the shortcomings of their policies. This denial of information to suit their own party political ends is totally unacceptable.”

Dr Joseph Garcia

The Opposition has taken time to consider the position paper issued by the GSD government on the future of GBC.  

In order to ensure that the Opposition’s reaction was accurate, this press release has not been issued until after the answers in the Parliament to the questions set down by the Leader of the Opposition and followed up by the Spokesperson for Broadcasting (Mr Picardo) on this subject.

NON-PUBLICATION OF REPORT

The Opposition condemns the GSD Government for refusing to publish the full report into GBC prepared by Allan King. This report has cost the taxpayer £50,000 and should be made public so that everyone in Gibraltar can then make a judgement over whether the recommendations extracted by the Government, are the best solution for GBC or not. Similarly, the Audience Survey which was carried out some 14 months ago (which cost an additional £70,000) and which is referred to in the King Report should also be made public.

The Opposition believes that it is an insult to the democratic process that this report commissioned by the Government and paid for by the taxpayer should remain secret, when the implementation of it will require further public spending. It was indeed shameful to listen to Joe Holliday in Parliament insisting the Government will not make the report available even to the present Board of GBC or to the employees of the Corporation, but not offering any reason or explanation whatsoever for this decision.

LOOKING FOR SCAPEGOATS

On the basis of the recommendations of the Government alone, the Opposition cannot be in a position to gauge whether what is being recommended is the best way forward. What certainly can be said is that some of those recommendations are not new and have been raised by the staff side with management on innumerable occasions and that nothing ever happened. We believe that there is enough talent and professionalism within the Corporation for it to develop if the resources to do this are made available, and that it is wrong for the Government’s position paper to make references such as there being some “deadwood” within the staff, or refer to a “job for life” culture to try and find scapegoats for the shortcomings of GBC. Furthermore, the Opposition fails to understand why the Government refer to the salary structure at GBC being analogued to the BBC in UK, but then they refuse to say in Parliament which posts they refer to. We take note that in a recent Viewpoint programme on GBC, the present Acting General Manager, Mr Stephen Cumming, said that there was presently no one in post who enjoyed an analogue with BBC pay grade equivalent and that this had already been the case for the past 6 years!  This explains why Mr Holliday refused to provide in Parliament any answers to the questions from the Leader Opposition on how many posts were analogued to BBC grades.

ROTATING MANAGEMENT

The Government, in its wisdom, decided three years ago to recommend to the Board of GBC that it should not replace the outgoing General Manager and to keep a rotating management at the top whilst it Commissioned and studied the King Report. Despite this being a manifestly bad move for GBC, the Board accepted the recommendation.  This temporary rotating management has regrettably contributed to the decline in the recent fortunes of the Corporation since there could be no proper leadership provided under those circumstances and even trivial decisions have had to be referred to the Board. We believe that this state of limbo at GBC has had a detrimental effect and that the Government cannot shirk its responsibility for this since they have been dragging their feet in coming up with this position paper which they now say will take some years to implement.

TECHNOLOGICAL UPDATE

There is definitely a need to bring GBC into the 21^st century, technologically. Moving to digital is now an international requirement and is long overdue. We did not need a report to tell us this since even small TV stations on the other side of the frontier have gone digital. What the recommendations do not say is what the initial infrastructural cost will amount to or the kind of increase to the annual subsidy that the Government is thinking of. Without this information being made available there is no General Manager or Chief Executive that can prepare a comprehensive business plan on the way forward.

INDEPENDENCE OF GBC

The Opposition also considers that the recommendations of the Government fail to address a highly important matter which is of concern to a wide range of people; the independence of GBC. We believe that it is time for the method of appointment to the Board to be changed and that a more representative system be introduced to ensure that there is no de facto ability for any Government to control the Corporation. The proposal at present is for the Government to continue to appoint the new proposed Board of Governors and this is unacceptable to the Opposition. There have been recent instances, since the GSD came to power, where this matter has manifested itself; the coverage of the referendum over the New Constitution and the coverage of the interventions of the Leader of the Opposition at the UN when the Chief Minister has chosen not to go. These are not theoretical issues but actually very real issues affecting the journalistic output of the Corporation and therefore the quality of our democracy.

In fact it could not be clearer that the GSD government seeks to control the Board of GBC than by the way that Mr Caruana has more or less told the Board of GBC that it should appoint Mr Alan King as its first CEO when that post is created. Although the Chief Minister has not said so in so many words, the statement he made in an interview with Stephen Neish was to the effect that he expected the Board of GBC to do as he said.  His exact words were as follows:

“I mean the government does not chose the chief executive officer of GBC, that is a matter for its board, the government is making a proposal to the board of GBC which I hope the GBC board will favourably consider in the context that the proposals is made, in other words, as an essential part of the implementation of this change.”                                                        

Moreover the Chief Minister made clear in the Parliament that in respect of the Board of GBC, he more or less expected them to do as he / the GSD government required.   In an exchange in Parliament, in supplementary questions and answers to Question 256 of 2009, Mr Caruana said the following:

HON J J BOSSANO:

…So what the Chief Minister is confirming is that, in fact, obviously the Government think the Board is sensible if the Board say yes to what the Government want.  But independent of that, is he confirming that the Board is free to take a different view even though the Government might not consider it sensible?  I am asking specifically whether there is that freedom of action available to the Board of GBC?

HON CHIEF MINISTER:

Strictly speaking, yes.  Now, I do not suppose it is any different than it was in his days.  The Board of GBC that looks to the Government, and indeed they might cease to exist, because there is no guarantee that the new GBC will have a Board of the sort that it has now.  But the Board of GBC, who support the Government’s initiative in a review and restructure and a reform of GBC, is sensibly and, despite having autonomies secured to it by statute, nevertheless does not wish to impede what is the full extent and scope of the possible reform of GBC.  Therefore, the Government are in the driving seat of the future shape of GBC.  Not least because it will require legislation that will need to be brought to this House, and because it all has to be funded by the Government, and therefore, there is editorial independence by GBC, perhaps more than there has ever been in the past.  But that does not mean that the Government are uninvolved in the resourcing, in the financial and in the reform aspects of GBC, just as happens in the UK with the BBC and in Spain with state-owned television channels.  So the answer is that if the Board of GBC were suddenly to decide to ignore the Government’s advice and proceed, it would be a regrettable measure which will certainly not help the reform of GBC and the Government do not expect it to do so…

COMMENTS

Opposition Spokesman for Broadcasting, Fabian Picardo, had this to say:

“It is an affront to the principles of parliamentary democracy that the Government should commission this report with public money and then refuse to put these into the public domain despite the requirement that more public money be expended in its implementation.  The Opposition cannot, under these circumstances make a reasoned judgement over whether what is being proposed, as a package, is the best way forward for GBC because we haven’t got all the facts at our disposal as the Government have. There are certainly aspects of the recommendations which we object to and which we think have a political orientation or objective; that there should be an attempt to pin the blame of past shortcomings at GBC on the staff; that it should give the impression that GBC should move towards a more commercial environment when the opposite is true; that a perception is created that no-one was aware of the leaps in technology needed until Allan King came along and that the recommendations do nothing to safeguard the independence of the Corporation and leave themselves open to the control of the Corporation by the Government. The GSD Government is addressing the issues of GBC as it does everything else, trying to steamroll its own policies without concern to the views of others and keeping vital information away from the public to limit the criticism that can be made of their own recommendations. It is a shameful state of affairs because GBC is the public broadcaster and should be answerable to the community; it does not belong to Peter Caruana and should not be solely accountable to him or his Government. In order to increase that accountability, we make a positive commitment now that in Government we will publish the King Report in its entirety.”

The Opposition welcomes the call by the Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon for a pragmatic and realistic approach to the decolonisation of the territories remaining on the UN list taking into account the specific circumstances of each. These comments were made in an address to the organisational meeting of the UN Committee of 24.

The Secretary General also told the Committee that it was crucial for the administering powers to work with the people of the Territories under their administration in order to generate further momentum for self-determination. He called for creative solutions for the remaining colonies on the list if the United Nations was to fulfil its obligations in supporting the legitimate aspirations of the people of these territories.

This call for a case by case approach was repeated by the new Chairman of the Committee of 24 Donatus Keith St Aimee from St Lucia. He declared that there was a “crucial need” to generate new momentum so as to ensure the 16 remaining Territories would be able to exercise their right to self-determination. Gibraltar is one of the 16 territories listed as a colony.

The call by the UN Secretary General for decolonisation to take into account the specific circumstances of each territory carries with it echoes of the so-called 4^th option for decolonisation which provides for a tailor-made solution for the decolonisation of a colonial territory. It will be recalled that the origins of the 2006 Constitution were based on the premise that it would lead to the decolonisation of Gibraltar in this way.

The Select Committee that drew up the draft proposals for negotiation with the United Kingdom “felt that the people of Gibraltar should achieve decolonisation by electing, as is reflected in the proposed reformed Constitution, the so-called ‘Fourth Option’, which has been identified by the United Nations as one of the acceptable ways of achieving this.”

The policy of the Opposition remains to engage the Committee of 24 in order to establish what changes, if any, need to be made to the 2006 Constitution in order to secure the removal of Gibraltar from the list. The comments made by the UN Secretary General and the new Chairman of the Committee are a step in the right direction and it is important that these words are now translated into action so that a new impetus is given to the issue.

Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon Committee of 24 Donatus Keith St Aimee

Committee of 24 Donatus Keith St Aimee

After today’s meeting of the Parliament for questions, Fabian Picardo commented as follows in respect of the Chief Minister’s refusal to answer question 440 of 2009 in respect of the killing of barbary macques:  “I am dismayed that the present Chief Minister has chosen, again, to turn the answer to question 440 of 2009 into a semantic circus in a clear bid to avoid providing the answer.   I really think that lowers the overall tone of the debate and is not what Question Time in a serious Parliament should be is about.   Mr Caruana has told Parliament that he is going to bring a motion to further the semantic argument  he wanted to provoke to avoid giving the answer to the question.   That will simply  further unnecessarily waste the time of all the community, in my view.  Nonetheless, if he feels that he has the time to waste on such issues, so be it.  I have researched my position and am confident of where I stand.  I would much rather see a Chief Minister of Gibraltar deal with the issues and defend the substance of his position in Parliament, where he is accountable, rather than see the display of hubris we have had to endure today.  Mr Caruana has clearly been in post for too long and the semblance of power he thinks he enjoys is going rather accutely to his head.”