Chairman of the Ethics Committee in Anguilla, retired OECS Judge, Don Mitchell, says the three-member body appointed during the time of Governor Alan Huckle does not have the power to do an effective job and is therefore weak and pointless.
“The Public Service Integrity Board was established under the Public Service Integrity Act.

Mr. Don Mitchell, QC, CBE

It has very limited power – in fact it has no power at all,” he told The Anguillian. “It is only an Advisory Board which advises the Governor only on those matters that he chooses to send to it. If the Governor doesn’t send anything to the Public Service Integrity Board, then it has no work to do. It is a very weak, ineffectual and pointless Board.

“Pastor Cecil Richardson, Allister Richardson (retired Permanent Secretary) and myself are the three members and we have recently been re-appointed and have agreed to serve for another two years. This is the last two years that I will be willing to serve on it because I consider it is not a proper Ethics Committee. It is not a fruitful organisation. We cannot use it to improve the Public Service of Anguilla. We need fundamental legal reform in the area of ethics before Anguilla can begin to show significant improvement in that area.”

Mr. Mitchell is known for his candid and independent views not just now as a private citizen, website operator/writer and social commentator, but as a former Bench Judge of the Supreme Court of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States.

He was asked how proactive he and his colleagues could be in making the Public Service Integrity Board more effective.

“We can be proactive only as private citizens, not as a body,” he replied. “The law is very strict on what the Board can do; and so, as a Board, we only have the power to wait until the Governor sends us something. The Board cannot have members of the public bring anything to our attention if we, as individuals, discover some unethical issue. We cannot deal with it. We have to wait until the Governor sends it to us. As private citizens, we can ask the Governor to send something to the Board but he does not have to follow that recommendation.”

Mr. Mitchell was asked why he had established his private website. “It is the result of the frustration that I felt as a citizen at the lack of interest and activity being shown by the leaders of Anguilla in matters related to ethics in public life, “he responded. “I get about 50 visits a day so I think that is really quite good. I publish a new article dealing with ethical issues in Anguilla every other day.”

He explained that many people in Anguilla send him emails, telephone him or meet him on the street and ask him to investigate certain matters that they know about. “There are hundreds of ethical issues in Anguilla that people are not addressing. We are just sweeping the dirt under the carpet and ignoring the real issues that we need to be addressing in all areas of our society,” he lamented.

On another matter, Mr. Mitchell said that with all the available electronic and print media in Anguilla the Government could be doing quite a lot more to keep the people properly informed.

“Do you realise that in St. Helena, for instance, Executive Council meetings are held in public?” he continued. “Not all the public, but the press is invited to the meetings and every time there is an Executive Council, a summary is published in the newspapers about what were all the topics discussed and how they were decided. Of course, there are also private sessions of Executive Council. If they are discussing something like a national security issue, that is dealt with in private but all the development issues and projects that are starting up in Anguilla – everything to do with the economic future of the island - could be dealt with in public.

“The matter, for example of changing the Constitution in order to put in a little provision for a Police Service Commission, had nothing confidential about it. If the Government of Anguilla decided to hold the biggest part of its Executive Council meetings in public (meaning that the press were invited), then this [proposed amendment] would have come out into the public long ago and there would have been no crisis. Government didn’t need to have a crisis. It happened because there is no public information about what Executive Council does.”

In the past Government had undertaken to provide weekly press reports on decisions taken by Executive Council, but this only now happens occasionally and far in between.

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