Cut cost of government not the OAP

At a stroke, a senior member of the Policy Council has demonstrated the intellectual paucity of government's response to living within its means.

Faced with making up a shortfall in the old age pension that deputies created by meddling with a carefully-crafted package of proposals from Social Services, the Commerce and Employment minister's instinctive reaction is to attack a soft target.

Take it off the pensioners, she says, in an attack on some of the island's least well off that is as poorly thought out as it is insensitive.

It also shows how out of touch she, and possibly the department she heads, is with wider States strategy.

Thousands have been invested in identifying the problems caused here by relative poverty and in highlighting how some of the single over-65s are in actual poverty.

It may be that the minister's remarks were meant as support for the business community – saving half a percent social security contribution per employee is worthwhile in the current climate.

However, if the minister was really wedded to easing the burdens facing commerce, she could call off her army of bureaucrats determined to regulate business into some sort of utopian model that exists only in the minds of those who have no commercial experience.

If the minister is really concerned about the cost to the community there are other ways of tackling that, too.

Social Services was trying to raise about £5m. to keep the OAP afloat yet the Policy Council cheerfully supported throwing £7m. into the ludicrously expensive civil and public sector scheme – and there will be more needed still.

This newspaper asked Social Services last week what it would cost to provide ordinary islanders with an equivalent civil service pension. There was a stunned silence and an intake of breath. After a pause and some quick calculations, the response: at least three times more, around 30% of salary.

So taxpayers fund an unaffordable scheme for a privileged few but find their own £170 a week OAP under threat as too generous.

Instead of trying to make OAPs poorer, the minister and her colleagues really should concentrate on making the States cheaper.