OPINION: Expect the unexpected

THIS week’s States’ meeting, after question time and the obligatory half-yearly statements, this time from the Development & Planning Authority and the Committee for Employment & Social Security, will pick up a couple of the items – water pollution legislation and low value debt relief – deferred from the last meeting. These failed to be completed because of the extraordinary number of amendments laid against the draft discrimination legislation.

This meeting’s legislation requiring final approval is pretty limited and continues to be primarily driven by the buffing and polishing of the legislative framework that is part of the Bailiwick’s preparation for next year’s important Moneyval inspection. This is also the driver for a policy letter seeking yet more regulation, this time of accountants, auditors, insolvency practitioners and tax advisers.

Those shiny new deputies elected a mere two years ago whilst calling for a bonfire of regulation have all fallen curiously silent as these additional layers of red tape are drip fed into the States of Deliberation for approval. Indeed, nothing further has been heard of a ‘red tape audit’ and if there is a bonfire being piled up somewhere, it must be very small indeed and the matches to light it have been lost or got very damp.

The top (and only) prize for deregulation during this term remains with the Committee for Environment & Infrastructure for their work on easing-up the process for al fresco dining.

Aside from tweaking the double tax agreements with Qatar and Poland, which are unlikely to detain the Assembly for long, there are two main events.

The first is the annual policy letter from the Committee for Employment & Social Security in relation to social security contributions and the benefits to which we are entitled as a result of paying those contributions. These include unemployment, industrial injury, incapacity and sickness benefits, maternity and new-born allowances and long-term care, bereavement and death benefits. However, the most significant by far, is of course, the States pension payable on reaching retirement age. The committee is recommending that benefits increase by 7% in line with inflation. Contributions rates will continue their upward path too, in line with prior States’ decisions: employers will be paying an extra 0.1%, employees an extra 0.2% and the self-employed an extra 0.3%.

These proposals have received very little profile, will meet little opposition and are likely to be approved by substantial majorities. It is one of life’s truisms and mysteries that it is far easier for governments around the world, including in Guernsey, to hike up the amount extracted from their publics in social security contributions than it is to take the same sums from them in taxation. At the end of the day, it’s still a reduction on individuals’ spending power and businesses’ profitability, but so long as you call it a ‘contribution’ rather than a ‘tax’, few people push back.

The second key policy letter is from the Committee for Home Affairs entitled ‘Population and Immigration Policy Review’. The most eye-catching and controversial proposal is the first – to note that net migration will need to average an additional 300 a year over the next 30 years to sustain the island’s workforce at its 2020 levels.

Undoubtedly this item of business will consume the States’ time more than any other during this meeting, not least because it faces six amendments. These are being led by some combination of Deputies Soulsby, Haskins, Roffey, de Sausmarez and Kazantseva-Miller. There is of course still time for more to be laid, without the need for the rules to be suspended, which the Assembly too often agrees to do. Because this is a policy letter without legislation or direct financial implications, amendments do not need to be lodged a week before. This means that they can be lodged at any time, including during the middle of debate. This is not unknown and can ensure that the Assembly emerges with a decision that no one – least of all the public – was expecting on the back of a late-laid, half-cocked amendment as the debate evolves.

A recent substantive example of this was during last year’s harbours development debate, the implications of which are still not fully and properly understood. It is just at such times that the proverbial dog’s dinner (or breakfast, if you prefer) emerges.

Given that population policy is one of those touchstone subjects as controversial in Guernsey as paid parking, it is eminently possible that this debate could veer off in the direction of dogs’ dining, so I won’t attempt to predict what may emerge on this topic by the end of the week.