Mark Helyar slammed States officials for continuing to create more jobs and invent unnecessary projects and regulations, despite facing a growing structural budget deficit estimated at nearly £80m. next year.
In a blistering speech during the 2026 Budget debate, he described proposals for further increases in spending and limited additional income as ‘an abdication of leadership’ and ‘surrender’ to a government machine which he portrayed as being out of control.
Listen to our Shorthand States round-up of this week’s Budget meeting
‘What is it about our worsening fiscal crisis that the public service doesn’t seem to understand?’ he said. ‘And why has it not filtered down to every level of our government that we are already trying to do too much, and we can’t afford to do any more?
‘I am afraid the answer is that we are passengers on a bus driven by bureaucratic inertia and departmental ambition.
‘The service, left with diffuse political direction, acts according to its own rhythm. Projects multiply, new and inessential services or regulations are invented, posts accumulate, costs rise, and every year the gap between what we spend and what we can afford grows uncontrollably wider.’
But Policy & Resources president Lindsay de Sausmarez has defended her committee’s first Budget and urged critics of public spending to be realistic and look more closely at financial pressures over the past two decades.
She told the Assembly that between 2004 and 2024, old age pension payments had risen from £55m. to £170m., long-term care costs had gone up from £8.2m. to £25.5m., and spending on health and social care had increased from £101m. to £242m. These items accounted for nearly half of all States expenditure.
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‘I know we’ve had a few comments about not just giving us demographics, but I’m trying to illustrate how absolutely material the demographics are to the cost pressures that we face on a day-to-day and year-to-year basis,’ said Deputy de Sausmarez.
‘If you look back over the past 10 years, and in light of that real and material increase on cost pressures, I think the States’ Budget has done well to increase only by an average of 1.1% in real terms.’
Deputy Helyar said P&R had been handed ‘the biggest hospital pass of all time’ by its predecessor and he commended the new senior committee for turning down more requests than they approved for additional cash next year.
Day-to-spending is expected to go up by inflation plus £8m. in 2026, a smaller annual increase than those recorded during Deputy Helyar’s period as treasury lead. He said that he feared that nobody would be able to stop the trend without extensive political and civil service reform.
‘When any of us tries to intervene, as we must continue to try to do, the system dissipates our efforts through endless working groups, consultations, watered- down initiatives, committee protectionism, self-interest and sometimes, I’m afraid to say, dubious and self-serving advice,’ he said.
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