They voted for an amendment last week which proposed stripping £27m. out of the States’ 2026 Budget, including reducing Health & Social Care’s cash limit by nearly £9m.
But committees on which they sit as members had earlier made inflation-busting bids for an additional £8m. on top of their 2025 budgets.
Three of the six deputies – Andrew Niles, Lee Van Katwyk and Haley Camp – sit on Economic Development, which asked for an additional £1.7m., an increase four times greater than the rate of inflation.
The other three – David Dorrity, Bruno Kay-Mouat and Simon Vermeulen – sit on Housing, Environment & Infrastructure and Home Affairs respectively, which claimed they needed between £950,000 and £3.7m. more than last year, increases about three times the rate of inflation.
Deputies Dorrity and Van Katwyk said over the weekend that they had only a partial picture of public finances when asked to sign off their committees’ budget submissions in August.
‘At a P&R budget update on 26 September, we began to get an understanding of how the individual committees’ budgets fitted together, and on 6 October we received a copy of the States’ 2026 budget document, which is when the full picture and dire position of finances became clear,’ said Deputy Dorrity.
He claimed the island was ‘living far beyond its means’ and that hard decisions were needed to deal with a growing deficit in public finances which ‘will not be solved simply by sacking a handful of civil servants’.
Deputy Van Katwyk claimed it was also a problem that committees developed budget submissions separately.
‘Until we have submitted, each committee has little to no idea what the overall budget request from P&R looks like,’ he said.
‘When I saw the tens of millions of pounds of overspending, looked into how P&R was planning to borrow hundreds of millions of pounds and began to understand better the precarious nature of our potential Pillar II receipts, the full shock of the overall picture hit.’
Deputy Van Katwyk said he was now preparing ‘to make the case for cuts’ within his own committee’s budget.
Deputy Niles, the vice-president of Economic Development, said it would be wrong to discuss the matter publicly, and no response was received in time for publication from Deputies Camp, Kay-Mouat or Vermeulen.
The Guernsey Press asked P&R treasury lead Gavin St Pier to disclose all committees’ overall funding requests the day after the 2026 Budget was approved by the States Assembly.
‘A number of members vigorously made the case behind closed doors to P&R on behalf of their committees for cash limits above those originally suggested by P&R, before claiming they were in favour of spending cuts on the floor of the Assembly,’ said Deputy St Pier.
‘It is disappointing in politics but not particularly surprising.’
P&R turned down about £13m. of additional funding requested by committees, but the final Budget still included an increase in overall expenditure slightly above the expected rate of inflation.
P&R president Lindsay de Sausmarez said committees had worked together to strike a balance between necessary funding and financial restraint.
‘Given the very real increases in demand for public services within the community, this Budget containing increases to just 0.4% in real terms speaks to the volume of requests we had to turn down,’ said Deputy de Sausmarez.
‘I’m encouraged by the desire expressed by quite a few deputies in debate to find genuine efficiencies, something every committee seems keen to do.’
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