The senior committee has insisted that it remains open-minded while reviewing other tax options, although it recently indicated that company tax reform, its main alternative, would raise less than half the revenue of GST-plus each year.
Andy Sloan claimed that an amendment to rule out GST-plus, which later lost decisively, was in reality a final chance to avoid it being the centrepiece of P&R’s new fiscal policy this summer.
‘I will be voting against the amendment. I’m in favour of GST. I have even gone on record as saying it will get to 10 or 15% and there is no point pretending otherwise,’ said Deputy Sloan.
‘Quite frankly, this is your last opportunity to vote against GST. Don’t kid yourselves. There is a political playbook at work. Don’t worry about the numbers, the maths is being done already, and it’s absolutely inevitable that the next decision will be “go or no go”, and if you’re against it you’ll be fiscally irresponsible.
'Don’t kid yourselves that there is another decision coming in the summer. It’s this week.’
Other supporters of GST-plus, who were elected or re-elected in July despite the general swing against candidates backing it, used the debate on Deputy Liam McKenna’s amendment to explain again why they saw it as unavoidable or beneficial to raise an estimated £50m. a year.
Neil Inder argued that putting off GST was doing nothing to stimulate much-needed economic growth, including in the hospitality and tourism sectors, where opposition has been particularly strong.
‘GST is a practical and broad-based way of funding the very things the hospitality sector relies on – transport, infrastructure, international connectivity, marketing and the public services which make Guernsey an attractive place,’ he said.
Pointing to estimates that visitors would pay about £7m. a year in GST, Deputy Inder said it was ‘neither fair nor sustainable’ to expect local residents alone to meet the rising costs of public services.
‘A modest, well-designed GST strengthens our public finances, protects essential services and allows us to invest in growth. Without money, we can’t invest in growth – it’s as simple as that,’ he said.
Andrew Niles, in arguably the stand-out speech of the day, spoke about public expectations of the state having been ‘completely transformed’ in recent decades without equivalent increases in tax.
He recalled his father, working soon after the Occupation, paying income tax at the same rate as today, 20p in the pound. But that tax did not buy universal healthcare entitlement, subsidised residential care, structured mental health services, long-term disability support or income support systems, he said.
Deputy Niles accepted that GST would not resolve all the island’s financial challenges but argued that the modern state could not be sustained without it.
‘Today we expect a fully-staffed hospital with specialist services, community mental service teams, residential and domiciliary care for the elderly, learning disability services, safeguarding, income support safety nets, long-term care, public health interventions, regulatory oversight and professional standards,’ he said.
‘Health and social care costs are rising not because of extravagance but because we live longer and because medicine advances and expectations are higher and dignity matters. We rightly refuse to return to a system where vulnerability is met with charity rather than structure.
‘But we cannot pretend that the social contract of 2026 can be funded from the tax base of 1950.’