Deputy Andy Sloan, the president of the Scrutiny Management Committee, but speaking personally, said that the committee was ‘playing a very artful political process’ in maintaining that ‘no stone would be left unturned’ in pursuing alternatives to the already-approved GST-plus tax package.
And he said that political colleagues who rejected a bid to cut spending that he made at last year’s Budget debate had missed a chance to ‘stop the juggernaut’. He said it suited many to go along with the ‘pretence’ that alternative options were being pursued.
Deputy Sloan said that he personally was in favour of a goods and services tax, but feels the public are being ‘let down’ because the States has not done enough to rein in spending.
He said that the commitment to look to make a 1% cut in public expenditure was ‘a jackanory’.
‘It’s another placebo to pretend that something has been done. Organisations don’t make 1% efficiency savings, they make 5% spending cuts or spending freezes. The 1% is just a lift from the propaganda of the Forward Guernsey manifesto.'
Deputy Sloan also dismissed the idea that fairer transport taxes would make any significant difference to Guernsey’s public finances, saying they were ‘pie in the sky’.
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