Deputy Garry Collins arranged a private meeting for deputies on Friday where 32 members attended, including four members of P&R.
He said it was clear from the meeting's feedback that the senior committee was struggling to secure support for its package, with its new headline 3% goods and services tax.
Deputy Collins has his own package which he has almost completed drawing up and he said he expected there to be several other amendments raised, and probably an attempt to delay debate for further work to be done. The deadline for amendments to be submitted is Tuesday 7 July, a week before the States debate.
‘The package will be challenged heavily,’ he said.
He said that there was deep concern about the prospects for realising savings baked into P&R’s proposals and that the committee’s changes to the GST-plus package, approved by the previous States with a 5% GST, had created a situation of ‘all pain, no gain’ and had ‘alienated’ several political backers for a goods and services tax.
Deputy Collins said that the meeting ran out of time to discuss the plans in detail, having spent more than an hour discussing the potential for efficiency savings. He has arranged a follow-up meeting for deputies on Friday 10 July, and in the meantime P&R will face a busy week.
It has been called to face the Scrutiny Management Committee on the morning of Monday 6 July and later that day is heading to Alderney to present its proposals again.
Deputy Collins said that there was some disquiet that the committee was focusing on Alderney while not staging a public meeting in Guernsey.
‘They are really not bringing the public along with them on this journey and we can see that people are getting angry,’ he said.
Scrutiny Committee president Andy Sloan said that with the tax reform proposals only presented earlier this month, his committee considered it important ‘and part of our public duty’ to hold a public hearing to examine the proposals.
Deputy Sloan said that people had asked for more scrutiny of the proposals.
‘The hearing will provide an opportunity to explore the evidence underpinning the proposals, test the assumptions that have been made and help both deputies and the wider public better understand the issues before the Assembly is asked to make its decision.’
P&R member Deputy Yvonne Burford, a former Scrutiny president, said on social media that she was happy to take part in the hearing that she was ‘more than a little surprised’ that only one principal committee has been called before Scrutiny in a year.
‘I am baffled by the committee’s seeming lack of interest in high-spending committees,’ she said, though the move was defended by Scrutiny member Deputy Haley Camp.