Policy & Resources continued to see off the most far-reaching amendments it was facing as the Assembly threw out Garry Collins’ proposal to hold off on major tax reform while a temporary task force of deputies – known as an ‘appropriations committee’ – oversaw a fresh search for savings.
The States had previously set itself a savings target of £20m. a year, but no details have been published about where they will come from, and Deputy Collins said he wanted members ‘to go away and do some more homework’ on savings before voting on the GST-plus tax package.
‘This gives us more time. We have heard that every stone has been turned, but I don’t necessarily think all of us have gone to the beach and looked at the stones, let alone turned them over,’ he said.
Deputy Collins had offered to lead the temporary savings committee, which he said could ‘think the unthinkable’ if it was given a budget of up to £100,000 and until the end of 2028 to take a report to the States, but the idea was thrown out by 11 votes to 29.
Sasha Kazantseva-Miller pointed out that the amendment’s proposer and seconder, Haley Camp, had recently resigned their seats on principal committees where decisions were made all the time about budgets and savings.
‘Day-to-day work on efficiencies, savings and transformation has to come from those principal committees which deliver public services,’ she said.
‘When the States’ chief executive looked at the Revenue Service debacle, he said to all of us that he had engaged with staff who had so many ideas about what needed to be done, and what was required now was not another consultant or deputy or more ideas but execution, and this is where our focus should be.’
Deputy Kazantseva-Miller argued that the remit of the proposed appropriations committee was too wide and that directing it to produce a report just six months before the next general election would virtually guarantee inaction during the current States term.
She recalled that she had been involved on a savings sub-committee set up by a previous P&R. Deputy Marc Leadbeater later reminded the Assembly that when it consulted with the public most of the ideas received were about raising more revenue rather than cutting spending.
David Goy, supporting the amendment, questioned whether P&R and other existing committees could be left to find savings. Deputy Goy claimed there were ‘a lot of holes in this boat called States of Guernsey’, citing numerous IT fiascos and expenditure of £63m. on consultants over a recent four-year period as evidence of wasteful practices.
Deputy David Dorrity said the proposed appropriations committee was ‘an under-developed idea’ which would be no substitute for tax reform and raising revenue. Deputy Sally Rochester believed it would unnecessarily duplicate the work of existing committees.
Tom Rylatt asked deputies to imagine telling voters at last year’s general election that P&R would spend the next year conducting yet another tax review and a package of reform, supported by a voluminous policy letter, only for it to be discarded and a new committee set up with a two-year timeline to redesign government.
‘In all of that time, you won’t see a fairer tax system or any fundamental reform, things will remain the same, and you will have no guarantee that by the end of the process the States will even agree to do anything,’ said Deputy Rylatt. ‘It wouldn’t have been defensible at the election and I don’t think it’s defensible now.’
Deputy Marc Laine said that efficiency savings were available and that realising them required not a new appropriations committee, but rather an executive of senior civil servants with more support and greater authority.
Mark Helyar claimed that more voters would be prepared to support tax rises if they could see the States making meaningful savings, but he doubted that setting up a new committee would help.
‘The areas costing the government money are headcount, process that we don’t need, and unfortunately benefits,’ said Deputy Helyar.
‘You just say there are 10% fewer people next year. That’s the way to do it and it cuts £30m. out of the budget. That is what we have to do if we really want to cut costs. There is no way around this and no number of committees is going to make any difference.’
Deputy Camp believed that P&R’s tax review had asked the wrong questions and saw the amendment for an appropriations committee as a way to ask the right ones.
‘What should government actually be?’ she asked.
‘Until we answer that question we cannot know what government should cost, and until we know what government should cost we cannot accurately rely on assumptions as to funding gaps.
‘I have no great enthusiasm for creating another committee, but this amendment creates something our system currently lacks – a vehicle with an explicit, whole of government mandate to ask those fundamental questions before we ask taxpayers to contribute more.’
Seven of the 11 members who voted in favour of Deputy Collins’ amendment were among the 10 members who had voted for an earlier amendment which would have ruled out a goods and services tax.
How they voted
... on Deputy Garry Collins' amendment to set up a temporary committee to look for expenditure savings.
For (11): Deputies Camp, Collins, Curgenven, Gollop, Goy, Kay-Mouat, Matthews, McKenna, Vermeulen, and Alderney Representatives Hill and Snowdon.
Against (29): Deputies Blin, Burford, Bury, Cameron, de Sausmarez, Dorrity, Falla, Gabriel, Hansmann Rouxel, Helyar, Humphreys, Inder, Kazantseva-Miller, Laine, Le Brun, Leadbeater, Malik, Montague, Niles, Oswald, Ozanne, Parkinson, Rochester, Rylatt, Sloan, St Pier, Strachan, Van Katwyk and Williams.