He painted a dystopian picture of ‘locals leaving in droves because they could no longer afford to live in the island, while wealthy people sheltered behind high walls’, and warned there was a real danger of the island being ‘transformed from a community into a museum’.
Having trashed his amendments the previous evening, during debate there was a lot of praise for Deputy Goy, both for his energy, and for his efforts to come up with alternatives, but most States members felt unable to support a move which would lose the island’s exchequer a lot of money.
Deputy Marc Leadbeater was the first to point out that while the amendment would do away with a goods and services tax, social security reforms, and motoring taxes, it would still bring in a 15% income tax band at a cost of £28m. After corporate tax reforms, that would result in a net loss of £22m.
This was echoed by Deputy Sasha Kasantseva-Miller who accused some fellow members of ‘living in a world of social media, rather than the real world, where two and two equals four.’
That theme was taken up by Deputy Mark Helyar.
‘The cost pressures coming down the road are huge and largely unavoidable,' he said. 'To meet those costs will require some heavy lifting, not fiddling. Some of the comments on Facebook are just nonsense.
'The rising costs are down to things like pensions and healthcare costs, not having jollies or building something we don’t need’.
Deputy Jayne Ozanne said that she could not support the amendment because it did away with social security reforms which she believed would lead to a fairer system.
Fellow ESS member Deputy Ross Le Brun warned that without social security reforms, the island’s pension fund would run out.
P&R treasury lead Deputy Charles Parkinson struck a conciliatory tone. He assured Deputy Goy that a second phase of the tax review would commence in the autumn, and not only would Deputy Goy’s ideas be on the agenda but he would also be given the chance to present them.
Deputy Tina Bury said for her the whole tax debate was difficult because of the tensions between fairness and the need to balance the books. But she concluded: ‘I can’t support this amendment because it is simply not fiscally responsible.’
Deputy Haley Camp summed up the mood of most of her colleagues.
‘I commend Deputy Goy’s spirit, but I can’t vote for this amendment, because it will make us worse off, and it will make the people of Guernsey worse off.’
Responding to the debate on behalf of P&R, Deputy Yvonne Burford said she found it hard to believe that the States had taken so long debating a proposal to reduce States income by £22m. She warned it would inevitably lead to big cuts to critical committee budgets.
‘If you want to vote against GST, just do so at the end of the debate,’ she said.
Deputy Goy maintained that the losses concerning his colleagues would have been compensated for if the States had supported the other four amendments in his package, and the amendment lost by 30 votes to seven.