‘It is high time we changed the way this island is run’

This is to a certain extent due to the lack of progress that has been made in so many areas during this States.

Before we look at the performance of deputies, we must remember that they are citizens of this island who have put their heads above the ramparts, and given up much of their time and family life in order to try to contribute towards the running of the islands. Through no fault of their own, many of them lack the high level of business experience needed for that role.

Some of the criticism directed towards them in the Press is fair, but a lot is also unfair. This is because the fundamental problem is that our system of government is at fault. It will continue to be at fault with future States until we have the courage to change the system. We are a very small island and the States tries to do too much governing at great cost to the taxpayer.

Until we change the way that this island is governed, there will never be any progress and things are likely to go from bad to worse.

The gross domestic product of Guernsey is roughly equivalent in size to a medium-sized public limited company. The islands should be professionally run as a legally established plc. That will require the hiring of a high quality chief executive who will almost certainly have to be recruited off-island and a high quality financial controller, who again will probably have to be recruited off-island.

Guernsey plc should be run for the benefit of its shareholders. This raises the valid question of just who are those shareholders?

It seems reasonable that these shareholders should be defined as the long-term residents of Guernsey. Obviously this should include local people who live on the island and non locally-born people who have been resident at least 10 years on the island, and only while they remain residents. The shareholding would not be tradable and would continually devolve to future long-term residents of the island as defined above.

Guernsey plc would assume the management and direction of all the divisions currently run by the States with their existing employees. Guernsey plc should have a board of directors, probably about 12 to 15, who would be directly elected by the Guernsey electorate, or the shareholders as defined above. The board of directors would be responsible to give the policy direction to the chief executive in accordance with the general wishes of the shareholders. The Guernsey folk are very canny and quite able to shoulder this responsibility and represent the views of the people who elected them. The chief executive should be mandated to run Guernsey plc at a long-term profit for the benefit of the long-term island residents and to build up a long-term rainy day fund for the islands.

As is the case in Switzerland, it should be possible to put any major and controversial decisions to the long-term residents of the island by referendum, which can these days be carried out electronically at low cost.

The expenditure of the islands must be strictly controlled. Everyone knows there are several large elephants in the room that no one seems to want to tackle. The first and foremost of those is the States employee pension scheme, which is simply not affordable in the long term.

There will just not be enough taxpayers in the future to pay for those pension commitments, which will largely have to be paid from direct taxation. This problem has to be addressed. It is particularly unfair as a large proportion of those taxpayers are from the private sector where there has been negligible pension provision.

The second, and important, elephant in the room is the future costs of care. With increasing life expectancy, there will simply not be enough taxpayers to pay for the ageing in future years. That problem also needs to be urgently addressed.

Thirdly, the social security system should be much more tightly controlled, with an underlying requirement for able-bodied people to work and pay tax. The social security system should exist to support people who are physically unable to earn a living and thereby require help from the Guernsey plc. Living on social security benefits should not be a lifestyle choice. There should be a requirement for people to actively seek employment if they are physically able to do so. It may be a cost-effective step for the Guernsey plc to provide a daily creche service for parents to enable them to look after their children during the day so that they can go out to work.

The principal efforts of Guernsey plc must be financial prudence. We are a small island and should not spend any money on foreign aid, unless the islands are running at a financial surplus and could afford to do so. Charity must begin at home and we should never pay overseas aid out of money borrowed at the cost of future generations. The Guernsey people are already generous givers to charity.

Likewise, Guernsey plc should be a follower, NOT a leader, in climate change activity and expenditure. Whatever we do on this island is going to make absolutely zero difference to world climate change and we should not spend borrowed money on trying to follow what the major countries do. That is financial stupidity. We should act responsibly, particularly when it comes to recycling and reducing plastic consumption. We should all aim to drive more efficient electric vehicles as they are ideally suited to the islands.

We should never consider imposing net carbon zero costs on this island. Those proposals are already likely to bankrupt the UK and other major countries that are trying to achieve carbon zero status.

The Guernsey housing stock is generally quite old and Victorian and would cost an exorbitant amount of money to bring it up to modern levels of energy efficiency. To try and follow the UK proposals to make landlords bring their properties up to a high level of thermal efficiency will just reduce the amount of rental properties available, which will create a far worse problem for the island. Likewise, we should not even consider banning wood burning stoves. They are a necessity and banning them would lead to civil unrest. People need, and have a right, to warm their homes.

Guernsey plc should completely stop the use of external consultants who have routinely been used to ‘kick the can down the road’ and, often, to produce the answers that the politicians want, at enormous cost to the taxpayer. We have a very large resource of retired business people on this island with considerable experience of various industries and their advice should be sought more frequently than it is at the moment.

Guernsey plc should actively reduce the role of government and reduce the headcount of States employees. And that would free up a lot of people to work in the hard-pressed hospitality sector and other industries on the island.

Guernsey plc should take a much stricter control on future population growth. A small island such as this cannot go on indefinitely building houses and increasing its population, or it will simply grind to a halt. Every increase in population puts more demand on medical, education and social services. It also puts more traffic on the roads, which are already at or above capacity. We must put a permanent cap on the island population.

This island has an appalling record of controlling cost overruns on major projects. As a maritime civil engineer, I have a detailed understanding of this problem. All major infrastructure works should be tendered and let as fixed lump sum projects. Quantity surveyors should be employed to control the cost and billing. No changes should be made during construction, unless at an agreed fixed price. Change orders are a licence to print money for the contractors.

There has been a great deal of heated debate about GST.

I am completely against GST, because, however small the starting rate, it will be just too tempting for States to just keep increasing it year after year. It will be treated as a dripping roast and prevent the imposition of the financial discipline that this island urgently needs.

We must have strict financial discipline and reduction of the States expenditure, headcount and pension costs. That will never happen as long as they have the GST tap to turn at will and at penal cost to all islanders.

We must be one of the only jurisdictions with a zero rate of corporation tax. Surely a 10% corporation tax would still be very competitive and unlikely to drive many companies away.

The best suggestion that I have seen is to levy charge a small fraction of 1% on the billions of pounds of funds under management on the island. The investors and fund managers enjoy an attractive and well regulated base for their operations with no corporation tax – their only contribution to the island is some local employment.

The fund managers generally charge about 1% a year for the funds under management. A levy of 0.03% would generate an annual income of about £100m. That would be unlikely to drive the industry away, but it would transform the finances of Guernsey.

• Ric Wharton is a businessman, maritime civil engineer and former chairman of Boatworks+.