The States 'milk' leaves a sour taste in the mouth

Now, it was due to be debated last week, in a somewhat fanciful bit of scheduling by the Policy Council because anyone with an ounce of nous would have predicted the tax, pensions and benefits debate overshooting the four days put aside for it.

This bought C&E some breathing space to lobby hard to save its policy in the face of a sustained campaign from Sure in particular.

The department has rushed out a briefing note to deputies, including a frequently asked questions list, and also the responses to the consultation it has based its final report on.

For a department that is so vociferous when it perceives it sees others presenting inadequate States reports that lack in evidence, it has scored an own-goal on this one.

This States does not do communication with the outside that well. It also doesn't communicate within that brilliantly either.

The response to the 2013 consultation came from the telcos, the regulator, one prominent business and an anonymous member of the public.

Take from that that the man and woman in the street really did not engage with this at all, probably because it is about spectrum, something that really does not fire the imagination even if you do know what it is.

Now they are starting to take note, because the 2% tax on relevant profits will be passed on to consumers.

Some like to argue this is less than a pint of beer or half a litre of milk a month.

But it is about time the States stop to think about how much milk it is asking the public to buy nowadays.

PSD coined the milk analogy with its waste strategy to try and stave off critics about the costs of that.

This may all be good news for the dairy, but the drip-drip of extra charges, fees and rising taxes is adding up to a lot of milk for people living in Guernsey.

It is what mobilised the people so forcefully ahead of the emissions tax debate, well, that and an organised motor trade.

At every turn the States is looking to maximise its income, whether that is from planning fees, driving licence tests or mooring fees - the 'user pays' principle is there at every turn.

When the Public Accounts Committee finally reports on the financial transformation programme savings drive it should expose fully the amount of belt-tightening done compared to the increased charges to the public or to business.

It is easy politically for individual departments to keep coming back to the States with bids to raise extra cash to keep their pet projects in train, but it is also easy for the overall impact to be lost.

This was part of the argument against what was on the table with the tax, pensions and benefits review, the knowledge of how it would disproportionately hit different people in the community is just not there.

So it is all very well for politicians to argue it is just a litre of milk, and then come back a few months later with something else that is just a half litre of milk, but the totality of all this picking

the pocket of the public is something that, even if it is acknowledged in passing, is just not understood.

Rarely if at all does public scrutiny of the charging happen once the policy is implemented. It just becomes a go-to for a department, often with no recourse to the States, to keep raising charges as it sees fit.

If there is a review of whether the public is getting value for money, or just propping up inefficiency, the public do not get to see it.

It creates pressure too. If the user is paying, the user will expect a standard of service, if they then have to pay more, they would expect there to be improvements to that service.

One of the concerns with C&E's spectrum charge is that once agreed the department has carte blanche to raise it to any level it sees fit.

In its Q&A the department says it could always lower it too, a political answer if ever there was one.

It believes it is charging a business for using public property, but the reality is because it is such a blunt tool and has no way of stopping the telcos passing the charge on it is the public at large, whether young or old, that will pay

Indeed, in that way it is actually more far-reaching than a simple tax, because it potentially hits on a teenager as much as a businessman as much as a pensioner.

If anything comes of the spectrum tax debate it should be a thorough review of the levels of charges being levied by the States and how they have grown over the last few administrations.

That big picture would make fascinating reading for when this or any other Assembly comes back to the public for more money.

Because it will. The demographics, rising health costs, make this inevitable.

Put that alongside the rising staff cost data which has been exposed recently, and then we might all really know if the crowing about efficiency is worthy or not.