Wider economy can benefit from flexibility

But the some old problems and some new ones have emerged for a sector of our working community described today as ‘a hidden army of workers keeping the economy going’.

These are ‘the cleaners, gardeners, waiters, kitchen porters, shop assistants, delivery drivers who are generally not valued or are forgotten by society, and certainly not valued by population management policies and the UK visa system which we have, by default, had to adopt post-Brexit,’ says EasyClean’s Claire Archer on our front page today.

Issues with Guernsey’s historic, and very popular, nine months on – three months off arrangement date back to when the States initially attempted to scrap it with the introduction of the Population Management Law introduced in 2017.

An indefinite stay, as long as you subscribed to 9/3 was replaced by a short-term permit of a year, which could be extended to five years, but then the individual would have to leave the island. Sectors of industry represented by the Confederation of Guernsey Industry felt that it introduced unnecessary red tape and would be an impediment for doing business. It was soon reinstated.

Historic issues with the PML arise from time to time, but the major one is that, in this sector at least, the law was consulted on and drafted in an economic climate different to the one it was introduced into.

Flexibility introduced last year during Covid, has helped these sectors of the economy to get by, but now that is ending. Home Affairs is due to discuss a possible extension next week.

With additional Brexit and Covid costs, uncertainty, and inflationary pressures added into the mix, firms at the sharp end of this now face a real challenge.

They don’t seem to need much from government, merely flexibility, to be able to continue to contribute to the island economy.

But without that flexibility, just how much our island needs this ‘unvalued hidden army’ could become very apparent, very quickly.