A lack of political will hinders States savings

BUSINESS as usual can be a wasteful approach.

Without challenge and review, services can become bloated and inefficient.

This is why, despite the eye-watering costs, the States needs to indulge in exercises such as the recent review of Education, Sport & Culture and Home Affairs by PwC.

It has proven at times incapable of significant action without some outside eyes probing and outside hands pushing – they also give the staff a voice which might otherwise be muted by the politicians involved.

The problem is not so much with commissioning expert reviews but in the responses to them.

People really start to question the value if the recommendations are simply dismissed without explanation or allowed to gather dust until they are reborn by the next set of consultants, laughing as they would at the ease of repackaging someone else's work.

Home Affairs president Mary Lowe has already said this term that costs are cut to the bone.

It was a position contrary to what the committee's staff were indicating and contrary to what the PwC report – primarily based on the message from those same staff – tells us.

There are savings to be made in both the short and long term – but the immediate response to the report was less than reassuring and only reinforces the message that it can be the lack of political will that is the block.

One of the big savings is seen in merging Fire & Rescue and the ambulance service, some £600,000 every year.

It was summarily dismissed with very little explanation even before it was announced.

Try again for a detailed explanation, as I did last week, and the political response is just the same – i.e. that's what we've decided.

Is that open and transparent? Is that an explanation? No.

You can only hope that wasn't because the savings would not all appear in the Home Affairs purse, or it has been filed in the too-awkward pot by the boards.

It is important to remember that these ideas must, because of the way PwC works, have had support at a high level within the staff with expertise.

That is not to say it is right or wrong, just the public deserve a proper explanation so that it can be tested.

What consultants can do is shine a light on areas where others would prefer not to look.

Take the College of Further Education.

Its work has good standing in the community and among all the things that ESC is doing has flown under the radar.

But it comes out of the report as bloated and inefficient.

The estate, which, do not forget, Education has been keen to spend tens of millions on, is too big for its needs.

The cost per pupil is significantly more than that seen elsewhere.

It competes with the Guernsey Training Agency when there is no need.

The PwC report paints a picture of grants being paid out to other bodies without any real checks in place to ensure the money is well spent.

Both the £750,000 handed over to the GTA and the £474,000 in the apprenticeship scheme leave serious question marks. The former because a significant amount is simply building up in a back account helping subsidise courses for finance businesses that could easily afford to pay the market rate; the latter because apprentices spend too much time getting qualified, up to three times longer than elsewhere, and no account is taken of a business's ability to pay.

That type of handout and stimulus may have been OK in the times of plenty, but is it really OK when the States is coming back to the taxpayer for what will ultimately be an extra £13.3m. a year more just to keep the island running?

For the public it can be seen as a double blow as some of the main beneficiaries of this are the very same companies that benefit from a zero rate of corporation tax.

There should be no delay in investigating these opportunities further, not with the States already promising transformation – it would be short-sighted to mouth some platitudes and hope the public forget.

It was a shame that the PwC report lacked all the costings of these big hits because that would really have served to spark the public imagination and help create the environment for change.

How the two committees act now is legacy-making stuff. Health & Social Care, which has already been through a similar exercise, is seen as making progress and its standing in the public eye since the dark days of last term has risen.

There is a very real danger that Education spends this term wrapped up in the secondary education changes while other areas fall by the wayside.

Politically, Home Affairs projects the impression that it is unchallengeable and has the answers, a dangerous combination.

This is also where we see a test of the scrutiny function of the States.

That can be monitoring from the top by Policy & Resources, by the Scrutiny Management Committee, which can take a proactive interest in this, from fellow deputies by probing for updates and from the media and public.

We should all care because, ultimately, waste and inefficiency is covered by tax rises and charges.