TRP debate: This form of ‘executive manipulation’ must be resisted

The proposal includes three proposed changes to the system for charging TRP on residential property. The first is to increase the rate of charge by more than the rate of inflation (2.5%) to 10%. The second is to seek to introduce yet higher rates of charges, on top of this, for larger residential properties, by introducing the principle of a tiered, or ‘banded’ system of higher premium rates for such larger properties. The third is to begin to implement such a change of principle by imposing the highest proposed premium, immediately, only on the very largest properties, with the introduction of the intermediate band increases to come only ‘later’.

While the proposal to change the increase in the TRP rate generally to make it more than the rate of inflation may not be fundamentally objectionable, the second and, in particular, the third changes most certainly are.

TRP in Guernsey has always been based simply on the size of the taxpayer’s buildings, and it is already progressive in that sense. The system does not take account of the actual value of the property, which would be a different system entirely, and far more complicated, expensive and contentious to administer. If it is accepted that the policy of progressiveness with regard to TRP is appropriately based on the simple measure of size, which is perfectly reasonable, then the addition of yet further premiums based on size is both unnecessary and invidious.

However, even if it were thought to be an appropriate policy to make people who owned larger residential properties in effect pay TRP twice over to some extent, then it is wholly wrong and unfair to introduce this by a sudden introduction of the 60% top ‘premium’ rate on the small number of the largest houses. The effect of this premium, added to the proposed 10% increase in the basic rate, would virtually double the TRP paid by this small number of homeowners. The proper course would, on any basis, be to introduce the lowest banding increase first, and add the higher banding increases, incrementally, over subsequent years until the highest band had been introduced. The proposal to introduce the highest band first is flawed as a matter of appropriate government process, but, worse still, raises the suspicion that, in practice, the proposal to introduce the immediate bandings will never be implemented, thus simply, and unfairly, penalising those with the largest properties, in a purely populist move.

The worst flaw in the Budget proposals, though, is that they ‘roll up’ the inclusion of all these three different types of change into a single proposition, such that a vote in favour has to support all three. There is no opportunity given to States members to consider each of these, entirely different, kinds of change and vote on them separately, as there should be. This ‘rolling up’ is a common form of executive manipulation and it should be resisted. The only way in which States members can now do this, and show their objection to being corralled in this fashion, is therefore to reject the whole package of the proposal and to vote in favour of Amendment No. 3 (de Lisle and Paint) to the TRP proposal. I very much hope, in the spirit of fairness, that they will do so.

HARVEY MARSHALL,

St Saviour’s.

Note: See today’s In the States page for news of yesterday’s debate on TRP.