States, leave pensioners alone

The whole of this island is a disgrace and it has to change.

I remember in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, everyone was equal, happy, smiling, joking. But now I see people very unhappy, depressed, struggling, cutting back on their little luxuries. Guernsey had a good industry, tomatoes, flowers, farming, fishing, tourist attractions, then the banks came in and we thought ‘what a good thing’.

Now we have nothing to offer, it’s all gone. So the States have to put tax upon tax on us. I want an answer from Gavin St Pier; why are you targeting the pensioners who are struggling, you should be making life easier for us, but you don’t care, do you?

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED.

Editor’s footnote: Deputy Gavin St Pier, president of the Policy & Resources Committee, replies:

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to your correspondent’s letter. They feel passionately for our pensioners and our island. So do I. I do care. In every decision I make, every vote I cast, every policy I support, I am seeking to help make this island the best home it can be for all of us. In a fast-changing world with new, difficult challenges, making these decisions is never easy and there are rarely perfect solutions. But I would urge all islanders not to re-write history, and to think not on what we have lost, but what we have gained as a society in recent decades.

I admire your correspondent who says they have worked since the age of 14. But at the same time, we must see it as a step forward that we no longer expect our children to leave education and find work at 14. Our standards and expectations of what our education system provides have improved and we should be proud of that. Similarly the standards of healthcare, law and order, equality and support for our most vulnerable are all far better than that which Guernsey could offer in the 1950s or 1960s or 1970s.

Our life expectancy has increased. A child born today can expect to live 10 years longer than a child born in the 1960s. Diseases that would have been incurable then are routinely treated now. In some cases, like polio, we have not seen a single case in 60 years.

The support systems we have for the most vulnerable and most in need were to a large extent non-existent for most of the previous century.

Equality, while it needs to improve further still, has come an incredibly long way since the 50s. It is simply not accurate to say everyone was equal back then. Not if you were a woman. Not if you were gay. Not if you were from an ethnic minority. More of our young women go to university now, more are able to pursue their dream careers. We talk seriously about how to tackle discrimination and improve accessibility in a way that wasn’t even on the fringes of the political debate 60 years ago. Not only is being gay no longer illegal, same-sex couples can now marry with exactly the same rights as any other couple. Some may not like these changes and may think our society would be better if we could reverse them, but they are in a minority.

The changes we have seen are not all the work of the States, they are work of the whole community and, in some cases, the wider world. In some cases they are changes that we could not have avoided even if we had wanted to. The world is changing around us.

In some ways we lament change and I understand those feelings. We take pride in our heritage and can see how some of our traditional industries, such as growing and tourism, no longer play the same role in our society. These industries are still important to the fabric of our culture and we are not giving up on them. But we must recognise that they play a smaller role in our economy because Guernsey has had to react to dramatic changes in the world around us, such as the rise of low-cost flights to far-flung exotic destinations and competition from cheap importations of mass-produced fruit and veg. By welcoming new industries Guernsey has continued to not only survive, but to thrive. It was the generation before mine that spotted the opportunity the finance industry presented for Guernsey, and they rightly seized upon it, ensuring well-paid jobs, growth for our economy and investment in our community. And we need our economy to continue to evolve into new industries we may not yet have thought of.

I agree that those who have benefitted most from the business community’s success should be asked to contribute more to the island. In the last few years the States has reshaped the tax system to be more progressive so wealthier individuals contribute a greater share, while the vast majority of islanders take home more of their salary before income tax is applied. We are asking the owners of the largest properties to pay higher rates of TRP. Some of these properties are owned by pensioners, but the majority of home-owning pensioners have paid for their homes outright and are not faced with the mortgages costs of working-age families. We have also extended the scope of corporate tax so that the whole of the financial services industry is now taxed, raising an extra £11m. each and every year.

In this Budget, we are doing more to bring some equality to the tax allowances for working-age people and those who are retired. Pension-age taxpayers have had a better deal from our tax system historically. But age is not a reflection of a person’s income or ability to contribute, and some pensioners are in a far better financial position than many working-age people, so it is right and fair we bring in this balance. Indeed, Dr Allsopp, former local surgeon, recently commented that he wished the word ‘retirement’ could be removed from the English language. Older people do not want to be seen as a drain on society and the community should be optimistic about an ageing population.

It is right to take these steps, but what we cannot do is stop the world around us from changing. Our job is to continue to be vigilant of those changes that bring new challenges: our population is ageing; that is a good thing but of course it puts more pressure on health and care services. More of us need nursing and residential care in later life. There are more options out there for treating health problems and extending lives, but these come at a higher cost. There is no easy answer to these problems. As a society we need to ask ourselves what we want, be realistic about the cost, and then decide how we are prepared to pay for it. That is the debate which this Budget is rightly initiating.