What happened to the public’s ideas on bridging the financial shortfall?

P&R is, of course, attempting to wear down the voters (good plan), and pocket some of the swaying politicians (another good plan) to vote ‘Pour’ for that preferred plan.

What happened to the comments and diplomatically-invited suggestions from the public to bridge the financial shortfall that our ‘leaders’ asked us to submit? Will they be published? Were they considered? Were they only a public relations exercise?

Perhaps our deputies can let us all know what happened to our ideas and perhaps explain why not many of Phil Duquemin’s cost-cutting suggestions have been included in the mix.

Art Allen-O’Leary

Calveston

Les Frieteaux

St Martin’s

Deputy Dave Mahoney, Policy & Resources Committee member and chairman of the Reducing the Cost of Public Services Sub-Committee, responds:

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to your reader’s letter.

It is always interesting to see the focus of people’s thoughts. Of course the tenet of the letter could have been, ‘Oh no, here goes P&R again, trying to impose a lower rate of basic income tax on me, whilst attempting to increase my personal tax allowance, and introduce a new allowance for my social security payments’. I understand it is perhaps natural to focus on the bits that we don’t like, but to do so without looking at it in the round does nothing for an understanding of why. The island faces a problem that must be dealt with and P&R recognises that those on lower incomes should be protected from the effects of the introduction of a consumption tax. Hence the mitigations noted above. I would urge those with concerns to understand the whole package and not become fixated on the GST element. The package proposed under Option 3 makes for a fairer deal for those on lower income and at the same time raises more money from wealthier islanders, visitors, and corporate entities.

Turning to the cost savings and the survey, I will shortly be giving a longer update in the Guernsey Press in which I will go into some detail, but in brief – far from being a PR exercise, the many suggestions have been very useful for the sub-committee and we were delighted to have received so many. Given the number of suggestions, it naturally takes some time to properly analyse everything, and officers have been working on this since the survey closed. P&R aims to bring a policy letter to the States at the end of this year, a full year earlier than instructed, and we will publish a summary of what was received.