Guernsey Press

Hands off Mrs Sebire

I WAS the victim of a drive-by Twitter assault the other day. Flesh wounds only, thank you for asking. And I did rather bring it on myself when I mentioned to an Environment member that I was delighted to see that the ideologically-driven war of attrition against ordinary, working, car-using families was picking up pace.

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The Co-op triggered it. You see, it sells unleaded petrol in Jersey for 109.9p per litre while the same thing here is, at the time of writing, 126.9p, because our rates of duty are higher. And they will go up further as we use less while government seeks to retain the tax-take.

Thanks to non-car-owning Deputy Peter Roffey, however, Environment has been tasked with finding a more sustainable and broad-based way of harvesting islanders’ cash and one of the things that might influence their thinking is that, unlike Jersey, we have no GST or vehicle emission charge levied annually. Plenty of taxation headroom there then.

If an ongoing emissions tax is introduced, it won’t be disguised as saving the chinstrap penguin or ending the current epidemic of schoolchildren retching to death in the gutter from air pollution because Environment’s work is economically driven, as I’d know if only I’d ever bothered to research that.

I was also advised that Guernsey is one of only two places that don’t have an annual emissions charge but it was yet another lazy, uninformed stereotype helping to drive a divisive media agenda to suggest it meant introducing one was a shoo-in.

It hasn’t been ruled out – and it’s not even on the long-list yet. A list, be warned from work done by Scott Jackson on his feasibility study on environmental taxes for the States of Guernsey, could include being charged for making emissions (not those), using water, creating refuse, and being billed for using heating oil, gas or electricity, because staying warm releases carbon.

Further misguided and unhelpful comments resulted in me being asked to please pull my journalistic standards up by the bootstraps and, later, that if I was to have opinions it was essential they were well-informed (i.e. acceptable to those on the receiving end).

Well, look. There are two serious points to emerge from this. Firstly, States members are incredibly sensitive about being criticised/challenged about their policies, motives and/or the consequences of their actions.

Which is why suggesting a behaviour-changing annual vehicle emission tax of, say, £3,000 a year could prevent Mrs Sebire from the Vale taking her kids to the dentist earns you an online kicking. With others who should know better enthusiastically joining in. It’s the purity of the policy – not its impact on people – that matters, you see.

The other point is more fundamental: for how much longer can we keep pretending chinstrap penguin taxes are a meaningful response to climate change when in reality they are a cynical and divisive way of preserving a 20p in the £ rate of income tax?

In the absence of economic growth and rising wages, Guernsey’s squeezed middle are paying the price for the Bailiwick’s low-tax status, a status that’s only relevant if you’re well off. If you’re not, this is a miserably expensive place to be – or to leave.

It’s the same in Jersey, where the new States chief executive said that ‘Inequality in wealth, income and opportunity mean that not everyone enjoys good standards of living here in the island’.

Likewise Guernsey, where 6,018 households – roughly the same number of homes as in the Vale and St Martin’s combined – have an income net of social security, income tax and housing costs which is less than 60% of the median enjoyed by the rest of the island.

That median isn’t high, by the way – £51,877 a year. Which means paying the bills and feeding a family on just over half of that – and government figures suggest 12,475 islanders are affected in this manner.

Let me put that another way. Approaching a third of all households (27.1%) and something like a quarter of the total island population are struggling. Close to half of all households are on less than fifty grand a year while a fifth – perhaps we should call them the unsqueezed elite – are on £100,000-plus. At the top end, a lucky 5% are on £200k-plus.

So Guernsey’s 20p in the £ tax rate’s great for the few but not for the many, especially when the cost of living here is so high, social security is effectively an additional income tax but one that’s not means tested, AND a raft of ‘environmental’ taxes are heading down the line.

Now, I bang on about cars because, like polar bears, they’re totemic. Not because I especially like them or because I think they’re good for Guernsey. But without one, you’re stuck. More significantly, work done earlier by the States demonstrated that being able to afford an average second-hand saloon was an essential element of social inclusivity, mobility and avoiding relative poverty.

So the people directly affected by lower incomes, receiving the least amount of social support and struggling the most to make ends meet, are the turn-to target of choice for our lawmakers looking to raise a few bob to preserve the 20% tax rate.

That’s the same States members who have failed to reform the public sector – Jersey’s powering ahead in that area, by the way – diversify the economy or even act in a unified, civilised way to tackle some of the island’s deep-seated problems affecting so many of its citizens.

Or, according to Kevin Stewart writing here on Wednesday, do anything at all, really.

Introducing creative new eco-taxes may give some of our States members a warm and fuzzy feeling, but it’s actually displacement activity designed to avoid the tough stuff like rescuing the construction industry, boosting productivity, ensuring adequate and affordable connectivity, plus ensuring people are decently housed and can pay the bills.

We’re never going to save a single polar bear, for all the Assembly’s virtue signalling. At the same time, banning dogs from the Richmond end of Vazon would have a dramatic impact on seabird numbers, which ornithologist Vic Froome estimates have crashed from 1,000-plus less than a couple of generations ago. But we won’t do that because it’s easier to penalise Mrs Sebire from the Vale than to take on well-heeled Fido walkers, who tend to bite back.