A U-turn to make Liz Truss blush

THERE’S been a lot to take in recently. Admissions that the island’s running out of money. A statement that government transformation and controlling the size of the public sector was, after all these years, nothing but a sham. And now a budget that’s setting the scene to take more off you to give to government and its employees.

But the thing that’s really exercising me – and ought to concern all islanders, whether they follow politics or not – is we’re now at the stage where there’s no going back. If Policy and Resources and their entourage do get away with abandoning restraint and civil service reform, no future States will be able to recover the initiative.

The situation is that dire. Not because of the circumstances we face, but due to the collective incapacity of this States to respond adequately.

Over the years, the island has built back following the near total destruction wrought by the German Occupation, survived the 1970s oil crisis and collapse of horticulture, coped with mass unemployment in the ’80s, a recession so bad in the 1990s that house prices actually fell, the global financial crisis of 2008, Brexit and now Covid.

Today, however, we have a president of P&R who declares, apparently with a straight face: ‘We have what is the most difficult job of any States since my political career began.’

That ‘most difficult job’ is simply getting the Assembly to live within its means.

For everyone else – be it pensioner, fund manager, shop owner, building contractor or hard-working family – that’s known as ‘the real world’, where spending more than is coming in means disaster.

Yet in the Never Never Land occupied by P&R and its cronies, failure in this most basic of management tasks isn’t a resignation issue. Instead, it’s (yet another) opportunity to blame someone else, in this case the previous Assembly. Yet another reason to cry ‘Woe is me’.

Read P&R’s update statement to the States last month on Public Service Reform and three things strike you – how unbelievable the capitulation ‘justification’ is, the level of blame transference, and the absence of any alternative strategy.

In essence, the transformation process was all wrong and ‘based on a “big bang” approach’. What? I mean, what the actual…? The reforms were rooted in zero-10 and the 2009 report by specially-commissioned consultants Tribal Helm recording that the States oversaw a financially profligate organisation that provided gold-plated services even when there was no need for them.

Report after report made substantially the same observations – the savings are there, government simply isn’t delivering them. This was acknowledged by then chief executive Paul Whitfield, who came in for quite a bit of stick for looking to change this over a 10-year period.

Since P&R’s collective memory appears to be failing, I’ll remind them that it was their president who sacked Mr Whitfield for delivering too slowly on that agreed transformation programme. Deputy Ferbrache has still to ’fess up what that has cost the taxpayer but now claims deadpan that, after all, he sacked someone for not doing something he now says couldn’t be done to begin with.

Similarly, the whole P&R update is riddled with inconsistencies. Some 100 posts – not the 200 promised – have been removed ‘and we know realistically we’ve removed as many as we can through efficiency alone’.

Leaving aside the fact that so many States, including this one, have approved these plans, there’s a problem with that 100 figure. The latest accounts show that during 2021, the first full year of this administration, P&R oversaw staff numbers rising by 142. At average government employment rates, that alone added £7.7m. to payroll costs – before the latest pay rise that’s been granted.

Perhaps the only time the statement strays into believability is this: ‘Many committees have, perhaps understandably, not leant into the reforms, and there has been a lot of pushback at a political level.’ That and his subsequent ‘We need a new direction now…’ herald a P&R U-turn that would make Liz Truss blush.

Remember, we’re seven years into a coordinated plan and umpteen million into the supporting Agilysis digital transformation programme and P&R has now decided to throw in the towel.

Those I’ve spoken to in senior business and government circles are aghast. Shock, anger, incredulity, dereliction of duty… all some of the comments from people who have done this sort of transformation planning themselves.

So why are we here? Put simply, the action-this-day, no-tax-rises-on-our-watch brigade have poked around a bit and realised that negotiating with 14 separate unions operating in the public sector and reforming contracts of employment weighted in favour of the employee and far too restrictive for today’s requirements is difficult.

That’s before considering the pension scheme.

So rather than accept that challenge and – a unique opportunity for any States – use its parliamentary majority to bring leadership and a firmness of purpose to the table, P&R has cut and run. The soft option, where they cannot later be accused of failure, or giving into committee pressure.

‘So what does the new direction look like?’, Deputy Ferbrache asked in his address. His answer: ‘Senior expertise will work with the subject matter experts to identify their, and their customers’, core challenges and together they will work towards addressing these with clear, measurable outcomes.’

Don’t try to make sense of it, it’s pure flannel. The true answer, seven years into a properly worked up plan, is that it has been replaced by nothing and confirms what we’ve feared for some years now – middle Guernsey taxpayers are there to be fleeced for political expediency.

A job for life with the States will shortly be the dominant employment sector and services provided by committees will expand to suit their ambitions rather than your needs. Costs are out of control despite mounting evidence that Health, Education and others are under-performing, while the economy itself is faltering – 3% down in real terms in the latest figures.

And the worst thing about giving up now and enabling committees to carry on spending?

P&R has left itself no leeway for the next economic shock, no plan B for a Moneyval grey-listing of financial services or the imminent energy crisis-triggered recession.

Islanders deserve so much more than its leaders just giving up.