Our government’s announcement that it intended to break what has, the P&R president admits, become a ‘cultural habit’ of using external consultants for advice and guidance has been widely welcomed.
In fact, it’s such an obvious shot that it’s almost amazing that it has come from the senior committee and not from the populist manifesto of an election candidate.
But it will take quite something to wean government off an addiction running at some £12m. a year – though that is small beer in comparison to the figures from Jersey, which clocked up £57m. in just a 18-month window at the start of this current political term.
P&R president Lindsay de Sausmarez admits that the States has defaulted far too often to going to consultants ‘where we know the answer to something but commission a report to tell us exactly that anyway’.
It seems hard to believe, for example, that the consultants just engaged by Economic Development to advise on the future direction of the financial services sector will know any better, will have better connections, and will open the eyes of our industry to an opportunity that they don’t already recognise, when local firms are at least horizon-scanning on behalf of their multinational employers, or having it done for them.
Or if an idea is proposed, that the industry will show any great appetite for it – green finance a recent example.
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