It is genuinely close to impossible to know what to make of the approach to the 2026 Budget taken by the new Policy & Resources Committee.
Almost every other sentence of its Treasury lead’s opening speech yesterday contained references to reviewing budgets and tackling spending and addressing the deficit – but the end result was the distinctly uncomfortable line that appears on our front page today.
‘Our efforts may flatten the growth in public expenditure, but they will not reduce it. That will only be achieved by switching off services,’ Deputy Gavin St Pier said.
An on-the-money, tell-it-like-it-is commentator might say – ‘they’ve given up’.
Yet there were also references to bottom-up savings exercises, effectively introducing zero-based budgeting, countering the obvious criticism this time around that the 2026 Budget process has appeared to be along the lines of ‘let’s take what you’ve already got, increase it by inflation, and then see what else you want or “need” to add on top’.
In what was mainly a two-horse debate, contender Deputy Andy Sloan had most of the best lines. ‘Demographics is a factor, not an alibi,’ stood out. So too: ‘responsibility means taking choices, not postponing them’.
Yet for all these fine words, maybe it will be that Deputy St Pier will prove to have had the final say.
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