Here’s a little puzzle for you. Go back a few years and around 50p in every pound taken off you by a rapacious States of Guernsey went on the payroll costs of its own employees. Yet today (2025 Accounts) that’s dropped to 33p. I mean, what the actual? How can that be when the size and cost of government has never been higher?
The answer, as you’ll have guessed, is our old friends at Treasury managing the figures. Accounting standards and reporting methods have changed, particularly incorporating social security funds, so trying to make direct comparisons is very difficult.
What I really wanted to calculate was how much of the money raised by GST would be used productively and how much would have gone into the back pockets of the additional civil servants hired to extract this new tax on food and kiddies’ clothing.
Alas, it’s not really possible to work that out from published data, so I turned my musing round a bit to ask a different question. Would we even have a financial black hole if the States had simply capped its costs in line with inflation over the last few years?
As you know, most islanders have seen their incomes fall in real terms over the last 10 years or thereabouts. So it’s not unreasonable to expect government should have shared some of that pain as well.
And if it had capped its pay bill at no more than RPI increases, we’d be a cumulative £152m. better off. Had the pay bill been held to inflation from 2015, 2025’s payroll would have been £287.2m. – £43.2m. lower when GST-plus was looking to raise around £50m. extra a year.
So a bit of restraint and no deficit. No need for a tax on consumption. But here’s the other oddity. Costs per full-time employee have actually fallen in real terms over the last decade – up 38.5% to RPI’s 42.9%. Yet total payroll costs have gone through the roof.
And that’s entirely due to the States of Guernsey having embarked on the biggest hiring spree ever known – an extra 822 posts in the 10 years to 2025. In that time, core government staff have expanded by just shy of one-fifth. Which is why you’re now facing GST.
This is a big topic, and now has its own website* thanks to the data wizards at Bridgehead Communications. They’ve been shining a light on Guernsey’s inner workings after being surprised by how little information is readily available and kindly agreed to help me.
Its Guernsey Deputy Scorecard, showing how your States member is performing against their manifesto promises, is a case in point. And unsurprisingly, not all politicians have welcomed it, especially tracking their attendance at States meetings.
Well, tough, I say. On average, deputies receive not far short of a grand a week to represent your best interests so if they can’t be bothered to pitch up to the 12-odd States sessions a year you ought to be the first to know.
One, I gather, was particularly incensed at being listed as missing from a committee meeting while they were busy honouring the Prince of Wales with their presence at an investiture and, separately, taking an exam in the UK.
Which all boils down to establishing priorities, the topic I really wanted to discuss this week.
I’ve been critical of Policy & Resources for missing the point with its so-called super-priorities in the Government Work Plan because they have no immediate bearing on ordinary working islanders in the grip of a very real cost of living and housing crisis.
So I was delighted to see chief minister Lindsay de Sausmarez being direct in response to a letter in this newspaper last week: ‘The priorities agreed by this Assembly are clear – stabilising the public finances; easing the cost of living and strengthening Guernsey’s resilience in an increasingly uncertain global environment; creating the conditions for economic growth; improving the supply and affordability of housing; ensuring our health and care services can become sustainable for an ageing population; providing our children and young people with the educational and employment opportunities they need to build their futures here; investing in critical infrastructure; and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the public services on which we all rely.’
Well, it’s a bit of a mouthful but it’s the first time our political leader has expressed the States’ direction of travel in clear and accessible terms that we can all understand and agree with.
But, and it’s something picked up last week by Horace Camp and his new best friend Eugene, Deputy de Sausmarez’s mission statement sounds suspiciously like business as usual. Isn’t that eight-point list exactly what any competent, caring government would be doing to keep its own community safe, happy and healthy?
In other words, they can’t all be priorities, can they?
As we’ve seen over the years, the States’ reaction to any challenge is always the same – more money and more staff.
Well, having busily taken on nearly seven extra people every month non-stop for a decade and inflated payroll costs by in excess of £150m. over the same period, you’d think we’d have something to show for it.
Yet from Deputy de Sausmarez’s own list of ‘priorities’ we appear to be at ground zero when it comes to arranging what many of you would consider to be the basic building blocks of a modern society.
I read them and thought, you know, these would have served well for Bailiff (later Sir) Victor Carey’s opening remarks to the emergency meeting of the States on 8 May 1945 to mark the liberation of the island from German occupation. Look over them again and you’ll see what I mean. Spot on. Perfect except, perhaps, for ‘ageing population’.
As it happens, Bailiff Carey, also civic leader as well as president of the States of Guernsey, didn’t say that as he gave thanks for the island’s liberation from the ‘privations and vicissitudes’ of war. Instead, he used a much more encompassing phrase.
‘I only wish I could say more, but my heart is too full, and I know yours are too, to adequately express our gratitude to all those who have helped us, are helping us and will help us in the island redemption,’ he said in a message aimed at Brigadier Snow, commander of the armed forces in the Channel Islands and our liberators.
Well, we’ve undoubtedly changed in ways unrecognisable to those who lived through those dark times.
Then, the immediate priorities for the States of 1945 were dealing with massive debt, economic stagnation, degraded infrastructure, chronic housing issues and a government that was no longer fit for purpose.
So remind me, where are we now?
* Available here – https://guernsey-payroll.bridgeheadcommunications.com
