Jersey – that sister island of ours just 20 miles to the south that we also treat as a slippery foreign land not to be trusted – has just saved an estimated £31m. in a year. By not doing anything. Specifically, by not employing any more States employees. This is set to continue for at least another year. The total saving hasn’t been quantified but let’s be conservative and call it £45m.
In addition, its Council of Ministers has managed to pull back overall government expenditure by just over 2% on 2024 levels to £1.89bn and there has been no blood on the streets, no dramatic political protest resignations and no shroud-waving tales of wrecked public services.
By way of contrast, Guernsey, which has resolved to reduce baseline expenditure by just 1% per annum for the next three years, has taken on 822 extra public servants over the last 10 years. And a Policy & Resources Rule 14 response to a question from Deputy Rob Curgenven indicates it has no intention of slowing that hiring spree. At current five-year run rates, last year’s 5,230 full-time equivalents will become 6,482 by 2035.
That would make it far and away the biggest employer in the island, way ahead of finance, and represent a bigger percentage of the workforce in government employ than England (around 17%) and Jersey (15.4%). We’re currently just shy of 18% but that figure is two years out of date and I expect finance has shrunk still further to something like 16%.
I mention this not to beat up our beloved government, deserved and entertaining though that is, but to ask what committees are doing with all these extra staff. Services, as far as we can judge, haven’t improved, far less improved to the extent of the increase in cost or numbers.
School performance, from the opaque way it’s reported, continues to decline, along with attendance rates (although happily, primary literacy has improved) which means the divergence between States schools and the private colleges is increasing. Despite ending the 11-plus, which Education insisted was holding back its own academic performance.
This, we can confidently predict, is why Education’s response to the amazing news that the two colleges are to be funded forever by a mystery benefactor has been so lukewarm.
Oh-my-God-this-will-further-show-us-up-so-it-must-be-stopped, sort of thing.
There are other examples, but I see those data wizards at Bridgehead Communications have picked up on a casual conversation I had with its boss Will Walter the other day and rather helpfully benchmarked overall government performance, based on the States’ own criteria – the Government Work Plan.
And how has it scored on achievement? Badly. Some 56% of all work streams are behind the deadlines government has set for itself, some dreadfully so. Home Affairs, for instance, is severely behind on three critical pieces of work on keeping the island safe, behind on two and on track with just one.
I could go on with the other committees but you get the drift, so do have a look for yourselves. The link is below and data handling and an external set of eyes mean that for the first time it’s possible to see States performance – as in actual outcomes – available in real time and in granular detail.
Which is an ideal point to remind ourselves of an old lesson: effort is the most underrated force in politics. Not my teaching. It’s from the man The Economist called the most effective government aide of the last half-century, Sir Michael Barber. In his How To Run A Government book from 10 years ago he said, ‘Policy is 10% and implementation 90%’.
Obvious, when you put it that way. But here, the evidence suggests it’s the other way round.
Yet we used to do stuff. In no particular order and not exhaustive but over the years previous States agreed to flood a beautiful valley to create St Saviour’s reservoir; build an open market enclave at Fort George despite a massive island petition against it; embark on a major crash infrastructure programme – especially housebuilding – in the years after the Occupation, although the island was on its knees financially.
Then there’s been the closure or merger of various primary schools because they were no longer efficient or viable and merging the then Boys’ and Girls’ Grammar Schools despite widespread opposition; establishing an earnings-based social security scheme in the face of huge protests from large sections of the community which wanted to retain the flat ‘stamp’ scheme; and mandatory seat belts for drivers, which thousands petitioned against and the president of the then Police Committee pressed on with, saying all the objectors were plain wrong.
As we now see, all of these decisions were clearly in the best interests of the island. States members recognised that, even if voters didn’t. Deputies cracked on, taking unpopular decisions because they were the right ones. They even banned smoking in the cinemas (we had the Odeon and Gaumont back then) and on the buses, despite howls of protest.
How come? My theory, shared by Matt Fallaize who helped me come up with this list, is because we had conseillers in the mix. Then appointed by the States of Election, their role was ‘...to ensure that the States should not at any moment… be overloaded with inexperienced men… in the hope that this would prevent decisions which would later be regretted being taken as a result of some passing mood or possibly even some passing events.’
Prescient, eh?
Conseillers were not so exposed to political terms as the deputies and helped the Assembly reach hard and unpopular decisions because, despite the heat and froth (remember, this was before social media), they could focus on what was right, not simply popular or unpopular.
I’m not suggesting a return to those days but, as I said in my last column, the system we have had since scrapping conseillers and not adopting some form of cabinet or executive government simply isn’t delivering.
As Will Walter says in his media release on the States performance scorecard: ‘Guernsey’s system of government is, in effect, built to preserve the status quo. Even where there is a genuine consensus behind a policy, it is extraordinarily difficult to see it actually enacted… [P&R president] Lindsay de Sausmarez has been handed a job with no tools to do it. She can agree a work plan with nine other committees, but she can’t make a single one of them deliver it, and she can’t move on a committee president who won’t.’
This seems to me to be exactly the case and why an underachieving president of the Home Affairs Committee is left in place to continue not delivering.
Indeed, it is why Jersey can implement a freeze on recruitment but Guernsey can’t. It’s also why then chief minister Peter Ferbrache came to regret his promise of Action This Day.
Yet the time for action is upon this States. The economy is flatlining.
Household incomes are declining. People are spending less on food and more on rents and impacting the high street economy. Out of sight, food bank use is rising and the housing crisis is worsening, exacerbating hardship and stifling growth.
This is all at a time when States’ spending has never been higher or its staffing more generous.
Think about that and my challenge to deputies the other week – what are you doing to improve the quality of life for islanders? – and you can see how absurd this situation has become.
Government is commandeering all the inputs, including scarce and valuable labour resources, but producing none of the outputs that benefit islanders or even meet its own GWP targets. Yet not a voice is raised against this, not a deputy questions what they are actually there for.
And you thought the emperor’s new clothes was simply a fairy story.
