CHIEF Minister Lyndon Trott yesterday poured cold water on a petition seeking to scrap student loans. He called on States members to show restraint when it came to spending.
‘What I will resist as chief minister is an attempt at relaxing our spending controls,’ he said. ‘That is where our economic difficulties will lie, if we go back to the years when spending was increasing year on year. That’s an unsustainable policy.’
Deputy Trott (pictured) said one example of that was student loans, with 23 members having signed to support Deputy Matt Fallaize’s requete to reverse the previous House’s decision to introduce them.
He suspected that the requete would succeed, but doubted whether members had fully considered the financial aspect of that decision.
He was speaking at an Institute of Directors seminar at which some of the island’s leading business figures said that the States could do more to cut unnecessary expenditure.
Deputy Trott said that a spending review which is being carried out at the moment would do just that.
He said it would identify the additional fat that was being carried and that the States would be starting at a much better level than its counterparts in Jersey and the Isle of Man.
The seminar was considering how successful the first few weeks of the new House had been.
The panel was made up of Confederation of Guernsey Industry director Peter Budwin, Chamber of Commerce president Paul Luxon, Guernsey International Business Association chairman Steve Le Page and IoD committee member Stephen Jones.
Mr Budwin and Mr Le Page both believed the States should be cutting public expenditure.
‘I don’t think the reining in of public expenditure has gone far enough,’ said Mr Budwin.
‘At some stage you have to bite the bullet and go for it. In the long run you need a leaner and meaner States. I think public expenditure has fallen between the cracks.’
Mr Le Page agreed. ‘Public expenditure is nothing to do with zero-10, it’s just about good governance.’
He said there must be room for savings because the quality of service offered to the public had in no way matched the increase in its cost over a number of years.
Mr Luxon said the States needed to operate more as a business.
The consensus of the seminar was that it had made a positive start, but it was still early days.
However, new States member Deputy Allister Langlois did voice some frustration at the decision-making process which he had experienced.
He feared that each time the States came to consider a single issue it would end up going the emotive way regardless of some of the wider implications.
Mr Budwin added: ‘The new and existing deputies may have got elected because their manifestos were more popular than others, but they may well have to make decisions soon that aren’t that popular for the good of the island.’
Article posted on 5th July, 2008 - 9.29am
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