WHAT a difference in the Policy Council’s response to their consultants’ original proposals on college funding and bus subsidies. In both cases fresh eyes – Tribal Consulting – looked at how our government spends its limited revenue budget.

Their remit was quite clear – find ways in which we can spend less money.

Obviously, nearly every suggestion they came up with was destined to be unpopular – at least in some quarters.

Alas, the political judgements over how vigorously to pursue those possible economies seem to depend on which bit of the community they’ll upset.

A big hike in bus fares? ‘OK, it’s not pleasant, but the typical bus user isn’t the most powerful lobbyist in the island so we’ll probably get away with it.’

Closing a few public loos? Likewise.

But proposals that will put up private school fees? ‘Let’s water those down.’

The first rule of Guernsey politics is that you never upset the island’s articulate upper middle class. Why?

Because they vote, they’re vocal and, boy, do they know how to lobby.

Combine that with the heavy sprinkling of Old Elizabethans in the upper echelons of the States and making really significant savings in the huge public subsidies to Guernsey’s private schools was always going to be an uphill task.

Actually, the outcome of big reductions in the States’ subsidies to private schools and the buses would be very similar. A slight downturn in usage but a significant revenue saving.

Even the Policy Council’s report makes it clear that recent increases in college fees haven’t led to falling pupil numbers, as some claimed was inevitable.

So why the back-pedalling on the potential savings identified by the consultants?

It’s true that few people really expected the States to go for Tribal’s most extreme option of stopping the grants to Guernsey’s private schools altogether.

Nor is it surprising that the reduction is being phased in to allow the colleges time to adapt. But a cut of less than 23% in States support over seven years is pretty modest.

It will probably be more like 15% after higher fees increase the amount paid for special place holders.

Surely the fundamental question is why the taxpayer is expected to fund private education at all. After all, we don’t subsidise private healthcare. Of course, the full payment made for special place-holders is rather different, although even here it’s hard to understand why [counting Blanchelande] we fund more scholarships for girls than boys.

And the original reason for the system is no longer valid as it dates back to a time when the colleges were regarded as the sole providers of ‘an academic education’.

Surely no one still believes that today?

But what’s even more puzzling is why the States still subsidise genuinely private pupils by millions of pounds each year, producing some of the cheapest school fees in the British Isles, when they can’t afford to fund some basic public services.

We also need to consider the impact of continued large sums coming out of the Education Department’s limited coffers and why its board has been totally excluded from this review.

Education is rightly expected to stay within a global budget and out of that sum determine its own funding priorities. Yet now a big chunk of spending has been taken completely outside its control, which is bound to impact on other areas of educational provision.

Quite how blatantly Education has been cold-shouldered is clear from its letter of comment. The department claims the Policy Council hasn’t given it enough time to consider the report in any depth or provided any access to the supporting financial data.

As the people paying the grants and mandated to ‘advise the States on matters relating to the grant-aided colleges’ and to ‘be accountable to the States for the management of public funds entrusted to the department’, this is outrageous. It amounts to an (unintended) vote of no confidence.

It’s all very well Education protesting now that they’ve been by-passed, but the proper time to raise a hue and cry was when this work, which clearly fell within their mandate, was first taken out of their hands.

Only Deputy Matt Fallaize really called ‘foul’ at the time.

If they find in a few years’ time they can’t afford priorities such as nursery education, they should ask themselves why they so tamely gave up control of their own budget. I hope it wasn’t just to avoid having to tackle a political hot potato.

Why do I feel the cuts should have been deeper? Is it ideologically driven?

I do think those who choose to go private should pick up the tab, but the main reason is far more prosaic. There ain’t enough cash to go round and maintaining cheap private school fees shouldn’t be top of the spending priority list.

Let’s take a step back and ask why the States invited Tribal in to slash and burn in the first place.

Simple – we were spending more than we earned.

Looking around the world, it doesn’t take a genius to see where that would eventually lead. Something had to be done about it.

Of course, one answer was increasing income. A bit of that has already been done, with the States tweaking up taxes and charges, and I’m sure we’ve all noticed that in our household budgets. But for a big increase in revenues, governments have only three realistic choices.

The first is increasing corporation taxes, but Guernsey still needs to be competitive, and so long as the IoM, and particularly Jersey, are determined to woo business with ultra-low taxes on company profits our room for manoeuvre is limited.

The second is income tax, but all the Crown Dependencies are pursuing policies aimed at attracting rich individuals. In Guernsey’s case that involves capping the amount of income tax paid at £250,000 and in Jersey a tax rate of just 1% above a certain income. So tapping our wealthiest residents to help balance the books won’t happen any time soon.

The third is consumption taxes. We’ve seen some increases in this area but no Jersey-style GST or Manx/UK-style VAT. These are the sort of measures which would be needed to produce a step-change in Guernsey’s income but I, for one, am glad the States have resisted it. It would be a regressive tax, hitting the poorest the hardest, and should be the option of last resort.

So the States are right to be looking very closely at the expenditure side of their balance sheet. The starting point has to be stripping out waste, inefficiency and duplication. But inevitably, if they are going to make large savings then some real, painful cuts are also going to be needed. That’s bound to upset the people of Guernsey, but many thoughtful islanders will fully understand that if the alternative is continuing to run a budget deficit then sacrifices have to be made.

The key thing in taking the community with them is for the States to be seen to be very fair in where the cuts fall. Firstly, they have to be quite stingy with themselves. That doesn’t mean silly minutiae such as going without sandwiches during a lunchtime presentation. It does mean being restrained in their pay increase for the next States and making sure that all overseas travel is absolutely necessary. The sums involved are minor but the symbolism is not.

But it’s deeper than that.

If they feel they can hit hardest those with the least power to protest, while going soft on the articulate and well organised, it’s shameful.

These college funding proposals, while producing some savings, are very half-hearted indeed. Our deputies should be representing all their constituents – not just the well-heeled and the old boy network.