No control on spending is the threat

Friday 28th November 2008, 2:17PM GMT.

A BUDGET speech from the Education minister yesterday indicated how poorly served islanders are likely to be by the political process when it comes to taking this island forward during economically blighted times.

Faced with less money than it wants, the department’s immediate response is to threaten the people who pay its wages with the withdrawal of highly regarded services. That is very telling.

We have already highlighted the sea change in Treasury and Resources’ thinking on restraint (absent) and the part it now plays in the zero-10 strategy (none) and it is clear that other departments have taken this to heart.

For while Education should be rigorously looking at spending priorities and staffing, its knee-jerk response is to take the easy way out and cut services.

What makes this worse is departments are supposed to be embracing fundamental spending reviews which, if all areas really did cooperate, could lead to job cuts of up to 450 and annual savings of £12m. to £16m.

Yet before that process has been completed, Education is in effect saying that there is no slack within its 671 teachers and lecturers or – more significantly – its 230 ‘others’.

Those figures are not the latest because Treasury this year decided not to publish headcount totals and has yet to acknowledge Guernsey Press requests for the 2008 chart, and so they could well be higher still.

What the Education minister did say, however, was that others could possibly make savings and pass them over to her department to spend.

The degree to which ministers are out of touch with what the private sector does on an on-going basis to balance costs, priorities and headcounts is breathtaking – and risks further alienating islanders who do not have access to taxpayers’ money to insulate themselves from real life.

The tone of this year’s Budget report and some comments by the Treasury minister have concerned business leaders and their representatives, who will be seeking clarification of them.

One senior Policy Council member told this newspaper that Treasury and Resources has ‘thrown in the towel’ over restraint.

If accurate, that represents a bigger long term threat to this community than the current downturn.

View more: Budget news, Education news, Treasury And Resources news.

1
Stephen John

November 28, 2008 at 8:51 pm

A good and timely Comment.

The view that “if all areas really did cooperate, could lead to job cuts of up to 450 and annual savings of £12m. to £16m” is a realistic target.

All departments support economies and savings.

Problem is they include everyone else and exclude themselves from the exercise.

I wrote a letter to the Press in mid 2005 setting out where Education, in particular could make substantial saving. Many of the areas where savings could occur still exist.

As you comment suggests the will to save money seems to be weak, and the usual take the easy option prevails.

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2
JohnnyB

November 28, 2008 at 10:31 pm

I could not agree more with every word of this article. The States knowingly created their own mighty recession, by implementing Zero-10, which created a £100m hole in their income yet did absolutely zero to cut their spending, their costs and their burgeoning empire building.

Nearly every States Dept is twice the size it needs be with new empire building, such as the Utiulity Regulator, GFSC, Guernsey Registry and all the merged States Departs under the machinery of Govt changes, doing nothing to cut head count.

Expenditure, from Tourism to roads, harbours, airports, squandering public asset sales like Telecoms (£85m+ lost in a corrupt ‘sale’) and diabolical purcahses like Aurigny are all easily solved by the age old theft from islanders pockets.

If the budget doesn’t fit, screw the taxpayer. Never live within your means or actually do something productive and find savings that could be given back to hard pressed islanders.

The States empire building has to be stopped in its obese and abusive tracks

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