DISCLOSURE yesterday that Treasury and Resources got its sums wrong in calculating how much money it has in the States’ so-called cash pool is a double embarrassment. Firstly because it demonstrates an inexplicable slip in a department that is supposed to be good with figures and, secondly, because it means that an alternative funding strategy relying on the money in the cash pool is now fundamentally flawed.

Treasury’s decision yesterday to seek leave to delay the capital prioritisation debate was pragmatic given that any attempt to continue would have triggered a debate that would have inevitably concentrated on the competence of the department.

Critics of T&R, however, will want to question how the error was discovered and why so late in the day. Those backing the Fallaize alternative, which did not require external borrowing, say that their package was produced with the technical assistance of T&R, was reviewed by them and even put through the Rothschild financial model which has helped to formulate Treasury’s own £175m. borrowing plan.

It is also clear that the alternative strategy was gaining significant support in States circles and it is understood that the Policy Council, by a majority, was also in favour of the alternative.

T&R justifies the mistake, saying that a Billet d’Etat report saying that £100m.-worth of spending could be covered by the cash pool was ‘a loose estimate’. If so, why was it putting misleading figures before the States?

And surely it would have double-checked them when told by those putting the Fallaize alternative together that they wanted to make formal use of the cash pool?

As it is, Treasury says its new figures represent a ‘prudent approach’ that ‘minimises’ the possible risks, so there is an element of interpretation entering the debate.

Until much fuller information is provided by Treasury on this, supporters of the alternative plan will not know whether this was a simple, incompetent, slip-up or a ‘dirty tricks’ way of scuppering the opposing scheme.

But they will have their suspicions.