AN ADMISSION yesterday by the Health minister that, yes, it was reasonable to describe as ‘a waste’ the money spent on childcare for a handful of privileged staff is the clearest acknowledgement of what this newspaper has been saying for years: the last people who should have any access to your wallet are in a States department.

What the £165,000 a year package for 23 people – which totals well in excess of £1m. at today’s prices – means is this:

• Those running the nursery selected to provide the childcare were able to out-negotiate the whole of the HSSD and secure £165,000 a year whether the places were used or not.
• No one at HSSD could be bothered to re-negotiate the arrangement as the years went by.
• Since they did not have to earn the money, neither the senior management nor the political board cared enough how it was spent.
• No thought whatsoever was given to reviewing the value for money of the arrangement or whether there was a better way of providing the ‘benefit’.
• When senior civil servants and their ministers say they run lean and efficient operations and not a penny more can be saved, they cannot be trusted.
  When the current Health minister was earlier prepared to overspend his budget, he really had no idea how profligate his officials were with taxpayers’ money – or any control over that.

This has become a serious issue. On one item of expenditure alone, it is clear that rational justification criteria were never applied because, well, it’s only islanders’ cash. Someone is responsible for that cavalier approach but they will never be identified or held to account.

Various political members will cheerfully have overseen that level of waste and never be held accountable, inevitably calling into question the role and value of deputies and the level of information they demand, are given and the use they make of it.

HSSD’s professional management is well-known for resisting anything it considers to be political interference in its day-to-day operations and perhaps today islanders will understand why – the right questions reveal embarrassing truths.

This, of course, is the same department that can cut patient care but says it cannot possibly shed a civil service post.