COMMENTS in this newspaper yesterday from the Treasury minister about the consequences of Health and Social Services budget continuing to rise unchecked indicate just how serious the need for expenditure restraint really is.

The minister, rightly, gave a real terms response to our ‘what if…?’ questions on HSSD expenditure. In nominal terms, however, ignoring the effects of inflation, its budget would double to £200m. in about eight years, equivalent to income tax rising to 26p in the £.

Clearly, that is not a realistic scenario but it illustrates why departments cannot simply let their budgets run away.

What isn’t so clear is why political boards and/or their officers deemed it acceptable to let their costs rise on average by 10% when they had been instructed by the Assembly to restrict it to at or below RPI.

This year, Treasury and Resources has confirmed, the across-the-board increase has to be kept below 2% for the States to comply with its own resolution. On last year’s evidence, there isn’t a hope that it will.

Why? Again on the evidence of the previous year, because no one really cares. Even where departments could have come in roughly on target, decisions were taken to use unspent balances and artificially inflate their budgets.

What this does is to illustrate in how little regard taxpayers are held and how politicians cannot be trusted when they say they run a tight ship with every last drop of excess squeezed out of it.

At least the HSSD minister was honest when he said he didn’t have a clue about his 90 extra staff and the reality is that neither he nor his officers are currently in command of manpower or spending because the financial control systems are lacking, as they are elsewhere.

Getting on top of that is a priority because Guernsey cannot afford to carry on as it is.

The other message that comes from the States Accounts is that the initial zero-10 policy of restraint, growth and modest use of the contingency fund very nearly paid off.

It was actually torpedoed by departments failing to keep their end of the bargain.