WHEN he was addressing the Institute of Directors last week, the chief officer of Commerce and Employment made a point of thanking his staff for all their efforts.

He did so, he explained afterwards, to try to give them a boost because of the morale-sapping effect of all the criticism the public sector has to endure.

And it was clear from his presentation that the department has a lot of work to get through and not an enormous amount of resources, so praise is indeed deserved.

In many respects, he was making a point for a wider audience. Guernsey has many dedicated public sector employees and their commitment and resilience is exemplary.

The criticism, however, is not aimed at those individuals, but at those who lead them.

His minister gave a similar presentation to the IoD and, when mentioning needed economies, heard the business audience respond, ‘cut staff’.

The difficulty faced by ‘ordinary’ public sector employees is twofold. Firstly, no one believes their masters when they say that every cut possible has been made.

Some businesses in Guernsey have had a headcount freeze in place for years and extended the services they provide. Yet in the States, the body count rises inexorably, as do payroll costs.

Both, effectively, are out of control.

The second difficulty faced by public servants is that they are expensive. Whatever the myth about poorly paid civil servants, the fact is that they are all paid industry-competitive salaries and have generous – and ultimately unaffordable – pensions.

Outsourcing immediately saves the taxpayer money, which is why Public Services, with its bureaucratic stranglehold on the ports, Guernsey Water and States Works, is so reluctant to spin off its empire to the private sector.

Doing so would expose its executives to commercial reality, proper cost control and the need to deliver shareholder value, while depriving its politicians of particularly interesting playthings and removing a significant element of their power base.

Not surprisingly, nothing changes.

But at least it is clear where the real criticism lies.