Guernsey’s Health minister is an honourable man known to have high personal values in respect of his public and professional life and who reacts strongly to any suggestion of his integrity being questioned.

So an interview by this newspaper with him on his financial interests in two companies that own office accommodation rented to his former colleagues at the Medical Specialist Group was always going to be uncomfortable for him.

There is no suggestion he has done anything wrong. On the contrary, he has made the necessary declarations in the register of States members’ interests.

Yet the firms of which the minister is a minority shareholder last year received £750,000 in public funds because that’s what the consultants who are paid through a compulsory island health ‘tax’ are charged by the companies of which the minister is a member.

It may be, of course, that the rent is paid for out of the private practice work the consultants perform when not engaged on the States contract.

On the other hand, that might be extremely unlikely since the agreement – criticised as providing poor value for money for islanders – more plausibly might be geared to regard rent as an allowable expense affecting how much remuneration the consultants receive.

We don’t know because the contract, despite request from this newspaper, has not been released although it is – or should be – a public document.

And since some consultants are also shareholders or directors in the same companies as the Health minister, might there be a benefit in having the rents as high as possible? Again, we don’t know, because so much about the arrangements of how £13m.-worth of islanders’ money is spent remains obscure.

What we do know is that consultants Sector are unhappy about the value provided for taxpayers by the underpinning contract and have not excluded the MSG rental arrangements from that concern.

We also know that States members generally were not aware of the Health minister’s financial interests in this matter and he sought to explain that to them in an email after our interview was concluded.

The fact he needed to, despite doing nothing wrong under the rules, indicates the weakness of the current disclosure regime.