AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, as we report on page one of today’s Guernsey Press, that the way Guernsey’s public sector employees are remunerated is in urgent need of reform is welcome indeed.

But for the taxpayer, it is too little too late.

The issue of what is now coyly referred to as ‘incremental drift’ – civil servants getting more than any negotiated annual increase purely by dint of staying put for another 12 months and moving a notch up extended pay grades – was first highlighted in the 2003 annual report of the States Audit Commission.

And here we are, eight years later, still talking about what ought to be called The Great Taxpayer Rip-off.

Elsewhere, taking money under false pretences is generally regarded as a criminal activity – in the States of Guernsey, potentially everyone’s at it.

The Audit Commission wasn’t quite so direct in 2003 and put it this way: ‘In respect of the suggested review of terms and conditions of civil servants, the [commission is] particularly concerned at the lack of performance-related pay mechanisms within the States.

‘This is common practice in the commercial sector and in the UK civil service, and has been proven as a valuable technique for productivity and performance improvement.’

The wonder, then, is why nothing has been done about this for so many years.

Guernsey has many dedicated and talented public sector employees whose contribution is not fully recognised.

Their earning potential could be boosted by a pay mechanism that rewards performance and penalises the jobsworths and those merely queuing for the still gold-plated pension.

Unreformed, the delay in introducing performance-related pay has not only robbed islanders of millions, it has also disadvantaged the brightest and best in the public sector while rewarding the rest merely because they have remained in post for another 12 months.