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The States of Guernsey need to find an additional £4million if it is to facilitate every ‘essential’ workstream proposed by its committees.
The figure was revealed in the latest iteration of the Government Work Plan. The ‘mid-term reset’ has been announced as a green paper, and deputies will be asked to endorse its contents during a special sitting next month.
It follows consultation between Policy & Resources and the Principal Committees, as politicians try and identify where savings can be made in the face of major financial challenges.
Pictured: Members of P&R briefed their fellow deputies yesterday.
P&R said Guernsey continues to suffer the financial consequences of Covid, Brexit and the war in Ukraine, leading to high inflation and the price for basic goods continuing to creep up. It asked the Principal Committees to assess their mandates and highlight where cuts could be made, as the GWP as it stands is simply too expensive and complicated to be deliverable.
Despite the Principal Committees interacting with the exercise successfully, they not only couldn’t reduce their mandates significantly, but several new initiatives had to be added to the roster, bumping the budget £4million over the original GWP plan.
Once again it appears that a failure to decide on a means to raise additional taxes during the GST debate earlier this year will force difficult decisions to be made. Recently that manifested itself as a proposal to choose the Education Programme over the second phase of the Hospital Modernisation Project.
Now, it means the Assembly will be asked to endorse the new GWP, which includes £4million of additional funding for new initiatives. You can see a table of these new initiatives below:
If the Assembly chooses to endorse this ‘reset’ P&R will be given the greenlight to start re-working the capital portfolio and the ways it could be funded. This’ll align with P&R’s new order of debate for these three massive pieces of government work; the GWP debate next month, followed by the Capital Portfolio and the Funding & Investment Plan together in September.
The question then becomes; where does that £4million come from? When asked, Deputy Bob Murray, who is P&R’s lead on the GWP, said proposals will have to be drawn up and presented to the Assembly in September and he doesn’t have a solid answer now, but the States will have to generate additional funding somehow.
When asked if a Goods and Services Tax could be one option he said “GST will always come back”.
“It has considerable merit and, whether it's this term or next term, it will be back on the table.”
There has also been a suggestion that P&R could end up recommending the suspension of some workstreams to prioritise others, potentially leading to another Education v Hospital debate.
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