Pre-election “no confidence” move to sack Ozouf

Thursday 11 September 2014

A move to sack the Treasury Minister over the sudden £95 million hole in States finances and the emergency plans to fill it has been made with just over a month to go before the election.

The move, led by Reform Jersey members, focuses on the new deficit in public finances over the next three years that was revealed at the start of the summer – and questions whether plans to fill it by cutting spending and raiding utilities and separate funds are legal.

Politicians are very unlikely to vote Senator Ozouf out of his job, especially so close to polling day on 15^th October, but the move is more likely intended to gather a few headlines as the campaign season begins in earnest. It will be debated in a special sitting next Tuesday.

A proposition by Deputy Geoff Southern – signed by fellow Reform Jersey members Deputies Montfort Tadier and Sam Mezec, and Senator Alan Breckon – quotes occasions between 2012 and October 2013 when Senator Philip Ozouf backed ambitious growth targets despite concerns and warnings from States Members, Jersey’s panel of economic experts and the OECD that the economic recovery was still some way off.

Instead of accepting that there was a problem, they say, he forged on with the same growth targets.

They also criticise the plans to fill the new hole in States finances by demanding £16 million from States-owned utilities, remove £28 million from housing and crime-fighting funds, and withdrawing money allocated to capital infrastructure projects – as well as cutting department budgets.

And the “no confidence motion” says that as it is a legal requirement to propose a balanced budget, if any of the measures proposed fails, then the whole thing might fall foul of the Public Finances (Jersey) Law.

Within hours of the motion being lodged, Senator Ozouf tweeted that it should be debated as soon as possible.

The no confidence motion proposed by Deputy Southern concluded: “The evidence presented here would suggest that the Minister for Treasury and Resources was aware of an impending shortfall of significant proportions between forecast tax revenues and the spending plans contained in the Medium Term Financial Plan as early as 2013.

“The minister’s proposals to meet what has turned out to be a shortfall of the order of £75 million have been shown to be likely to result in an illegal Budget, since some of the disparate measures involved are unlikely to deliver the savings required.”