Comment: "Let’s give Charlie a break"

Tuesday 05 February 2019

With a £250,000 pay packet complete with full housing qualifications, all eyes are on the States’ Chief Executive as he spearheads the single biggest reform of the public sector that the island has ever seen.

With this level of scrutiny also comes challenges, controversy and often unpopularity, but does Charlie Parker deserve the reputation he is beginning to earn in Jersey?

Express columnist Kevin Keen doesn’t think so, as he calls for islanders to “give Charlie a break”…

“Back in 2004, in return for the introduction in 2008 of GST at 3% taxpayers were promised a more efficient public sector and £20 million per year of savings. This promise was quickly forgotten when tax receipts were higher than expected, since then there have been a few attempts at public sector reform all of which have come to pretty much nothing.

Pictured: Express columnist writes about giving States' Chief Charlie Parker "a break".

Money and time carried on being wasted, whilst investment in our infrastructure was ignored. Worse still this neglect was often passed off as saving money. Many commentators (including me) warned that the longer genuine reform was put off, the more expensive and difficult it would be.

In 2017, Jersey did something radical and appointed Charlie Parker. It is clearly still early days but one thing you cannot fault him for is the energy he has put into a very ambitious agenda. The pace of change is like nothing the public sector in Jersey has ever seen, which has caused a fair amount of stress - especially for the employees. With a large and diverse organisation, lots of empires and intense public scrutiny, the job was never going to be easy. 

Apparently Mr. Parker gets a salary of £250,000 and the promise of full housing qualifications if he does a good job, which actually seems pretty good value to me. 

He is not the highest paid person in the States (that privilege seems reserved to the Crown Officers), it is only a bit more than his predecessor and I am sure there are quite a few leaders in the professions & financial services that would not get out of bed for that money.

Pictured: Mr Keen says that the States CEO's salary and perks are "pretty good value" given the job he's doing.

It obviously would have been better if we could have found someone who would take on a task like this, do it well and on the cheap, but we would have been waiting a long time.  

Added to all the internal challenges in the public sector, we also have the dreaded Brexit, an ageing demographic, how we grow and diversify our economy whilst minimising population growth and of course where should we build that hospital?

After a year in the job there are signs Parker is making progress. There is the initiative to have one place for citizens to interact with government, one call centre for ambulance, fire and police, income tax & social security working together. Simple things that have been talked about for years but they finally now seem to be happening. 

Pictured: "After a year in the job there are signs Parker is making progress."

Like most people I am sad to see the pay dispute going on between public sector employees and the States. Industrial relations have never been good in the States, which is such a shame. Generally the people seem well paid, have generous pension entitlements and pretty good security of employment. Working for the States of Jersey should be a great job.  

I really feel we should cut Mr. Parker some slack and give him our support to get on with his important job. If he fails it will put the prospect of change back years, something taxpayers just cannot afford."

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and not of Bailiwick Express.