King defends EDD travel practice

Friday 01 July 2016

One of the States officers whose Cape Town junket spurred a wide scale review of overall States travel practices yesterday defended his department’s record.

Chief Officer of Economic Development Department (EDD) Mike King said that his department has reduced its travel expenses significantly over the last three years – from £136,000 in 2013 to £74,000 last year – and always fell within its travel budget targets. And Mr King said that over the same time period, the business attracted to Jersey through EDD’s work brought in a tax yield for Jersey of £16 million.

Speaking before a Public Affairs Scrutiny Panel chaired by Deputy Andrew Lewis, Mr King said £7m of that tax yield was on a recurring basis and the remaining £9m was in one-off receipts. “I think that’s a good return to the taxpayer,” he said.

Questions raised over Mr King’s £14,000 trip to a mining conference in South Africa with Locate Jersey director Wayne Gallichan last year led to the launch of a broad investigation of States' practice, but in a report published earlier this month, it was decided neither officers would face disciplinary action with regard to the trip.

The report found that the States spends £3 million yearly on travel – but only £150,000 of that was for international flights.

In the future, all travel or entertainment bills over £500 incurred by States officers will have to be published every six months. 

But yesterday Mr King said he would be in favour of all travel expenses being published monthly and that data is already being collected.

He also defended his department’s occasional use of fully flexible fares although they are more expensive. He said on six occasions in the past, travel booked in advance had to be cancelled closer to the date and in those cases the department recouped over £29,000 in flight costs because they were fully flexible.

Mr King said five of the trips had to be cancelled due to “genuine business reasons” but he did cancel one following the death of his father.

Mr King appeared before the panel with Chief Education Officer Justin Donovan. Both men also spoke of some of the frustrations in dealing with the States travel management system – which has been provided since 2012 through the Hogg Robinson Group (HRG).

Panel chair Deputy Lewis said the investigation had found many cases of short haul flights costing up to four times as much as should be expected – and he pointed to the example of a flight two officers took to Liverpool on Easyjet for £1,200.

Mr King and Mr Donovan said their departments often have to query travel costs generated through the system because they seemed out of kilter with what experienced travellers would expect.

But they said if a better deal was found outside of the HRG system - through a search engine, or by contacting the airlines directly - the department must report it as a “breach” of the States' travel rules.

Mr Donovan said it was difficult to know whether the States were saving money by booking all travel through HRG.

Both men also said, while they did not personally book their business related travel, they often heard the vocal frustrations of their administrative staff when wrestling with the system.

It was suggested that the HRG system is also skewed toward British Airways flights – especially on international travel – which can be more costly.

And the two officers said, while civil servants are not allowed to collect personal air miles on States travel, the HRG system automatically attributes those points to personal accounts and often the civil servants do not know how to return them. As a result, the points are left sitting on personal accounts unused.

“It does make people vulnerable,” Mr Donovan said.