"No new charges or spending growth until cuts become real” – Treasury Minister

Monday 03 August 2015

There will be no increases in States budgets or new charges to fund services until spending cuts have actually been delivered, the Treasury Minister has pledged.

In an interview with Connect magazine, Senator Alan Maclean has promised that the public will not have to put up with new charges or fund budget increases until departments have made real efficiency savings.

With ministers aiming to cut £90 million from the public sector as they fight to fill a £145 million deficit in public finances, Senator Maclean faces an uphill battle to balance the books over the next four years. But he says that this campaign for States cuts will be different to previous attempts – he says departments won’t be able to pay-off staff and then re-employ them, and that if departments fail to make cuts, then growth funding won’t happen.

In the interview – which is in the August edition of Connect, hitting the streets this week – Senator Maclean says that the £45 million worth of charges for health and waste will come at the end of the process, once the cuts are already starting to bite.

He said: “The £145 million shortfall of expenditure over  income involves investment in services – what we are talking about is keeping all of that growth money centrally within the Treasury.

So we will make certain that if departments are not delivering, or if something in the plan goes wrong and we have to adapt, then the impact could well be on some of the additional funding. We will have to adapt and be flexible as things go on.”

“The proposed charges are coming late in the programme. We are also doing a piece of work on distribution analysis that has not been done historically. We want to know where the changes hit hardest and we want to make sure that we get the balance right, across the income quintiles.

“There have been a number of changes on fees and charges in recent years and we want to look at which areas of the community have been hit hardest to make sure that this is as fair and equitable as we can make it.”