Redundancies, pay freeze and health charge on their way… plus pensions for States Members?

Thursday 07 May 2015

The threat of £95 million worth of cuts to States budgets and a new £35 million health charge hasn’t stopped politicians proposing that it’s about time they got a pension on top of their £46,600 per year pay packets.

An email to States Members has proposed a new scheme through which taxpayers would contribute up to £4,000 per year for each politician, matching their own contributions.

If every States Member took up the offer, it would cost the public up to £196,000 per year – at exactly the same time that the Council of Ministers are proposing to fill a black hole in public finances by cutting £65 million from States’ pay budget through job cuts and pay freezes, as well as £35 million from other cuts and a £35 million “health charge” on taxpayers.

The Privileges and Procedures Committee responsible for States reform and administration have asked all of Jersey’s 49 politicians to tell them by the end of tomorrow whether they’d like to take up the offer of a pension scheme, and how much they’d like to put in to it, matched on a pound-for-pound basis by taxpayers.

They say that they’ll take the responses and ask for the money to be found in the States’ financial plan, due to be released next month.

But the response from politicians has been mostly negative – responses seen by Bailiwick Express show that there were three favourable responses from politicians who wanted the pension, but 13 who said no.

The original message from the Privileges Committee asking for politicians’ views on the pension proposals said that the idea had come from the independent body that makes recommendations about States Members’ pay, and that the committee had only decided to take the matter forward by a minority vote.