Spending question foxes future leaders

Friday 10 October 2014

Most of the 18 candidates for Senator asked to estimate annual government spending at a hustings this week got the figure wrong – but only by about £400 million.

The 18 hopefuls looking for your vote on Wednesday – who include financial experts such as Chief Minister Ian Gorst, Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf and Economic Development Minister Alan Maclean – were stumped when a member of the audience asked: “Could I ask each of the candidates to tell me how much we spend, per day, running our government please?”

When the candidates started to answer the question, most said that public spending was “around £700 million” and that it worked out at almost £2 million per day.

But that number just covers net departmental budgets – it completely misses out on around £400 million worth of other spending through the Social Security or Health Insurance funds (around £250 million per year), up to £100m that departments spend but claw back through charges and fees, and money spent on States-owned bodies.

If you add all of that together (plus the money spent by the parishes funded through rates bills) the final figure is closer to £1.1 billion - or just over £3 million per day.

Although 17 of the 18 candidates failed the test – most opted instead to talk about public spending in general terms, or give a variation of their stump speech about health or education – there was one who stood out. First-time candidate Konrad Kruszynski confessed that he did not know the figure (Ed. but he gets bonus points for quoting a Bailiwick Express exclusive story about ministerial travel expenses in his answer instead).