The ‘mid-term reset’ has been announced as a green paper, and deputies will be asked to endorse its contents today. If the Assembly chooses to so P&R will be given the greenlight to start re-working the capital portfolio and the ways in which it could be funded.
Pictured: Deputy Ferbrache was speaking at an event held by the Chamber of Commerce.
Deputy Ferbrache didn’t hold back when describing the abysmal financial pit Guernsey finds itself in and how he believes we dug ourselves to it.
“We’ve spent very little, as I say, on capital projects over the last 10–15 years, and we’re paying for that now – and we really are at a crisis point.
“Now, most of you followed the Tax Review debate, and you will appreciate the ambition was to provide a plan for sustainable public services. We wanted to ensure that we could fund public services going forward. And that includes being able to invest in essential infrastructure.
“We failed and we failed miserably.”
He was referring to the debate on tax reform earlier this year, when the States voted against a Goods and Services Tax (GST) while also failing to choose a tangible, alternative revenue raising framework. He said he is usually a “pretty optimistic person” but the tax debate was the “most depressed” he’d felt.
He said some of his colleagues failed to show courage and bowed to public pressure against GST: “If there was an Island Games Gold medal for political courage, I don’t think Guernsey would win It.
“I felt that all 40 of us in the States abrogated our responsibility. We were inept. We didn’t come up with something that was meaningful.”
He concluded a long speech on the housing crisis, diminishing working population, and a difficulty to borrow because of stretched resources, by calling for support from the island in approaching “difficult decisions”.
Today’s debate on the Government Work Plan is only the beginning, and the specifics of those “difficult decisions” are yet to be seen, but the door appears to be re-opening for the return of GST.