Policy and Resources (P&R) handed a private firm more than £10,000 to double-check its own figures on controversial tax plans – just days before deputies vote on the package.
Under States rules, contracts under £15,000 don’t automatically trigger a mandatory competitive tender process, so Dorey Financial Modelling was given the job without having to bid for it.
We now know the firm, which has been at the centre of a political row, was paid between £40,000 and £52,000 a year between 2020 and 2025 for population and GDP forecasting work – a total of more than £272,000.
The decision to hire Dorey to validate P&R’s tax modelling has sparked sharp questions over transparency, timing, and potential conflicts of interest.
Martyn Dorey, the firm’s founder, is a vocal, public supporter of GST, leading some to question if the firm’s appointment creates a perception of bias.
Alongside this, Express revealed that the firm’s operations director is in a relationship with a deputy outside P&R – who did not disclose this in his official declarations of interest.
£50,000-a-year payouts
Official answers to a series of Rule 14 questions from Deputy Rob Curgenven reveal the extent of Dorey’s relationship with the States.
The States of Guernsey has paid the company continuously over the last six years, with yearly fees climbing to over £50,000:
- 2020: £40,752.34
- 2021: £41,254.60
- 2022: £42,932.00
- 2023: £46,600.00
- 2024: £49,540.00
- 2025: £51,332.00
In total, taxpayers have handed Dorey more than a quarter of a million pounds across the past six years to build and maintain population and economic projections.
P&R justifies Dorey decision
In its response, P&R strongly defended bypassing a tender process, laying out its key grounds for appointing Dorey directly:
- Below threshold: The £10,500 fixed fee sits under the £15,000 limit that requires a formal procurement process.
- Time pressure: P&R needed the validation finished before the tax reform debate resumes on 30 September. A condensed window – further tight-squeezed by mandatory Cyber Security and Data Protection reviews – left “a limited number of suppliers” capable of working at speed.
- No external AI risk: Dorey proposed an analytical approach that progresses fast without exposing sensitive raw data to external AI tools.
- Census data experience: Dorey has previously processed census data for the States, meaning it already has “an up-to-date working knowledge” of Guernsey data definitions and the secure facilities required to handle restricted information.
- Professional code: P&R emphasised that Dorey’s Managing Director is bound as an actuary by strict duties under the Actuaries’ Code. The committee pointed to Principle 3 of the Code, which explicitly dictates that an actuary’s professional judgement must not be compromised – and cannot reasonably be seen or perceived to be compromised – by bias, conflict of interest, or external influence. P&R argued this professional duty ensures an unbiased technical assessment regardless of past public comments or ongoing States contracts.
P&R has not revealed why it didn’t decide to validate the modelling before publishing the tax policy letter or July’s GST debate.
Ignored alternative scenarios
The disclosure also sheds further light on the exact nature of P&R’s tax modelling – and confirms that the States hasn’t asked Dorey to look at alternative scenarios – instead keeping the focus of the validation work very narrow.
As independent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) economist Martin Mikloš previously told Express, best-practice tax modelling usually involves testing a wide range of “behavioural assumptions” to see how sensitive tax proposals are to real-world changes in consumer spending, tax compliance, or economic growth.
However, the Rule 14 response confirms Dorey was not instructed to test alternative scenarios like consumption elasticity, compliance, avoidance rates, or GDP growth.
Instead, Dorey was simply asked to verify the single, fixed set of calculations already supplied in P&R’s model.
Rather than a rigorous stress-test of how GST might hit the real economy, P&R’s £10,500 validation exercise looks like it’s essentially an arithmetic check of civil servants’ existing work.
As P&R has refused to share the models or the methodology, formulas and equations it used, we don’t know whether civil servants tested a range of optimistic and pessimistic scenarios or just looked at a ‘best-case scenario’.
Disclosure questions
The Rule 14 response also sheds light on a separate political row – Deputy Adrian Gabriel’s decision not to declare a personal relationship with Dorey’s Operations Director, Sally Diamond.
P&R confirmed that Deputy Gabriel – who does not sit on the committee – had no role in appointing Dorey and didn’t know the process was happening.
However, under the States’ ‘Green Book’ code of conduct, deputies must declare relevant interests involving spouses or co-habiting partners to prevent actual conflicts of interest, and eliminate any appearance of one.
Despite Ms Diamond joining Dorey in May 2021 while the firm was actively contracted by the States, Deputy Gabriel’s published declarations from May 2021, July 2023 and June 2026 do not appear to mention Ms Diamond or Dorey Financial Modelling.
Deputy Gabriel previously refused to answer Express’ questions about why it was not in his declarations.
Too late to act
Deputies won’t even see Dorey’s validation report until 23 September – the day after the strict deadline to lay amendments to the tax debate.
P&R has flatly refused to extend the deadline, meaning politicians will be forced to debate the multi-million-pound tax overhaul on 30 September without any chance to alter proposals based on the £10,500 review.
