It’s very disappointing, to see first-hand the change of political style from my first term in 2012-2016, the Policy and Resources Committee has become much more dictatorial, whoever is in the seats, during one amendment all five members of P&R spoke at length and then accused the proposer of using their 15 minutes to reply in full to a 3 hour long debate, then complained afterwards the time was being taken up, as I said I’m happy to sit for 5 or 10 days, we really have only had 2 and a half days on this so far, in 2015 we as an assembly sat for 5 to 6 days on tax changes.
I raised many times in debate, P&R didn’t arrange workshops or meetings as one group of deputies to discuss members ideas, they just published their policy letter, one member of P&R stated in the debate I was invited into a meeting to discuss my ideas and I pointed out the date offered, was the 9th June, the day after the publication of their policy letter, plus they have invited members in as individuals, but that is 5 to 1, plus officers, it’s more like 12 to 1, why I decided to bring amendments to the Chamber direct, as at least I had friends in the room.
I have been invited to lay further amendments by the President of Economic Development Deputy Kazantseva-Miller in the last debate, about the States expenditure should not exceed inflation over the next three years, during my speech about possible options of reforms to the social security funds, and that is exactly what I plan to do, including other measures to cut costs and reduce expenditure, which might include cutting the Economic Development budget, this extra time is valuable and we can really put on the table the reforms that are needed and not introduce GST right now.
As I said in the debate, we are in a housing crisis, not a financial crisis, we need to build flats, bedsits, homes for our young Islanders and guess what they will stay on the Island and pay taxes filling any possible holes, not that I’m sure we have one, they didn’t answer my questions if our financial modelling had factored in the extra Document Duty or TRP, as this Island builds the thousands of homes needed in the next five years.
The latest population data is from December 2024, we have no idea what makes up our population now and we shouldn’t be making these long-lasting decisions on very poor data, our reserves increased by £154 Million last year alone to now over 4 Billion, we have over 1 Billion in pension and long-term care funds, a Staff Public Sector Pension fund nearly 100% covered from the latest actuarial valuation, we have high employment and hundreds to thousands of job vacancies, the answer has always been grow the economy and taxes will just flood in, it might mean higher population whilst we deal with the increase in pensioners, but the alternative is really unthinkable.
Deputy Garry Collins
