Senator Alan Maclean said that small government was key to success.
He made the comments when addressing an audience of business leaders, entrepreneurs and sixth-form students at the inaugural Jersey International Business School Annual Directors’ Conference, which was held at the Hotel de France in association with the Jersey Evening Post.
He said that tourism and agriculture were already benefiting from private sector involvement and would continue to have his strong support in parallel with moves to protect and grow the finance industry.
‘Government policy is not, and will never be, to diversify away from financial services,’ he said, adding that it was the cornerstone of the Jersey economy.
He explained that private sector tourism industry experts were already working with their States colleagues to improve the marketing of Jersey.
He also signalled that Jersey would look at ways of working more closely with Guernsey to market the Island as both a finance centre and a holiday destination.
‘We must look at how we support the tourism sector as we move forward,’ the minister said. ‘We must consider whether that should remain a role of government or whether there is a better recovery model.’
He added: ‘More government functions should be outsourced.’
During his 15-minute speech, Senator Maclean said that Jersey must not tax its way out of deficit, but at the same time the Island could not ‘slash and burn’ public services.
He said that re-establishing economic growth was ‘critical’ for the Island and this would be done by pursuing policies that include the promotion of ‘enterprise, investment, skills and competition’.
The role of government, he explained, was not to act as an entrepreneur but to be a facilitator for business.
‘The aim is to reduce and simplify excessive red tape and bureaucracy,’ he said, adding that he would focus on ‘removing barriers to business to allow potential to be fulfilled’.
He stressed that Jersey was ‘open to inward investment’ and there had to be greater emphasis on attracting inward investment in future.
On the financial services front, the minister said that the Island already had offices in London, Hong Kong and in other key markets and he said: ‘We will continue to invest to stay ahead of the game.’
But he gave an assurance that ‘government policy will never be to diversify away from financial services’. He said that the policy would be to continue to work with the industry to ‘innovate and legislate to capture opportunity’.
And he gave a hint that Jersey could end up following the lead of Malta and outsourcing the preparation of financial legislation to the private sector.
He said in doing so Malta had reduced the time taken for new laws to be prepared and put on the statute books.
‘There will be more government focus on outsourcing to the private sector, we will look to create smaller government,’ he said.
And he said that he would work to create an environment where ‘government would get out of the way and allow the private sector to play a bigger role’ in reforming the structure of the public sector.
The Senator said: ‘The future has to be productivity-led. We have to let enterprise be exactly that – enterprising.’
