Lost . . . a great opportunity on exemptions

If it doesn’t, it should. And on these grounds you could almost hear the sound of hands being wrung in an anxious manner in and around the States Chamber this week.

It was the question of exempting food from GST which was really the cause of all this week’s angst and passion.

Some while ago Deputy Carolyn Labey put forward the idea that an exemption on food would be appropriate. Of course, others later decided — increasingly vociferously as the elections approached — that she was right and jumped on her bandwagon. Some even went for bigger exemptions than she had asked for. At one point, despite the initial opposition of the Council of Ministers, it had seemed that the proposition would get through with some ease. But in fact the vote was a tie.

Whether Deputy Labey’s proposition was economically sound or not (on which I wouldn’t dare comment), it was never going to be an unpopular one with the wider public. But ministers stood firm. Or at least they did until they decided that they didn’t and it was time to back down. But then they weren’t sure again.

The trouble was that no matter how hard those hands were wrung, they were going to be tied by the appearance of the thing. Continue with their course of non-exemption and stony-faced resistance to changes on GST and they risked looking out of touch and hard in the face of a cash-strapped public. Change their minds and join the ranks of those calling for the exemption and they would risk accusations of trying to gain political profit in the month preceding an election. Who’d be a politician, eh?

The problem is that this was a moral dilemma. It was hard for anyone to make the case that it was morally defensible to put extra taxes on food, but ministers did make that decision — with the rider that income support was in place to help those in need.

Deputy John Le Fondré’s proposal to raise thresholds and benefits gained fav-our in this scenario because it appeared not to involve a volte-face by those who could ill afford it. However, it had two pitfalls. Firstly, it didn’t address the moral issue of taxing food in the first place and seemed to indicate a less permanent state of affairs than an exemption. Why take money from people only to give it back to them again? Especially when the real point of the matter is that it shouldn’t have been taken in the first place.

It also, as Senator Ben Shenton pointed out, rather flew in the face of the point behind the new income support system, which is to try to encourage people to become financially independent where possible rather than relying on benefits.

It really is to the shame of the States that Deputy Labey’s proposition was lost. The right and moral course would have been to send out an unequivocal message to Islanders that food, as a basic of life, should not attract any extra tax.