Here we go, putting all our eggs into one basket again

But he’s got a cunning plan. As Jersey doesn’t have a cabinet, we can’t have a cabinet reshuffle, but we’re having the next best things with a reshuffling of the chairs around the Council of Minister’s table. That’s probably a bit of an exaggeration because the faces will stay the same and their chairs will probably stay in the same place as well, but their roles will be enhanced, altered, expanded or refocused (take your pick).

There certainly won’t be any new faces around the table, because there’s not much ministerial material available and there will probably be even less following the result of the referendum. That’s what you get for sacrificing almost everything else for the sake of trying to make the States smaller.

Perhaps the most important change in portfolios announced by the Chief Minister last week is also the most inexplicable. From now on the leader of our government, who has already got a fair amount of work on his plate, is also going to be the finance sector supremo with responsibility for by far the Island’s biggest industry and revenue earner.

This is as a result of recommendations by leading consultants looking into the future of the finance sector. Yes the love affair between Jersey and outside consultants continues, despite the fact that we’re now supposed to keep as much work as possible inside the Island, rather than giving it to outside organisations.

The future of the finance industry may well be a special case, however, and so they have brought in one of the world’s most respected global consultancy firms, and probably one of the most expensive as well.

While you can paper the walls with previous reports by consultants which have been largely, if not totally, ignored, no one is going to ignore this consultancy firm. You can imagine the outcry there would be from the public and some States members if large sums of money were spent on outside experts and then we ignored their advice. So no one in little old Jersey is going to differ with the findings of this particular group of experts.

We don’t know what they are recommending yet, except the Chief Minister says that one of their key findings is the importance of clear lines of government responsibility for the finance industry.

Apparently Jersey lacks focus now because political responsibility for this important industry is shared between three departments – the Chief Ministers, Economic Development and the Treasury.

So the consultants are recommending that financial services should be centralised within the department of the Chief Minister and political responsibility for the industry should be transferred to this busy minister.

The change is so urgent that the Minister for Treasury and Resources will take on some ‘operational tasks’ to help the Chief Minister implement the new structure. Although that might be blurring the lines again, this change is apparently necessary for the future of the finance sector. Rarely has the Council of Ministers moved so quickly.

Far be it from me to pour cold water on the recommendations of a firm of global advisers, but this is rubbish. The consultants may well have diligently fulfilled their obligations to make recommendations for the good of the finance industry, but what about the rest of the Island and its economy?

It wasn’t the consultants’ job to look at what was good for the Island as a whole – perhaps they expected the Council of Ministers to do that – so they had a blank sheet of paper on which to create the future finance sector for Jersey. For them, the future of the finance industry is the future of Jersey, but I thought the Island was trying to grow out of this obsession.

Many of the current ills affecting the Island’s economy are precisely because Jersey has in the past put all of its eggs in one basket. For years everyone has been saying that the economy should be more diversified and while hopefully, the finance sector will remain by far Jersey’s most important industry, other activities should be encouraged. Even people heavily involved in finance now say this openly.

But what are we going to have now? The political responsibility for finance is being separated from the political responsibility for all of the Island’s other industries and given – not to a junior minister – but to the head of government. Whether the aim was to create a two tier structure for industries or not, the effect is to make it look as though finance is so important that only the Chief Minister can handle it, while all other industries can be relegated to a more humble Minister for Economic Development.

It’s even worse than that, actually. It’s also been decided that the current Economic Development Minister will have so much time on his hands just looking after all the other industries, that he can also take over responsibility for cutting the public sector down to size.

It’s true that his clear preference for small government gives him unique qualifications for sorting out the administration, but nevertheless he should have his hands full juggling the needs of tourism, the digital economy (if we get one), construction and everything else that is apparently nowhere near as important as financial services. At least he won’t have to worry about a balanced economy as that appears to be yesterday’s policy.

It would have been far more logical for the EDD Minister to take over full responsibility for financial services as well. Looking after all the islands’ industries would indeed be a big task, but there are various regulatory functions which have nothing to do with economic development that could have been stripped out of his portfolio.

There could have been many other ways to reshuffle ministerial responsibilities to meet the needs, not just of financial services, but of all industries. But separating finance from the rest of the economy isn’t a clever way.

Yes, the future of financial services in Jersey is vitally important, but so is the future of a balanced economy and all other industries.

I’m sure we can find a consultant to confirm that.

Peter Body