Call for details of £100m savings for ‘effective scrutiny’

Call for details of £100m savings for ‘effective scrutiny’

The Government Plan, which was released last month, outlined how £40 million would be cut in 2020 with a total of £100 million being saved by 2023.

In an open letter to Chief Minister John Le Fondré, Corporate Services Scrutiny panel chairwoman Senator Kristina Moore has demanded that more information be made available about where the savings are coming from, to allow the plan to be properly scrutinised.

She said the information should have been made available by now and is calling for it to be shown to the panel by 29 August.

In the letter Senator Moore wrote: ‘On page 110 of the Government Plan you have provided information about the efficiencies programme and confirm that £19.7 million of efficiencies have been identified to date.

‘However, you have not provided any details in the document about which parts of government spending the efficiencies will come from.

‘This information is critical to us if we are to effectively scrutinise the Government Plan.

‘Given your role overseeing the efficiencies programme, we are surprised that you have not made this information available at the same time as publishing the rest of your spending proposals for 2020-23.’

She added that she would have expected the work to have been completed by now and that detailed figures should be available to States Members and the public.

‘We note that in October 2018, you said in a speech to the Chamber of Commerce that “over coming weeks, we will refine our work on efficiencies for 2020-2”,’ she added.

Senator Moore had criticised the plan earlier this month for ‘lacking vision’ and called it a rehash of previous strategies.

She is now calling for a quick response from Senator Le Fondré so the scrutiny process can progress.

The letter goes on to state: ‘It makes it extremely difficult for us to assess the level of funding proposed for putting children first, improving wellbeing and your other strategic priorities, if efficiencies are to be allocated against these figures before the plan is debated in November.

‘Therefore, we request that you provide us with detailed information on the efficiencies and where they will be attributed to. This information should be provided to us by Thursday 29 August.’

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