Deputy Kirsten Morel, chairman of the Economic and International Affairs Scrutiny Panel, has heavily criticised the savings proposals for 2020 that were published as a supplement to the main document.
The Deputy was among a number of backbenchers who have called for the Efficiencies Plan, which was published at the end of October, to be debated at a later date to allow more scrutiny time.
After an initial review of the plan, he has raised a number of concerns, including his belief that the government will simply not meet its target of £40 million of efficiencies based on what he has seen.
‘Their efficiencies include boosting the government’s revenue by increasing existing charges, such as extending the hours of parking charges to 7am to 6pm, to raise £1.1 million,’ he said.
‘This is not an efficiency and no one in Jersey believes it is. So, they have already missed their target by more than £1 million. And with the parking charges it will hit lower-income earners and St Helier residents the most.
‘Another thing is they have forecast a reduction in benefits payments – again, this is not an efficiency. It is a naturally expected reduction in costs due to high employment in the Island at this time. If the economy declines, as indicators suggest it might, then this would be another £0.94 million of efficiencies that will disappear.’
The Deputy said that he was particularly concerned that a lot of the planned efficiencies seemed to based on the hope that the economy would perform well next year, which might not be the case.
‘The global indicators are that there could well be a downturn. Another proposed efficiency is managing inflation to save £4.86 million. This could come to nothing if that proves to be unachievable,’ he said.
‘Things like sickness/vacancy management saving £5.58 million is another hoped-for target. Some of this is pie in the sky, like saying the target operating model will save money – it’s an ongoing project and the savings are just being hoped for.’
He added: ‘The cutting back of day-to-day spending on things like biscuits and professional journals, which has also been proposed, could be a false economy.
‘Things like journals are useful for professionals and boost productivity, so the loss of them will impact on workers negatively. And things like getting rid of biscuits are the sort of thing that really impacts on staff morale.’
The Deputy added that he felt the plans also included ‘a few accounting tricks’ like reprofiling revenue expenditure as capital expenditure.
‘It is still money collected from the taxpayer, and is therefore not an efficiency,’ he said.
The Government Plan is due to be debated on 26 November.
