TENSIONS over Jersey’s escalating levels of public spending have reached boiling point, with the Treasury Minister warning that she has been stripped of the powers needed to keep costs under control, while a former Chief Minister is demanding £89m in cuts because the Island is “struggling to deliver and balance the books”.
Deputy Kristina Moore has put forward a sweeping amendment to the government’s proposed Budget – due to be debated next week – that would freeze net revenue expenditure at 2025 levels, arguing that “unsustainable growth” must end immediately.
If approved, her plan would strip more than £57m from the Health Department, £5.7m from Economic Development, and £26.6m from Treasury itself next year alone – with identical reductions carried through to 2029.
“Taking inflation into account, this will of course be a real-terms spending cut,” said Deputy Moore.
“This can be achieved, not through imposing austerity, but by reorganising the structure of the organisation at a high level and developing a culture of high performance, that harnesses technology and merges some functions in order to reduce the cost of delivering them.”
She accused Chief Minister Lyndon Farnham and Treasury Minister Elaine Millar of viewing fiscal responsibility as “something that can wait for another government to deal with”, claiming that labelling the Budget as “interim” was code for “struggling to deliver and balance the books”.
But the former Chief Minister saved her sharpest criticism for the ballooning Health budget, describing it as a “a classic case of a lack of grip and control”.
She claimed that the former Health Minister was “close to bringing a proposal to the
Assembly which would have sustained those planned efficiencies of 2023 by
transforming the health service into a high quality, efficient service”.
“Instead, we have a £60m overspend with no costed health strategy, no costed workforce strategy and no grip on the spiralling costs associated with the hospital development,” she added.
Deputy Moore drew further comparison to her own tenure as Chief Minister, claiming that her Council of Ministers was presented with £100 million-worth of growth bids “and diligently went through each proposal to decide what was a priority and what could not be done, in order to curb the requested growth in expenditure”.
She said that, at the end of this process, she told ministers and officers that the “following year would have to be different“, with future growth bids having to be accompanied by plans to stop or to simplify another area of business.
“However, in 2023 the request was not observed and once again approximately £100m
of growth bids were brought forward for consideration,” she said.
The former Chief Minister claimed that “the change of government has set the Island back by two years.”
“The Island does not have time to lose, the Assembly must get a grip of public finances now, or the next government will be forced to raise taxes,” she added.
Deputy Moore said that “radical change” is required to deliver a sustainable budget for the Island’s future and action must be taken “immediately”.
Her amendment also seeks to revive a programme of top-level reform that she claims was underway before the change of government.
She noted that the government chief executive previously had “such a mandate and was working on a new structure to deliver a more efficient public service”, and criticised the current administration for stalling that work.
She said the Council of Ministers should restore that authority.
Tighter control of public spending was a dominant theme at Tuesday night’s Question Time Budget Special, which was attended by Treasury Minister Elaine Millar and hosted by All Island Media, parent company of the JEP and Bailiwick Express.
In it, Deputy Millar – who described the Budget as one of “balance” and “restraint” – told the audience that the Island’s escalating expenditure was a direct consequence of the Treasury Minister no longer holding centralised control over departmental budgets.
“I think at some point, if I come back, I will be wanting to get the Treasury Minister more in control – that could be one of the reasons why spending is mushrooming,” she said.
“Another reason is we’re on a one-year cycle, and we are looking to move towards a three-year budgeting process – which will help bring the money in as well.”
Fellow panellist and Public Accounts Committee chair Deputy Inna Gardiner responded: “I completely agree with Deputy Millar, because I do believe that the Treasury Minister needs to have the possibility and the power to tell ministers ‘no’.
“…In the current Council of Ministers, it’s not good the Treasury Minister doesn’t have this power.”
Following the event, a spokesperson from Jersey’s newest political movement Value Jersey said the Minister had “failed to justify a Budget that ignores Jerseyʼs affordability crisis” and which does not clearly address concerns over public sector expenditure.
“The event was great. The Treasury Ministerʼs defence of the budget was not,” a spokesperson said.
“Jersey faces rising prices and a shrinking economy and this government has no plan to bring spending under control and no understanding of why Islanders are struggling.
“Instead they have decided to make these challenges the next governmentʼs problem. But, the government needs to understand that kicking the can is not a plan.ˮ
