THE Health Minister has questioned the merits of the role of Comptroller and Auditor General in the wake of a report on healthcare funding that he said contained “nothing we didn’t already know”.
The report issued yesterday by the Comptroller, Lynn Pamment, expressed concerns about “piecemeal” efforts towards increasing income and changing users’ behaviour through a series of new charges.
Ms Pamment also highlighted the high turnover of chief officers at Health, and of government chief executives, and called for a more joined-up approach to bring together learnings from multiple previous initiatives to tackle the challenge of funding the Island’s healthcare over the past 20 years.
But Health Minister Tom Binet said he was sceptical about the value of Ms Pamment’s report.
“Most of what she has said is quite logical, we aren’t taking issue with it from that perspective,” he said. “But I don’t think anyone in the health service will learn from it – there’s nothing we didn’t already know.
“These reports tend to be written in a tone that assumes people on the receiving end haven’t thought of these things, or aren’t currently dealing with them, but nothing could be further from the truth.”
Senator Binet also defended the work carried out to bring in charging in some areas, criticised as “piecemeal” by Ms Pamment.
“In the past there’s been a tendency to wait until all the elements are in place and all the boxes ticked and then have a big launch, but I’d rather just get on with the work that needs doing,” he said.
The minister has now clashed twice with the C&AG in less than a month since being confirmed to remain in the post he has held since January 2024. In a JEP interview earlier this month, he was critical of Ms Pamment’s involvement in the process to finalise the contract for the Island’s new hospital at Overdale.
Senator Binet described the hospital intervention as “very heavy-handed”, placing him under “unreasonable” pressure and threatening to scupper the contract, which was eventually signed just two days prior to last month’s election.
He issued further criticism yesterday in the wake of the funding report.
“It leads me to question the value of having the Comptroller and Auditor General – does the post deliver anything for us?” he said. “In my opinion, if we are looking for ways to cut expenditure then that’s an area to be looked at.”
The Health Minister is likely to face questions over healthcare funding from a newly-formed Scrutiny panel in the coming months.
Deputy Beatriz Porée, who was appointed as chair of the Health and Social Security panel on 29 June, said: “As a panel we have only had one meeting so far, so there’s been little opportunity to discuss this, but we will be meeting informally with the minister ahead of our public hearing in September and this is something we’ll be looking to ask about.
“Healthcare funding has always been an area of concern for me and I would want to see further consultation about the impact of changes on those who access healthcare.”
Deputy Porée said she agreed with one of the concluding observations in the C&AG report that resolving healthcare funding challenges was not an issue that could be resolved by the government and the Health Department in isolation, but would require a wider public consensus if it was to be successful.
