By Ben Shenton
WE all pay our social security on the promise of a pension when we retire. The custodian and manager is the Government of Jersey, an unregulated body that does not publish the investment accounts or actuarial reports. In fact, getting any information out of them is like trying to get blood out of a stone. On 16 September 2025, the Jersey Evening Post published a letter from the government in reaction to one of my comment pieces, which sadly took deliberately misleading the public to a new level.
The social security pot consists of two funds, the Social Security Fund and the Social Security Reserve Fund – think of them as a current account and a deposit account. The letter gave the balances of both funds and showed the total balance had increased from £2.0722 billion on 31 December 2019 to £2.5579 billion on 31 December 2024, an increase of +23.43%. As the government points out in its letter, “the Reserve Fund has grown by nearly a quarter since the beginning of 2020”. Hands up if you read this letter and thought that this was investment performance and the increase was really good?
Now let’s give you some more information. Thanks to the perseverance of the think tank Policy Centre Jersey, we can add a bit more detail. In 2024, £403 million was paid into the social security pot – primarily our social security contributions. Based on 2024 figures of £400 million per annum, for it’s not easy to get this information, around £2 billion (at current values) was paid in over the five years covered by the government letter. The other thing not mentioned was the effects of inflation. My parents paid £2,000 for their first house in 1960, but £2,000 won’t buy you a four-bedroom house today, will it?
The Jersey inflation rate over the five-year period covered by the letter was +30.03% – which means that a social security pot of £2.0722bn at the beginning of 2020 would need to be £2.694bn at the end of 2024 just to stand still on an inflation-adjusted basis. Yet our pension pot, which has been used like an ATM by ministers over recent years, is short by £136.1 million – primarily because the government has suspended paying in their full obligations.
Even though the pot has declined by -£136.1 million in real terms during the period, the government intend to continue to withhold payments due to their inability to control public sector costs. Surprisingly the actuaries appear happy. I’ll cover the appalling use of funds to buy the government headquarters, implications of AI, automation, and an ageing demographic, on both tax revenue and social security revenue/expenditure at another time. Incidentally, it is our – yours and mine – pension they are stealing from. They have no intention of withholding any of their obligations regarding paying into the public-sector-salary-related scheme.
While writing this piece I suddenly thought of Dennis Moore, a fictional character from a Monty Python Sketch. Dennis Moore was a version of Robin Hood who would steal from the poor to give to the rich. In order to get my point across I thought that I would write a draft public letter (below) using Robin Hood as the satirical lens to highlight the concerns recently raised by Deputy Sir Philip Bailhache – the budgetary policy of stealing from the social security – which mirror my own concerns. We are already over £136 million, in real terms, below levels seen at the end of 2019, and we should certainly not be stealing from the social security pot at this time.
To the people of Jersey…
Once upon a time, in the fair isle of Jersey, there lived a band of merry ministers who, unlike Robin Hood, had a rather curious interpretation of justice. Instead of stealing from the rich to give to the poor, they’ve decided to borrow from the pensioners to fund their own political wish list – all in the name of “stability”.
Yes, you heard that right. The social security pot – the sacred vault meant to support our elderly, our vulnerable, and our future generations – is being raided to the tune of £50 million a year for four years. That’s £200 million spirited away from the very people who built the Island, to plug budget holes and finance government ambitions. If Robin Hood were watching, he’d be galloping back to Sherwood Forest in disbelief. Because in this version of the tale, the Sheriff of Nottingham isn’t the villain – it’s the Treasury. Deputy Sir Philip Bailhache has rightly called this out. He warns that this policy is not only unsustainable but morally questionable. After all, plundering reserves to meet current spending is not a recipe for stability – it’s a recipe for future crisis.
Let’s be clear: this is not a temporary inconvenience. It’s a structural shift that risks undermining the very foundation of our social contract. Pensioners deserve dignity, not delayed promises. Children deserve security, not IOUs. So I ask: where is the accountability? Where is the long-term vision?
It’s time to reverse this policy. It’s time to protect the Social Security Fund. And it’s time to remind our leaders that true leadership means safeguarding the future, not mortgaging it.
Yours sincerely,
Concerned citizen of Jersey.
An imagined reply from the government to the esteemed citizens of Jersey…
We appreciate your concerns regarding the recent adjustments to the Social Security Fund. Rest assured, these decisions were made after extensive internal discussions, a few catered lunches and a robust round of “what’s best for us right now”.
Yes, it’s true – we are reallocating nearly £50 million a year from the Social Security Fund over the next four years. But let’s not call it “plundering”. That sounds so medieval. We prefer the term “strategic rebalancing of intergenerational liquidity”. It’s modern, vague and fits nicely on a PowerPoint slide.
We understand that some of you – particularly pensioners – may be worried. But we assure you, we’ve run the numbers. And while they didn’t look great, we’ve decided to proceed anyway. After all, elections are coming, and nothing says “fiscal responsibility” like a shiny new office and a balanced budget built on borrowed promises.
In conclusion, we remain committed to short-term stability, long-term ambiguity and medium-term re-election. We thank you for your understanding and encourage you to focus on the positives – like the new government headquarters, which will have excellent heating, unlike some of your homes.
Yours bureaucratically,
The States of Jersey Treasury and its political friends.
Ben Shenton is a senior investment director. He is a former Senator, who held positions such as minister, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, and chair of Scrutiny. He also assists a number of local charities on an honorary basis.
