The 2026-2029 Budget has occupied the minds of our politicians for the last four days, and given its importance, it’s fair to ask what it told us?
Firstly, the obvious point is that Ministers’ proposals have survived largely unscathed. Thanks to preferring pragmatism over principle on some amendments, they avoided any embarrassing defeats, and the back of the Treasury sofa looks like it will only have to yield up something around £1m. In the context of the Island’s total expenditure, that is only a minor annoyance.
Which leads to the second point: whereas most budgets are dominated by discussion of duties on alcohol, tobacco and fuel, comment in advance of this one was all about public sector spending, how we use various government funds, the amount being borrowed for Fort Regent, and criticism from the Fiscal Policy Panel.
Those debates may well develop in the run-up to the elections; but certainly on the basis of this week’s debate, they have not caught the imagination of the States Assembly, with Ministers never looking like losing on any of the key issues, and none of the votes was perilously close.
The same group of voices made the same points – on both sides of the issues – but it never looked like being enough to sway the small group of politicians in the middle who might have voted either way.
Ministers will of course argue that is because their proposals were fundamentally sound, and ultimately it is the electorate which will have the final say on that.
All of which leaves Islanders with two broad ways to look at what’s happened. Ministers will see it as a pragmatically managed Budget, in which they put forward balanced proposals, plotted a stable course ahead and kept the Island steadily on the right track, accepting we have significant challenges to manage. In terms of the voting, the majority of their colleagues agreed.
And then there is, what on the basis of this week can only be described as a minority view, that the big decisions on expenditure reduction have been ducked, that we have been seduced with too much borrowing, and that we haven’t done enough to replenish the Island’s reserves for what may be tough times ahead; in a nutshell, that the buck has been passed to the lucky few who succeed at the ballot box next June.
Which is correct will only be divined by the perspective of history; in the meantime, Budget 2026-2029 is done, and we will see where it leads.
