PERHAPS we should have seen it coming. With pressure building for some time now on government spending, and a narrowing focus in particular on so-called “arms length organisations” we shouldn’t have been surprised. The Jersey Employment Trust falls into quite a broad definition of an “arms length organisation”, but still, we learnt this week that its government funding this year will be around £800k lower than last, meaning jobs there are at risk, and the people with disabilities who it helps to find employment will need to be supported in another way.
And that’s the point. From a government accounting perspective, JET has “overspent” its annual budget by around £800k, and so has apparently been told that “extra” money just won’t be available in 2026; that JET needs to operate within the limits of the main funding it is given, which runs to several million a year, while a longer-term arrangement is agreed. The Government needs to save money, so is doing exactly what many commentators have told it to do, and is tightening up.
Except of course it isn’t. No one would be crass enough to claim any sort of “victory”, but it is certainly a pyrrhic decision. We’ll come back to the amount at stake in a moment, and just focus initially on the 516 islanders with mental and physical disabilities who were supported by JET last year.
We’re told half of all those people will now need to be referred back – to the government – for support.
The cost of helping them is still there, still borne ultimately by the government; it just appears that public funds will have to come from another pot to do so – rather than from JET, which was specifically set up for exactly that purpose, and has been doing so since 2002.
In that sense, it makes no sense. It might make narrow technical logic to crackdown on a particular sum, bureaucratically deemed an “overspend;” and it may send a message to other arm’s length organisations. But it is unlikely to actually save a single penny – in fact it is far more likely to end up costing more, not less. The money is not saved, it is moved.
And then we come to the actual amount in question, around £800k. We will remember that number next time we report on a failed public sector project, costing millions; we will remember it next time we read about yet more bureaucracy and the mangers within it; we will remember it whenever we think about our billion-pound government.
