JERSEY’S politicians will slip back into their seats this week after the New Year, with at least one unexpected item on the agenda – the future funding of the Jersey Employment Trust.
Much has been written about it already in the last week, but it seems that each day, another few brushstrokes are added to the developing picture. For example, over the weekend, we learnt that one of points at issue was over data-sharing. The Minister confirmed that as part of the discussions over this year’s funding, they wanted details at to the Islanders receiving support from JET, but so far, she said that hadn’t been forthcoming:
“The basis for that was so that we could work out whether there was any duplication in services across government, and also to assess that people were in the right service… Ultimately it would be that data that I would need…that would then give us the objective information that would be required for any business case for any further future government funding…”
With discussions seemingly going back up to a year, the picture which is slowly beginning to emerge is of a long-standing disagreement over exactly how, and by how much, the charity should be funded.
As taxpayers, we should of course expect the government to be very careful indeed as to how it spends our money, and perhaps we should expect other charities, and arms-length-organisations, to be featured in these pages in the coming months, as their budgets too, come under the same pressure.
In return it is also perhaps incumbent on government departments to both confirm they are applying the same financial stringency to their own staffing and operations; and that the requirements being placed on those they are funding don’t become a triumph of process over outcome, with the risk of drawing resources away from actually providing a service.
But those points made, now that this funding question is in the public domain we should expect a full explanation of the issues which have been raised, and the various options considered for the future.
These are difficult and sensitive subjects, but they are clearly ones islanders are going to need to wrestle with much more often as budgets shrink and squeeze; dealing with them behind closed doors only builds tension and promotes rumour, which then bursts into the news agenda in fragmentary and confused way, as has happened here.
Part of navigating these problems successfully will be having an open and honest conversation about what can still be paid for, and how that should be achieved.
