One of a series of speeches I made in debate on the MTFP. This against an amendment by Deputies Roffey and Ferbrache.
Sir, On the back of Deputy Ferbrache’s speech I thought I would provide a few definitions. Let’s start with progressive – it says on my electronic communicator that progressive means happening or developing gradually or in stages – and uses an example as ‘a progressive decline in popularity’.
The use of the word realistic, defined as having or showing a sensible and practical idea of what can be achieved or expected, is spread liberally around the MTFP but with little evidence behind it to justify the word. We are told firstly that we have to find £40m each year, the reasoning behind that being somewhat questionable and then to find it an apparently realistic split should be 35% from taxes and 65% from savings.
This amendment is no better of course, other than the fact it expects the public to provide more in the way of taxes when they are not earning more in the way of income. That is unless Deputy Ferbrache’s Committee can generate more economic activity and bring in significantly more people to increase our tax take.
Deputy Queripel says we need to raise more taxes and he says he is willing, on median earnings to pay an extra £100. But, and to take Deputy Trott’s comments further, if you take that as an average I suspect it’s unlikely to make £5m. Where does he suggest we find the extra £20m if we support this amendment? Well perhaps one area where income has fallen considerably, indeed almost halved in the last 8 years, is document duty from £24 to around £13m. The sooner we can get the housing market moving again the better. But still that wouldn’t be enough.
Now Deputy Roffey said yesterday that £26m of savings was unachievable but he is happy to place an amendment of not much less. Do I think £25m is achievable? Well, I have my doubts more particularly about how P&R believe we go about it than the quantum and I will say more when we come to debate the next amendment. However, what I will say now, just as a taster, as it were, and from a health and social care perspective is that we are expected to make short term savings at the same time we are looking at undertaking a fundamental change in the model of care. What concerns me is that will impact on our ability to undertake the structural changes that we need if we are not to prevent our health and social care costs to rise exponentially. Short termism is what worries me here.
One particular area of concern is the fact that we are told that savings can be made from overtime. Well that smells like FTP for one thing. It also makes no sense from a health and social care point of view. OK so we cut overtime. If we are to maintain safe staffing levels we then need to take on more agency staff, which as we all know are fundamentally more expensive and were a major reason for the overspends for several years.
So, I have concerns over this amendment and proposition 1.
However, I can’t support this amendment because I don’t think either elements of this amendment are achievable or realistic.