MINISTERS want to tack extra spending worth almost £10m on to next year’s Business Plan, partly to cover the expected moves on free nursery care and anti-discrimination funding.

And they want to bring back a Vehicle Emission Duty on new cars, just a year after an annual emissions tax was overwhelmingly rejected. The amendments, formally announced today by Chief Minister Frank Walker, will each be debated individually by the States on 16 September – a month before the Senatorial and Constables’ elections.

By lodging the extra spending separately to the main proposition, the Council of Ministers have technically kept to the 3.5% spending increase stipulated by last year’s Business Plan – even though the final spending increase is likely to be much higher, at around 5.41%, if the States approve the extra measures.

But Senator Walker defended the late additions, and the reversals of previous decisions to cancel funding for discrimination, GST exemptions and free nursery care, by saying that ministers were reacting to changing circumstances. The extra spending also includes the lost income from the GST exemptions on food that ministers agreed to support in a U-turn last week, the 20% increase to the winter fuel allowance and the freeze on fuel duty.

Pictured: Education Minister Mike Vibert and Chief Minister Frank Walker