FIGURES which, finally, have been made public show that over the past three years almost £12 million has been spent by the States on consultants’ fees, ministers’ travel and ministers’ hotel accommodation.

It is, of course, possible that this level of expenditure represents excellent value for money. Politicians’ travel might have yielded insight into all sorts of money-saving ideas and consultants’ reports might have saved millions which might otherwise have been pointlessly squandered.

This, however, is not a point of view likely to find favour with most Islanders, who can have hardly failed to notice a further figure linked with the release of information – namely that spending on the items in question has almost doubled since the Council of Ministers and allied structures came into being.

Our political representatives should all be aware that, like it or not, expensive consultancy is not popular with the electorate. That electorate, moreover, is generally very willing to subscribe to the idea that entertaining travel in the guise of fact-finding expeditions is one of the better perks enjoyed by those holding high office.

The notion that ministers are always jetting off on ‘jollies’ is not sustainable, but it is easy to understand public cynicism in the light of the recent revelations about police officers enjoying club and even first class flights when investigations meant that they had to travel to Australia.

Meanwhile, although the Treasury was finally able to extract the relevant figures from the mass of data that it is obliged to handle, the Code of Practice on Public Access to Official Information had to be invoked by this newspaper before the information became public. And even with the presumption of openness on which the code is founded, the figures took a very long time to emerge, having initially been asked for in March.

This, in all probability, had at least as much to do with the difficulty of extracting the information from the States accounts as they are currently kept as with any official reticence. Nevertheless, it is interesting to speculate on the impact a law, as opposed to the code, and a statutory duty to comply with reasonable requests for official information, might have had on the process of disclosure and its speed.