IT’S unfair I know, and I don’t like doing it, but I’m going to use this column to answer criticisms levelled at me in a recent letter to the editor.

I’m not just trying to get the last word. No doubt the letter writer will want to respond, and so this could run and run.

But while I hate this kind of tit-for-tat, and frankly I’m getting very bored with the subject of my original column, it is a vitally important issue and it needs more debate and certainly more reasoned debate – because we’re talking about twaddle here.

The criticism of my views about public spending cuts expressed in the letter by a well-respected businessman also raised some interesting points.

He won’t be surprised to learn that I don’t agree with all of them, but I do agree that we need to discuss the issues in much more depth and not just stick to our entrenched prejudices.

First, however, I think we need to get the record straight. Perhaps I wasn’t very clear, but the reason I accused the Treasury Minister two weeks ago of talking twaddle was not because he proposed expenditure cuts.

I believe he was talking twaddle because he tried to deflect blame for the highly unpopular changes the Council of Ministers have proposed to the Business Plan. He clamed that it was all the fault of managers who had proposed cuts that they knew would not be accepted by the public. That’s what I considered twaddle and I still do.

Anyhow there are other more important issues raised in the critical letter. The correspondent repeats what other businessmen have said about the recent proposed cuts in public spending. They amount to less than one per cent of the total, so are ‘hardly draconian’.

Obviously the private sector ‘experts’ will claim that any organisation can make efficiency savings to cover these modest cuts. That is something that even a die-hard supporter of the public sector would have to agree with. But the Business Plan is not talking about efficiency savings. It’s talking about getting rid of public services which, the furore shows, the public values.

States departments are not being asked to introduce efficiencies that will reduce their spending by less than one percent. They have been told to save the money now. That’s because the Council of Minsters panicked when they realised they couldn’t balance the budget without introducing immediate service reductions on a pro rata basis.

My claim that departmental budgets have already been cut to the bone was also ridiculed by the letter writer because ‘of the remorseless rise in States spending that has occurred not just in recent years, but as long as many of us can remember’. Well that’s a surprise.

The letter writer ‘puts things into perspective’ by telling us that public spending is now running at almost £2m a day. Well you have to agree that that’s a pretty big bill. But hang on. Apart from doubting the accuracy of the figure (public spending is nowhere near £730m a year), every other figure has grown as well, including inflation and national income.

According to some tables Jersey is the second wealthiest jurisdiction in the world when you measure income per head of population. Is the letter writer suggesting that the value of services provided to the public should not have kept up with the growth in wealth?

But probably the most ludicrous comment in the letter to the editor is the suggestion that the rising cost of public services hasn’t produced any improvements.
Do hospital patients receive better nursing care now then they did in 1999, he asked? Are school children better educated? Are our streets safer, cleaner and better lit? Are the roads better maintained? Does the drainage system now cover the whole Island?

Well I think in virtually every case it’s obvious there have been improvements. Taking nursing for example, which represents a hefty wage bill, there are many more specialist nurses and clinics now providing new levels of care that were unheard of ten years ago. Certainly improvements in the way the States operates have been on a par with anything you can see in the private sector.

But I’m totally at a loss to understand why the letter writer thinks that not achieving any improvement (according to him) is an argument for cutting public spending. It sounds more like a case for spending more money not less. Otherwise how are we going to get the drainage system to cover the whole Island?

But this isn’t his position because he obviously believes there’s a lot of waste in the States and that too much money is spent on ‘more managerial and administrative positions’. Sounds a bit like the private sector to me.

However, if he includes the biggest spending department, then there is precious little evidence to support him. Certainly the Comptroller and Auditor General doesn’t agree. He couldn’t find any evidence of too many administrators in Health and Social Services, and it’s well known that the education department struggles because of a lack of departmental support.

It’s ironic, of course, that the Treasury Minister now also acknowledges that his department needs a number of new pen pushers in order for it to function properly.
This is supposed to help to raise productivity, which as the letter writer says can be done by ‘the application of technology, by changing work patterns and by organisational reform’.

Everyone but a couple of States Members and trade union leaders will agree with that. But it needs investment before the efficiencies start to show up and that means spending more, not less, money. So perhaps a lot of that £2m spent every day is merely being invested in improving services.

What is certain is that the States can’t achieve even a less than one per cent cut in spending without damaging services that the public value.

That’s unless of course you agree with the Treasury Minister that departments have chosen the wrong cuts just to upset the users.

The author of the letter to the editor says that the States have to face up to the same tough spending decisions now being undertaken by Islanders and Island businesses.

Well they did precisely that with the current Business Plan cuts which the public claimed targeted the vulnerable. But of course you don’t have to worry about that when you’re in business.

Peter Body is editor of Business Brief magazine