BEING a determined critic of the Jersey financial services industry and the rules and regulations which enable it to thrive must be a frustrating occupation.

Every time a new independent report on the sector emerges, criticism is very much in the background and the favourable aspects of our number-one source of wealth and public revenues are highlighted.

Even the most objective and manifestly balanced views of what we do and how we do it will, of course, fail to convert our arch-critics, but countering first the Island’s honourable position on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ‘white list’ of co-operative offshore jurisdictions, then the glowing International Monetary Fund report which placed us at the very top of the regulatory league and now the very favourable Foot Report must be hard work.

Quite rightly, our finance industry, its promotional organisation, Jersey Finance Ltd, the Jersey Financial Services Commission and senior politicians are eager to draw maximum attention to investigations which praise our standards.

They are all too aware that the old ‘tax haven’ slur is hard to live down and that, in the wake of global recession largely driven by greed in high financial places, many people continue to view us with suspicion.

However, all Islanders should be very glad that the succession of reports which began in the 1990s with the work of Whitehall mandarin Andrew Edwards and later involved the Financial Action Task Force, the OECD, the IMF and now Michael Foot have not found us wanting. Like it or not, the central pillar of the Island economy – and its prosperity – is finance and it is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

In spite of this – again with our critics in mind – it is important that no one overstates the degree to which independent reports support our industry’s probity, the strength of Island regulation and the effort we put into tackling financial crime.

Mr Foot, for example, surveyed a very wide field indeed, looking not only at the Crown Dependencies but also six Overseas Territories. Great breadth in an inquiry must always be at the expense of depth, so we should be aware that this latest examination was more cursory than some of its predecessors.

In addition, any document which sets out to assess territories such as the Turks and Caicos Islands – which have not covered themselves in regulatory glory – at the same time as Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man is bound to make us and our fellow league-toppers stand out as models of excellence.