TREASURY Minister Philip Ozouf’s Budget proposals recommending major increases in tobacco, alcohol and fuel duty were clearly never intended to win friends and influence people among the general public.

There will always be understandable resistance to plans to raise the price of life’s luxuries – and, in the case of fuel, necessities.

However, the Budget speech delivered yesterday by Senator Ozouf included promises which ought to offer some comfort to the many Islanders who now believe that government is too eager to pick their pockets too frequently and too enthusiastically.

The Senator’s key promise was that there will be no new taxes until all possible public sector savings have been identified and made. This runs counter to other politicians’ claims that all possible cuts have already made and that departmental budgets have been cut to the bone. It is, moreover, a pledge that will find special favour in the present circumstances in which private sector organisations are having to look at every aspect of their operations to limit costs.

The announcement that there will be a review of all taxation – including the tax that is not quite a tax, social security contributions – will also be widely welcomed. It seems that no one will be exempt from this review in that it will encompass the tax arrangements of wealthy immigrants with 1(i)K residential status. That they make a contribution to the exchequer is evident. That all of them pay their just due is not.

Among the criteria that will be used to assess the tax system is the concept of ‘fairness’. The importance of this from the point of view of the ordinary taxpayer cannot be stressed too emphatically.

More worryingly, the Senator admitted that the present States business planning process, which is a core element of the budgetary cycle, is not working. It is, however, due to be replaced by three-year spending limits agreed whenever a new Council of Ministers assumes its responsibilities.

This is encouraging, but the measure will stand or fall on the strength of the discipline which ministers are able to impose on themselves. As the Senator has said, departments will have to stick to agreed spending, though some unforeseen contingencies are bound to emerge over the course of any three-year period.

If, meanwhile, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the new chancellor’s first Budget is a particularly tough one, we must bear in mind the background against which it is set. We are facing a series of serious deficits which must be addressed, with the longer term aim being to balance the books in the time-honoured Jersey way.