JUST what use is the Public Accounts Committee? Not much, it would appear. Having failed to identify any really significant savings in the public sector, members of PAC remain undeterred.

Now they propose immediate butchery in public services, thus trying to put a spanner in the works as far as the carefully thought out plans of the Treasury department is concerned concerned.

Treasury were already going to have a tough job cutting ten per cent of the entire States budget over three years. Now PAC want to tackle this
sensitive problem with all the precision of a bulldozer and get them to do it in two years.

Personally, I think it’s simply crazy to expect a large, complex organisation like the States to be dramatically restructured over three years, let alone two. The obvious danger is that services the public have said time and again that they want and value, will be damaged irreparably.

But in their budgetary panic, that’s what the Treasury is trying to do. Now we have PAC, which is panicking even more, telling us that it should all be done much more quickly.

Now it’s well known that we don’t learn from history, but you would think we could remember what happened last year.

In yet another panic, the Council of Ministers insisted that each department make real cuts in its budget pro-rata so that the books would balance. The cuts were dutifully made and all Hell broke loose. The public complained that services used by the vulnerable were being targeted and States departments had to furiously back-peddle.

Precisely the same process is underway now. The same departments are being asked to make the same cuts next year, with even further and much
bigger cuts to come after that. Now unless those departments have managed to find that hidden service that no one has heard about and which could be cut without anyone noticing, precisely the same services will be cut with presumably the same reaction from the public. And that’s just with the Treasury department’s proposals.

If PAC has its way, those cuts will all be made over just two years, so that no department and no service will escape immediate attention. You can imagine what the public will say about that.

Indeed, it doesn’t need much imagination to know what the public thinks. You only have to read the columns of this newspaper. Over the past few weeks there have been complaints about too few childcare places, not enough resources going into child protection services, a renal dialysis unit under severe pressure, concerns about too many locums at the Hospital, the need for the States to invest in new enterprises, and on and on.

These items would, incidentally, constitute what PAC calls ‘shroud waving’ but the real cuts haven’t even started yet.

However, PAC obviously believes that its penny-pinching message goes down well with the electorate. After all, the increase in expenditure is frightening – even I acknowledge that. So there’s a great desire to rein in spending and reduce budgets dramatically. But as the annoying saying goes: ‘We are where we are’ and it’s how we get out of where we are that really matters.

Some of the electorate will swallow the whole of PAC’s proposition that these cuts can be achieved ‘without significant impact on frontline services’. Well, please pull the other one. The evidence would suggest otherwise. Or should we just rely on the word of the PAC without any supporting facts. PAC may only be concerned with the public accounts, but even accountants have to consider what services the figures relate to.

Unfortunately, some of the electorate does not make the direct connection between what the States spend and how they benefit. Indeed, some are keen to see budget cuts – until it affects them that is. They want the States to spend less money, but not on their budget.

But PAC raises the prospect that our problems are all really down to the ‘greedy’ and the ‘inefficient’ in the public service because they are overpaid. So is it too much to ask for some evidence.

PAC has been looking at this long enough to come up with something more substantial than a wink and a nod.

It simply isn’t good enough for a States committee charged with reviewing States spending to merely repeat urban myths and half-truths as though they were gospel.

If there are people being overpaid in the public sector – and I’ve no doubt there are some – who are they, how many of them are there and how much money could be saved by bringing their remuneration more in line with the private sector (assuming you could find anyone doing a remotely similar job)?

In any case, that in itself wouldn’t be enough to come anywhere near solving the problem. We’re talking about job cuts not pay cuts, but some evidence might have made a more valuable contribution to the debate.
Had PAC come up with an argument based on verifiable facts, it would have been more difficult to ignore their plea for speeding up the spending
review.

As it is, accelerating the process is merely a knee-jerk reaction when PAC themselves say that what is required is a long-term, sustainable plan.
It would also have strengthened PAC’s argument had they been able to produce comparisons to show that government spending in Jersey is out of control compared to other jurisdictions.

Perhaps this was just an oversight or perhaps they suspected that the figures would not support their arguments. Certainly if you look at government spending as a proportion of GDP, Jersey’s figure is very much lower than just about anywhere else.

Comparisons are difficult but States spending is about 20 per cent of GDP, which is less than a half of what government spending is in Sweden, Britain, Germany or even the Isle of Man.

So while both the Treasury and PAC are panicking, it would be wise to keep a cool head. No doubt we can identify budget savings and new ways of working, given time (and investment). I’m sure that to begin with we could do away with a few quangos and States committees.

Anybody got any suggestions?

Peter Body is editor of Business Brief magazine