STATES departments are currently in the throes of a comprehensive spending review, launched by Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf. The review is intended to cut excess fat from the public sector and to counter criticisms, voiced over a long period, that government spending is excessive and even out of control.

The review is without any shadow of a doubt a worthwhile – indeed vital – exercise, but it will achieve nothing if the theoretical savings it identifies are never transformed into action. Senator Ozouf has, of course, pledged that the leap from theory to practice will be made, but, as a newly published document shows, the States have a less than admirable track record when it comes to acting on cost-cutting proposals.

The Public Accounts Committee, chaired by Senator Ben Shenton, has just presented a report which shows that measures recommended two years ago by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Chris Swinson, have amounted to little more than wasted effort and wasted paper.

The report says, with a degree of vehemence seldom encountered in States documents, that although lip service has been paid to the proposed cuts by politicians and administrators, very little has been achieved.

Specifically, ministers are accused of lacking the will to drive through the economies identified by Mr Swinson and departmental officers have strenuously opposed cuts affecting their own domains.
The report also points out that there is no ‘enforcer’ in the Island’s system with the necessary authority to see that appropriate cuts are made.

It is true that the comprehensive spending review is an exercise quite separate from Mr Swinson’s programme, but the failures identified by the Public Accounts Committee lead to at least two important questions. The first is: Can Islanders really believe that an entirely new level of determination is part and parcel of the Treasury review? The second is: Can the Treasury review possibly succeed in the absence of the enforcement that Senator Shenton and his committee say is entirely absent?

Meanwhile, there is an additional question to be posed concerning Mr Swinson’s role. He is a respected and manifestly able assessor of what qualifies as prudent
financial management in our public sector, but what is the point of employing him if his advice is, at best, ignored for two years or, at worst, disregarded entirely?