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Ministers are still yet to release any details of their own spending on travel or consultants more than a year into their term of office – complaining that producing a report on the latter has proved to be a "time-consuming process".
Reports were originally due to be published earlier this year.
However, due to major issues with the finance part of the Government's new IT system, officials said they would instead be released in May and June. However, this was then pushed back as resources had to be diverted to deal with the IT problems.
Express was then told that islanders would have to wait until the end of July to discover details about the use of consultants for the second half of 2022 and details of Ministerial travel and expenses from 1st July 2022 to 30th June 2023.
However, Cabinet Office officials now say that islanders will have to wait until September at the earliest.
Pictured: Issues with the switch to a new IT system were previously blamed for the delays in releasing the figures.
As a backbencher, Chief Minsiter Kristina Moore was critical of the last Government’s use of UK consultants. Following a successful proposition by the now-Deputy Chief Minister Kirsten Morel in 2019, the Government agreed to produce bi-annual updates on its consultant spend.
The last of those reports, published in February 2023, showed that John Le Fondré’s government spent more than £100m on consultants, interim staff and agencies in its final year.
Of this figure, around £30m was spent on consultants, while more than £27m was spent on fixed-term contractors and £18m went to healthcare and social workers from agencies.
Deputy Morel said at the time that Ministers were “absolutely committed” to reducing this spend.
Also yet to be released are details of the amount spent on travel and claimed on expenses by the current crop of Ministers. Trips taken so far have ranged from London to Brussels and Normandy, New Jersey and, most recently, Rwanda, where the Chief Minister attended the ‘Women Deliver’ conference following a late “unexpected” invite.
Ministerial spending on travel and expenses came under scrutiny in 2014 when it emerged that nearly £80,000 had been spent on travel, accommodation, and entertainment. In 2017, after the then-Senator Philip Ozouf was asked to repay £11,000 spent on his States purchase card, new rules were drawn up covering how Ministers should account for their spending on travel.
Despite the extensive delays in publishing the reports with the latest spending stats, Cabinet Office officials said that Ministers are still “committed to putting more information into the public domain on how public money is spent”.
"This includes a new 12-month report of ministerial travel from 1st July 2022 to 30th June 2023. This takes some time to compile and will be published in September, not long after the close of the 12-month period. This will include details on every trip Ministers and Assistant Ministers have taken in their first year in office,” they said.
They continued: "The report on spend on consultants, contractors, and temporary staff, has proved to be an extensive and time-consuming process. It takes many hours to complete, manually collating figures and non-financial from across the whole of government.
"Once the latest reports are published, which it is hoped will take place in September, Ministers will consider how it can be done better while still providing more and better information to the public on consultancy spend.”
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