"Real population policy needed to create jobs for Islanders" - Maclean

Tuesday 09 September 2014

Jersey needs a clearer policy on population to lure businesses to move here and create jobs and opportunities for Islanders, Economic Development Minister Alan Maclean told a Chamber of Commerce debate last night.

The minister – likely to be a candidate for Chief Minister if he is re-elected in five weeks’ time – said that a clearer rule than the “interim policy” of allowing overall migration of 325 extra people per year was required to encourage inward investment.

He was one of a panel that included Public Accounts Committee chairman Tracey Vallois, Deputy Geoff Southern, Chamber of Commerce president James Filleul and Visit Jersey chief executive Kevin Keen that spoke at the event in front of a crowd of around 200 at the Royal Yacht last night.

Questions were raised on small business exemptions to workplace laws, whether the current deficit in States finances is structural or just cyclical, and what should be done for tourism in a discussion chaired by ITV’s Leah Ferguson. But the population question provoked the most discussion, with Mr Filleul labelling the policy “ridiculous”, and saying the real challenge for the States was to accept that the population was growing, and focus on managing the challenges that it created.

Deputy Vallois went a step further, asking how anyone could support a “target” that had never been reached since it was put in place in 2009 – the average net inward migration total has actually been 525.

“I voted against the Population Policy because I thought that it was a pointless exercise and a pointless document,” she said. “In my view it was just saying, let’s just so the same old thing.

“The evidence suggests it was never working – why endorse a policy that isn’t actually working?”

And Deputy Southern added that the States had a poor record on keeping promises on population.

“A decade ago we had a policy that said that you could have someone imported for five years, as long as they trained up a number two to take over, but that never happened,” he said.