No Increase In Benefits

A bid to increase Guernsey's Old Age Pension and other benefits by 2.9% has been defeated in the States.

The vote was tied at 18 all, with one abstention and three members absent. A second vote was taken, but with the same result.

Under States rules of equality of voting, the Policy Letter wasn't passed.

The extra allowances would have cost £3.5M for the second half of this year as a single cost. They wouldn't have had to be funded separately next year.

These included uplifts to the pension, income support and carers and disability allowances.

Deputy Peter Ferbrache, for Policy and Resources, said Guernsey's Social Insurance Fund couldn't afford it:

"What it shows, for the figures that I know and I've been given, is that for every single year, if it wasn't for the investment activities return, we are in deficit, and that deficit will grow."

Deputy Peter Roffey, the president of the Employment and Social Security Committee, argued that increases were needed to help the least well off weather the cost of living.

Summing up, he took a swipe at Policy and Resources:

"P&R believe this Assembly didn't back them in putting the revenue raising measures in place that they felt - and I felt - were necessary. I was completely alongside them there. Now they're saying, well here you are, wise up, these are the consequences of your actions.

I don't believe that's grown up government. If these proposals are right, they're right, and even P&R in their hearts, know they're right."