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STATES OF JERSEY
Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel Migration & Population Sub-Panel
MONDAY, 27th APRIL 2009
Panel:
Senator S.C. Ferguson (Chairman) Deputy G.P. Southern of St. Helier Deputy C.F. Labey of Grouville Deputy D.J.A. Wimberley of St. Mary Deputy T.A. Vallois of St. Saviour Dr. P. Boden (Panel Adviser)
Witness:
Mr. C. Perkins (Chairman of Concern)
Present:
Mr. W. Millow (Scrutiny Officer)
Senator S.C. Ferguson (Chairman):
Good afternoon, welcome to this public hearing of the Corporate Services Migration and Population Sub-Panel. For the sake of the recording lady, please can you say who you are and where you are from.
Mr. C. Perkins (Chairman of Concern):
My name is Chris Perkins. I am the chairman of Concern.
Senator S.C. Ferguson:
Super. Before we go any further, a bit of housekeeping, there is a sheet before you which has the various health warnings and explains how the hearing is conducted and I think tells you that you will have a copy of the transcript before we put it on the website. But that all transcripts will eventually end up in the public arena. Now, for the sake of the recording if we could go through the panel.
Deputy D.J.A. Wimberley of St. Mary : Daniel Wimberley, Deputy of St. Mary .
Deputy C.F. Labey of Grouville : Carolyn Labey , Deputy of Grouville .
Deputy G.P. Southern of St. Helier : Geoff Southern .
Dr. P. Boden (Panel Adviser):
Peter Boden, adviser to the Scrutiny Panel. Deputy T.A. Vallois of St. Saviour : Tracey Vallois, Deputy of St. Saviour .
Senator S.C. Ferguson:
We are basically talking about the population policy. What do Concern and their members think of it?
Mr. C. Perkins:
Well, where do I start really? I do not know if we would even really call it a plan. We have made a few notes. Basically the current proposal is for net inward migration of 325 people a year. Since the 1960s we have had about a 50 per cent increase in population, so that is about 6,000 people a year; the current proposal is 3,250 per decade ... sorry, 6,000 a decade down to about 3,250 under the current proposals. It is a slight reduction on historic levels but it is still a major increase and our view is that given that Jersey has never had a proper mechanism to control inward migration and that the future new mechanisms are only proposed, they are not in the plan itself, all we have got is: "Well, let us have some more of the same please" with no real policies to go around it. No real ideas as to how that should be achieved. There has been a great reluctance in the past to cap population, especially at times of great economic growth. Past policies have effectively been a policy of allowing the population to grow ad hoc to meet economic demand and then you have got the consequence of catch-up of social and housing and service provision following on from that increase in population. We do not see it very much in the proposals which varies from the past pattern. It is a case of: "Yes, we will grow the population and we will cope with it as we go along." We know that the policy document uses both the phrases "sustainable population" and "sustainable growth in our economy". Our view is that these 2 mean very, very different things and they are entirely incompatible. In fact, we regard sustainable economic growth as an oxymoron. We basically see very little in the way of new policy in the proposals. The only new factor is the rationale of maintaining a working age population. Traditionally Jersey's economy has always pulled in migrants in the 18 to 30 age group and basically this is what is being proposed again, and we do not see very much difference from what has happened in the past, so we wonder really if it has not worked in the past what are we doing to fix it? The idea of providing for the ageing population we believe is a good one and that obviously must be done. We recognise and we agree with a need for flexibility with regard to retirement age. We do point out that when it comes to the general cost of care for the elderly, we point out that in common with all other services in Jersey these costs are driven by the general high cost of living in Jersey and what is being driven first; is it high cost of living or is it the population increase? We have very high property prices which are, in turn, pushed by Jersey's perpetual housing shortage. In other words, policies which aim to expand the population and housing demand ultimately push up the costs of everything for all of us in the Island. Inflationary consequences of Jersey's housing shortage may be good news for certain sectors of the economy where there seem to be a real degree of denial as to the negative impact this has on the economy as a whole and on costs in general. Basically the use of the ageing population and the requirement to maintain the working age population is, we believe, just a red herring designed to disguise the real policy of continuous economic growth. We have always been opposed to population growth itself as we believe that it is not only directly damaging to our environment but it leads to a reduction in the quality of life, and interestingly that is completely opposite to the Council of Ministers' view and they actually say that they believe that by not
increasing the population we will reduce quality of life. Now, our view is entirely different to that. We believe the quality of life deteriorates as the population increases and we have greater population density. The whole idea of driving the Island's economy and way forward around population growth of course relies on one very important thing, even if you agree that this is the way forward to go, is the creation of jobs. So we have a policy which says we will grow the economy, we will grow the population and everything is centred around this increase of 150 heads of household per year. But we would question, particularly in a time of major world recession and major world crisis, whether a population of growing jobs at this particular time is something that is even going to work. Will this whole plan, which is based around increasing our working population, even if we wanted to do it as a policy and we do not agree, we question whether that would work,
whether we would attract those workers into the Island in the first place. Our view really is can you call policies that are based on a wish to increase job policies, is this a policy or are they just wishes? We would conclude that policies based on the concept of actual sustainable development will be even more relevant today in a time of climate change and a time of economic crisis, and perhaps the whole plan should be looking more towards a sustainable future, a way of managing the Island sustainably rather than this policy of growth, growth, growth. It is growing the population, it is growing the economy at the same time. As I pointed out earlier on, that this use of the word "sustainable growth" and "sustainable economic growth" I think that is rather sort of sealing the environmentalist's word for an understanding of sustainability. Our view of sustainability is that to be sustainable you need to maintain an environment and an economy in which you can live within your means, you can live within your own resources, and continuous growth is just not sustainable. We have a few queries on the actual policy itself which we would like to throw in, if possible.
Senator S.C. Ferguson:
Yes, with pleasure. But at this point if you could give a copy of your presentation to the officer that would be very helpful. What would you like to see in the population policy as, say, a 3-year or a 5- year plan to address your concerns? In the strategic policy even.
Mr. C. Perkins:
Jersey has had a history of setting our supposed population limits without any plan to achieve that so we have had 70,000, we have had 80,000, we have probably had 90,000. Now we have this rather strange figure of 100,000 which seems to have been plucked out of the air. Our view would be that we have to maintain the economy in as near to a sustainable fashion as possible, which means no further increase. What we are looking at here is over 25 years which is ... all right, the plan is for 5 years but the policy is for roughly 25 years from now. We are looking at a population increase under these plans of roughly the size of the Parish of St. Clement in the next 25 years, and that is quite a lot of people to service in the Islands, so we would like to look at maintaining the economy and maintaining the Island within existing population levels. Now I have some thoughts here as to how you can do this. It is rather interesting that the policy itself says that the main crux of the policy is increasing the population and even if you look at, there are the 2 appendices to the policy, one which says no growth and the other one says 150 heads of household per year. But what is tacked on to that says: "Well, we can do it with 150 a year but we need a few other things on to that such as increasing efficiency and so forth" but there is very, very little substance to those extra parts of the policy. Really, I think a serious population policy needs a lot more thought, a lot more in depth thought as to how this can be done. A quick thought, if you increase the efficiency of the workforce we have here by just 1 per cent our calculation show that that would be equivalent to about 500 people of the working age population. So that is your almost 3.5, 4 years worth of increase in 150 people a year just by an increase of 1 per cent in the efficiency of the people we have got here now. But each year that the retirement age is increased you are adding about 1,000 people to the working age population. Again that is a substantial amount of what we are looking at in just growing the population, just done through tinkering with retirement age and efficiency. There
is a lovely example on ... we have our graphs in the appendices which show the working age population, it shows the actual population itself, and I understand the whole idea of increasing is to try and keep down this dependency ratio so you have got as many as possible working age people to non working. Concern had a very eminent professor from Oxford over a few years ago who gave us a lovely example of this sort of attempt if you tried it anywhere else in the world and he actually said a few years ago if you tried to maintain the dependency ratio in South Korea as it is today by bringing in more and more people the entire population of the world would have to move to South Korea by the middle of this century, and I think it is really just ... as I said before, it is a bit of a red herring just for economic growth trying to say that we can keep this dependency ratio down just by having a few hundred people a year. I do not think it is going to make that great a difference but it is going to add more and more pressure to our environment and to the services that need to be provided.
Senator S.C. Ferguson:
So you are saying that that is not a good ratio to be using?
Mr. C. Perkins:
I do not think that ... if you wanted to keep the dependency ratio as it is you would have to throw thousands more people at the figures to make very much difference, and I think this 150 a year is perhaps just a bit more of a tweak to maintain economic growth rather than anything else.
Senator S.C. Ferguson:
So what else would you like to see in the plan?
Mr. C. Perkins:
We would just like to see more in the way of actual concrete proposals. The actual final appendix to the plan only has about half a page of efficiency and so forth. Yes, I mean, I think we have got about 2 or 3 lines on paying more, in other words, looking at ways of raising more from the existing population and not much more on productivity profile. I think this is what we ... if you are running a business and particularly at the moment all businesses are looking at, they are getting rid of staff and they are trying to become more productive and making money from what they have got rather than saying: "Things are not going too well, we better have some more staff." I think we could use that analogy very much by the way we look at the Island.
Deputy G.P. Southern :
I am interested in your analysis when you talk about historically we have grown at about 6,000 per decade and we are suggesting more or less halving that per decade in terms of inwards migrants. You say this amounts to very little difference. Essentially, I was particularly interested that you said the issue of control of the population, and you were very sceptical that we have got any control because historically we have not managed to do it.
Mr. C. Perkins:
Exactly. We have almost got the cart before the horse because we have this policy that we do not have the controls to go with it. We did not have a census 2 or 3 years ago, we do not really know how many people are here. The actual policies, the migration policies to go round it and the mechanisms are not in place so it is almost like we have got this sort of idea how to do things but actually how to do it, if that is the way forward, it is not there and I think that should all really come in together. If that is going to be a policy it all has to be in together.
Dr. P. Boden:
Just to follow up on that, do you therefore think the situation over the last few years has been uncontrolled migration?
Mr. C. Perkins:
I think that we do not have enough in the way of facts as to exactly who is here at the moment. Perhaps we should have a greater idea, and I know a census is a pretty cumbersome way of doing things but it would have been ... I think we missed a great opportunity to put that last census in and I really think the next one will probably be quite shocking.
Dr. P. Boden:
Do you not think that there have been levers in place to enable control of inward migration to Jersey?
Mr. C. Perkins:
Well, the lever we have at the moment is basically Regulation of Undertakings. Now I do not know how that is being used and whether it has been used as a lever at all but that is our population tool effectively and really the only one we have got. We do not have border controls or anything similar, so what we can do ... and logically the best way of doing it at the moment is to control jobs because
that is what your migrants are going to come in to do, they are not going to come in to sit around and do nothing.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
What do you think the chances are of R.U.D.L. (Regulations of Undertakings Development Law) being applied? I mean in the last 2 years before 2008 we had ...
Mr. C. Perkins:
Well, we were trumpeting 7 per cent growth and 700 per year increase in population.
The Deputy of St. Mary : That was with R.U.D.L.
Mr. C. Perkins: It was.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
So what are the chances in the future as this seems to be the only tool being offered of these targets being met?
Mr. C. Perkins:
It seems to be, as we said earlier in the presentation, we seem to have a policy of meeting any sort of growth that we have, so on that sort of idea it has not been applied up until now. It would have to be a lot tougher for it to have any effect.
Deputy G.P. Southern :
There is certainly no implication even, I think, in the document that says we will reverse this. It does not mention it. It says we have this target of 150 but it does not say: "And this will be firmly applied."
The Deputy of St. Mary : Through R.U.D.L.
Mr. C. Perkins:
It says a review every 2 or 3 years.
Deputy G.P. Southern :
It may well coincide with the end of the recession and the pick up in demand.
Mr. C. Perkins:
We have our concerns as well for the way that ... it sort of quite glibly says: "Well, if we have effectively 8,500 extra people in the next 25 years, and that is what is planned for, and that can be contained without building on greenfield sites. I live in St. Helier and I do not really know if I want to share my town with another 8,500 people.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
Do not worry, you will not have any greenfield sites in St. Helier .
Mr. C. Perkins: No.
The Deputy of St. Mary : They would all be built on.
Yes. They are the greenfield sites, are they? So, that is ... particularly for the people in St. Helier we are being faced with, as I said, equivalent of the entire population of St. Clement as we have got it now, to send everyone to St. Helier in the next generation and that is not a very encouraging thought.
The Deputy of Grouville :
What do you think will be achieved by introducing this population policy?
Mr. C. Perkins:
I think all it will achieve is to justify economic growth, so a number of us wrote to all States Members, and you will remember this from a few months ago with the article which were in New Scientist in October, which were basically saying that the world needs to live sustainably, the old economic policies of growth, growth, growth cannot carry on because the world is already living beyond its sustainable capacity. We already need more than one planet Earth to sustain the people that we have here at the moment. If we have less developed countries trying to achieve the levels of wealth we have in the west by growing we are going to need 5 planets fairly soon. We cannot do it. All these models have to come down, all the old ideas about achieving things of growth, that really has to come down because we just cannot sustain the planet in the way that we are going. It was a, I suppose, quite a frightening quote from the President of the American Association of Advancement of Science who said that Barack Obama has 4 years to save the planet because if we
do not do anything pretty quick we are too far down that route. So, the idea that we have got to follow the old economic model of saying: "Well, the only way that we can survive is by growing, growing, growing", well, what are we growing? By growing the economy you need more resources. Those resources are limited. We need a fundamental rethink of economics. I am not an economist but I can see that that is something that needs to be thought about because those ideas really might have worked in the days of great abundance but we only have one planet to live on and I cannot see another one on the solar system which is available at the moment.
The Deputy of Grouville :
So if you see this population policy as being sort of sanctioning population growth basically for the economy, what would Concern like to see in its place?
Mr. C. Perkins:
We would like to see a stopped population growth.
The Deputy of Grouville :
You can say this in this sort of 3 point action plan, if you like, or more points if you have got them.
Mr. C. Perkins:
We have always said all this growth just leads to, from an environmental point of view, it leads to environmental problems. It leads to the requirement for more buildings, more homes, more schools, larger hospital and all the various drags that there are on the environment with a greater population. So we must bring a halt to this growth.
The Deputy of Grouville : So nil growth?
Mr. C. Perkins:
Yes. There has to be a different way of ... the world is coming round to this way, and economists have around the world is coming this way, of looking at ways of maintaining it and sustaining your population through efficiency. We have to bite the bullet of increasing working age, for instance. It just has to be done because when working age was set ... a retirement age was set our life expectancy was a lot lower than it is now. We are saying that the ageing population is a problem. Well, it is very good actually because people are living a lot longer. Is it a problem when you are
living longer? I would like to retire at 65 but I can see I am not going to be able to. That is something we have to accept and the fact that we have better health care and we are living longer. So we have to look at efficiencies and better ways of supporting what we have got rather than throwing more people at the problem.
Deputy G.P. Southern :
You raised the issue earlier of very little attention paid to increasing taxation, do you see a role for that? We are a low tax, low spend economy at the moment and we are going to have to spend more on our elderly it seems. What role has taxation played?
Mr. C. Perkins:
It has to play a role. I mean there is just a thought just thrown out by one of our committee members, for instance, at the moment social security payments are only taken from people in employment. Could you perhaps take social security from people who have retired early or people who have retired early who have a substantial income, should they not be making a contribution to what is happening? So that is a line of inquiry to be taken, it does not necessarily have to be income tax. There are ways of raising your revenue that are not purely through income tax but that is not something we have ... we are an environmental group not a taxation group.
The Deputy of Grouville : Any other means?
Mr. C. Perkins:
I mean basically it is raising money from people we have got here and then increasing the efficiency from ... in the Strategic Plan there are some good things said about productivity. There are some things said about trying to make more from sort of higher end industries and that is something. That is the sort of thing that we should be looking at even if it is only just to move away from being a sort of one store economy as well. Again, those sort of ideas I probably leave open to the experts.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
You said the real reason for growing a population is to grow the economy properly, but it reduces the quality of life.
Mr. C. Perkins: Yes.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
Could you expand a little bit on that before I ask another one?
Mr. C. Perkins:
I mean I think most people would tell you, and I think you will probably see from the various surveys that have been, I mean, it is said in the policies here that Islanders would like to grow the population. I think those questions were put in a manner which produced the answer that the questioners wanted. Other surveys have said that Islanders look to quality of life as being just less social pressure, less pressure on the environment, more green ... maintaining the green spaces we have got. We say there is a rather nefarious phrase "Keeping Jersey Special", please have different ideas what special is but I think a lot of people would say it is the actual ... the beauty of our Island and hat sort of thing, and that is very much what people look upon as being quality of life. Perhaps to harp back to earlier days when life was less hectic and less under pressure, people regarded that as being a greater quality of life and the greater population density and the more people we have working here we do not see that as being an increase in quality of life, but more of a pressure on the environment and the pressure on the population.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
Would one step in like a policy of population which had as a goal a steady population, more or less as it is now, would one step in that be to get people thinking more in terms of quality of life rather than economic growth because if the debate is framed in terms of economic growth then your position is going to lose it.
Mr. C. Perkins:
Yes, exactly. I mean there is something encouraging from our point of view from the plan itself, is that it is now talking about nil net migration because what was always said was: "Ooh, people who do not want population growth do not want anybody else in the Island" and that is generally now accepted that is not true because there is a - I forget the figure - but there is quite a large turnover in the population every year. So we have that influx of new ideas, new people. We have the sort of society that we wish to have. Those sort of thoughts are going in the right direction, we are not now being told: "Oh, you environmentalists, you do not want anybody else to live here", well that is not true. We just do not want to increase the numbers of people who are here at the moment. That is an encouraging step forward as far as we can see. What was the rest of your question, Daniel, sorry? I got sidetracked.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
If the debate is cast in terms of economic growth and so we need the extra bodies, assuming that is true to produce the economic growth, and it is not cast in terms of quality of life you are always going to lose to the bank your position, so what steps could you see that could be done to move the terms of the debate?
Mr. C. Perkins:
I do not want to see it as being a quality of life versus economic growth argument because that is probably counter-productive. As I say, I do not particularly like the argument that the report uses which says that: "Not increasing the population will reduce quality of life." I would like, as I say, to look at it the other way and we still need a mindset which changes thinking that way to say: "Well, we can have a very good quality of life without perhaps having all the number one gadgets and all the great wealth that we are all longing for at the moment. There are other aspects to quality of life. Now quite how you achieve that and persuade people, I mean it is obviously something we have been trying to do over the years, and perhaps I would say that environmentalists, people who care about the environment on the planet, are slowly starting to win the argument.
Senator S.C. Ferguson:
There is an assumption underlying this though that - play devil's advocate for a minute - people come here because of the chance of their improving their quality of life.
Mr. C. Perkins: Yes.
Senator S.C. Ferguson:
Therefore if the people here are saying that people coming are reducing the quality of life and the people who are coming reckon that they are improving their quality of life, are you going to square the argument?
Mr. C. Perkins:
I suppose it is a bit sort of ... reminds one of the sort of discussions about people who go on holiday to some remote island and they say: "Oh, it is absolutely fantastic, you must go" and by the time another 10,000 of their friends have been that that idyllic place is not idyllic any more. You can almost imagine that following that argument we would end up with a uniform world with everybody having exactly the same quality of life. Is it insular to say that: "Well, we like what we have got and perhaps we do not want to lose any more of what we have got." Most countries would probably do that but one of those countries will have elements of border control and so forth to try and maintain what they have got. I am sure the pressure is on the U.K., even with their ever expanding population through migration, would be even greater if they just let everybody in who wanted to arrive in the U.K. because there are going to be other parts of the world where people have a terrible quality of life. From an ethical point of view, it is never an easy argument to have.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
The traditional way around it is to have a vibrant tourism industry, so a lot of people can experience the beauties of Jersey without staying here.
Mr. C. Perkins:
Of course the other argument as well, from a wealthy society, is to make sure that our contribution to overseas aid is at a level that it should be. So that quality of life in other parts of the world are, to an extent, helped by those of us who are living here.
Senator S.C. Ferguson:
You mean with a view to encouraging them to stay where they are?
Mr. C. Perkins:
Yes, to help countries in other parts of the world so people do not feel they have got to leave where they are to come somewhere else that is better.
Deputy G.P. Southern :
You had a few questions to ask on the problem you see yourself and we interrupted slightly. Would you like to elucidate?
Mr. C. Perkins:
There are a couple left I suppose. We have got the projections until 2035 which is nice, it is nice to see projections going beyond 5 years. I just wonder what happens beyond 2035 if we have said: "Okay, our population is now 97,000, 100,000, and we have been doing this to, for instance, assist the ageing population", we now just have an even larger number of old people in the Island. So it is almost like saying: "Okay, we can solve this problem until 2035 and then after it is somebody else's problem because we are not going to be around anymore, mate."
Deputy G.P. Southern :
I believe in Imagine Jersey there were some projections to 2065 which have now disappeared. I was wondering what they did and what the new ones do.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
It is the end of the world, Geoff.
Deputy G.P. Southern :
It is Armageddon perhaps. I notice also that in the 2035 projections on net nil inward migration, and on over-50 heads of household, in fact, the proportion of non workers to workers, in both cases is very close to 0.8.
Mr. C. Perkins: It is very similar.
Deputy G.P. Southern :
Does it make an enormous amount of difference? It seems to me that having come a long way from ... the scenario of 650 was never a starter but from 250, which appear to be the so-called consensus of Imagine Jersey 2035, we then came down to 200 and now we have come down to 150. We are getting closer and closer towards net nil which ...
My point about if it is a policy to maintain dependency ratios your 150 a year is going to have virtually no effect. So it is not a policy to maintain dependency ratios. That would be our view.
Deputy G.P. Southern :
Does that then reinforce your suspicion that what we are talking about is in 3 years' time we will let rip again when we talk about maintaining the economy?
Mr. C. Perkins:
But it is an economic growth policy, it is not population policy because, as you say, the dependency ratios do not differ much. I mean it is hard to tell from that graph but it does not seem to differ very much. I think it would be very useful if there could be a referral made to somebody like David Coleman at Oxford who is a world class demographer who could give his own views on dependency ratios and so forth, and we could have an independent review on those sort of ideas. But I think it would show that it will make very little effect; if you want to maintain that dependency ratio as it is we would need hundreds a year, if not thousands.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
Could I add to your thoughts on that? The fact that in one of their tables about the effect on tax take of different measures including productivity increases and putting up the retirement age, when you come to the bit about increasing the population it has one-fourteenth of the total contribution to make. So it is the same point.
Mr. C. Perkins:
The appendices as well, I do not know if it was the way I read them, but you seem to have appendix A which says nil net migration, and appendix A basically says: "If we have nil net migration it is an absolute disaster" and in appendix B says: "Well, actually this is quite good because we can tack all these other things on to it and it works." It is almost as if they were preplanned for one to say: "If we take this one it is not going to work but let us put another one in and make sure that it works", because appendix B seems to have: "Well, we can have 150 year plus more productivity plus this, plus that and therefore it is going to work."
The Deputy of St. Mary :
But you are saying in fact there is not much difference?
Mr. C. Perkins:
No. But the arguments seem to lead towards the fact that nil net migration does not work, have a few extra people here, it will work because we can add on productivity and all these other things, so in other words they were not looked at ... the argument does not seem to flow the same for both, so it is almost like a presupposed idea that we are going to have 150 heads of household a year and we can make it look better by tagging these other things on to it.
Deputy G.P. Southern :
Can I just take you back to Imagine Jersey 2035, I know you are not very keen on that. You have been very sceptical of what it produced, as I was, and certainly whereas ... I have the impression that the extremes of the argument nil net and 650 were presented as that, unthinkable extremes to frighten people about the possible consequences. When, in fact, you start to look at net nil and 150 you cannot do that because you cannot frighten people because they have looked at how it is similar and it seems to me that having moved under extreme pressure towards the lower end, they have then lost the extreme nature of the argument that they were using in the first place.
Mr. C. Perkins:
There is no fear factor.
Deputy G.P. Southern :
The fear factor has gone, and both might be viable. That is interesting you should have pointed that out.
Mr. C. Perkins:
There is another major thing which, of course, really should be in these sort of policies and these plans: do these projections take into account the impact of climate change on the Island? I have something here, a colleague looked through the draft plan, the one before this final one came out, and did a word search that was quite interesting.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
I did a word search on the first version and climate change did not occur at all.
Mr. C. Perkins:
No, it mentions economy 41 times, finances 8 times, money 3 times and climate twice, one of which was financial climate. So there is absolutely ... we know that we are faced ... it is accepted around the world that we are faced with some major changes. There is a debate as to quite what those changes are going to be and obviously climates are incredibly complex, so we do not know the North Atlantic drift switches off we might be really cold. If it keeps going and we get other factors we could be growing olives on the land that is left sticking above the water line. But if we do not take in ... this is a plan for 5 years, but it is looking at population for 25 years, that plan should be taking into account the effects that climate change is going to have on the Island and on the world economy, and how that world economy affects what goes on in the Island because we are not in isolation. There is a huge amount of effect on the Island. I got very hot under the collar with the comments made the other week about the climate change report was saying we might have more tourists. Well, it does provoke a very interesting argument. You really need to look very, very carefully at your economy because Jersey is going to be 3 degrees warmer in 2065, the whole world is and most people will be struggling. We will not have the tourist industry, it is likely that the rest of the world will not have a tourist industry so we need to be thinking really, really differently about, as I said before, not just about classic economics, about growth and that sort of thing, but where we ... 2035 is 25 years away, quite what effect there is going to be on the Island with those effects for climate change, for instance. None of that is factored in and I think it is a serious issue.
Senator S.C. Ferguson:
Yes, because if there is such a thing as ... if the climate changes to the extent promulgated by the I.P.C.C. (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), instead of 25,000 people in the U.K. dying ... oldies dying in a cold winter we will just have 2,500 dying in a warm summer so that we are going to have even more oldies. But on the other hand if the climate turns the other way, which is equally possible, then we will have the reverse effect.
Mr. C. Perkins:
Who knows? It really is something ... it is a factor that must be considered as part of an overall plan. It is the opportunity to do it now while these plans are being looked at. I do have another question, I did not know from these figures whether they take into account, and I presume they do, the fact that are the 150 heads of household going to be of the sort of 18 to 35 age group who are more likely to settle down and have families themselves? So is our 150 equals 325 people a year, is that based on a broad cross-spectrum of society or is it looking at your likely 18 to 35 year-olds who are likely to have more dependents fairly soon, which is going to change our figures quite considerably?
Deputy G.P. Southern :
If they do not arrive with dependents then we have got a figure of 2.1, or something like that.
Mr. C. Perkins:
They will have dependents, quite a few, fairly soon.
Deputy G.P. Southern :
Dependents, that is your 325. Then maybe within 5 years they are having dependents, they are having their children finally, I do not know.
Senator S.C. Ferguson:
We have to look at some of the basic assumptions which unfortunately Duncan Gibaut is away at the moment.
Mr. C. Perkins:
It obviously makes a major difference to the figures.
Deputy G.P. Southern :
I believe the estimate does not build into anything about variation of the cohort that comes in and acts ... 150 equals 325 is the number of dependents historically.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
On an average basis, we are talking an average household size.
Deputy G.P. Southern :
We only get 18 to 30 year-olds and factor in a bit more because they will have kids, and if it is not 18 to 30s then it is 40 year-olds as well, they have had their kids and they are part of the 2.1. So I do not think there is any ... there is no adjustment made for that I do not think. It is the 2.1, 2.2.
The Deputy of Grouville :
But then you are likely to get longer working life from them so therefore rather than bringing them in at 40 and then they retire at 60 or 65 and then you have got to bring someone else in.
Deputy G.P. Southern :
I do not think that second level, third level analysis has been done. It is just done on an historic basis.
Mr. C. Perkins:
Again, just a query which it would be lovely to know the answer to. The appendices seem to say that a reduction ... if we do not increase the population then school pupil numbers will drop quite rapidly and we will not need so many schools. I am just intrigued to know why this is particularly a problem because it will reduce the need for public services for paying so many teachers and so forth. It just seems to be put as a problem and I do not know quite how much of a problem that is.
The Deputy of Grouville :
I think it is a political problem if it means something like St. Mary 's school that shuts rather than one of the town primaries.
Mr. C. Perkins:
It is not an economic or population problem.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
It is a problem about apparently there are fewer numbers so apparently we can save some money but where does the axe go. This is bound to be difficult as it was in Guernsey recently.
Senator S.C. Ferguson:
I think perhaps - carry on with your questions - but I am not sure at this point in time we are really here and able to answer them all as well we would like.
That is a query to be thrown into the melting pot.
Senator S.C. Ferguson:
Certainly if you can give us a copy of them then obviously they will go up on the website but we will follow them up.
Deputy G.P. Southern :
Interestingly I cannot find anywhere else in this document ... the only initiatives in terms of, for example, you are talking about the environment and the impact on the environment, comes in in short sustainable public finances where it says: "Introduce a range of environmental taxes in response to environmental challenges to fund environmental initiatives at their current levels" which is next to nothing. Followed by: "But extending the environmental initiatives through high levels of environmental tax will not be considered until the economic outlook improves" so as you pointed out earlier on the environment seems to have gone by the board. Certainly in the next 5 years and since we are looking at population for the next 25 years that seems singularly inappropriate.
Mr. C. Perkins:
Did that policy use the word "sustainable" in it? I think it did.
Deputy G.P. Southern :
Sustainable finances, sustainable economy, sustainable population but not necessarily a sustainable Island.
Mr. C. Perkins:
Fair enough. There is a final query, I suppose; the nil net migration strategy states that the current waste strategy will cope with the forecast increase in waste so I presume that meant current being as we have now. But then it says ... it goes on later to say that this incinerator is being constructed which is going to burn enough waste for over 100,000 people, and I do not see how you can tie the 2 in and say the current waste strategy is sufficient but we are still building an incinerator that is going to burn enough waste for another 10,000 people and 15,000 people. The 2 just did not seem to tie in unless of course the incinerator was built with a view to having 106,000 people on the Island.
Senator S.C. Ferguson:
I think this is a question that is outside the range of this particular panel. Is there anything else you would like, any steaming thought you would like to leave us with?
Mr. C. Perkins:
I would just like to leave with a thought that we have to live within our means, we have to save sufficient for our retirement and not leave a very large debt for our children, and that will be our thought on it.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
Can I challenge you on that? Because we had an interesting paper from Mark Bolier(?) and he rubbishes sustainable population, "It has little meaning. There are many communities that are far more crowded than Jersey that have the means to sustain themselves."
Mr. C. Perkins:
They do not have the means to sustain themselves.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
So what do you mean when you talk about maintain sustainability, you said, "Means maintaining environment, an economy, living within your means and living within your own resources." He rubbishes all that.
Mr. C. Perkins:
Jersey, actually could not sustain itself within its own boundaries. We have too many people living here to live truly sustainably. I do not know what the figure is but it is probably 20,000 or 30,000 people struggle during the occupation. So on truly sustaining ourselves within our means here we are very much overpopulated. Any society that is more overcrowded than Jersey could not sustain themselves. What they are doing is they are sustaining themselves by using other people's resources and the rest of the planet's resources. I suppose you could say somewhere like Dubai can sustain itself but that is despite the fact that just about everything it has it is bringing in, so it is actually taking those resources from other people on the planet. That is not sustainability.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
That is illustrated by the new fiscal support point that says, "Watch out for leakage." If you enforce everything then it pours more money in the top of your economy, "Watch out for leakage," because it goes elsewhere.
Mr. C. Perkins:
What he is referring to there is maintaining themselves, not sustaining themselves. There is a big difference. You can maintain yourself as much as you want just by taking from everybody else, but sustainability is really different. It is all about living within your means and within your own environmental footprint. I disagree entirely with that.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
No surprise there then. Right.
Mr. C. Perkins:
Thank you. That was lovely, thank you very much.
The Deputy of St. Mary :
Your time is much appreciated.
Mr. C. Perkins: Pleasure.