Rather than having a keynote speaker, the Chamber of Commerce lunch was dedicated to a question and answer session with four candidates.
Chief Minister Ian Gorst, Home Affairs Minister Kristina Moore and Deputies Tracey Vallois and Sam Mézec, chair of the Island’s only political party Reform Jersey, were selected following an anonymous poll of Chamber members.
And after being given two minutes to briefly outline their policies, the floor was opened up to questions – the vast majority of which centred on how the candidates would support the business industry.
The four panellists each voiced their support for the living wage and raising the minimum wage to help the Island’s lowest earners but – recognising their audience – said it was important that businesses were given due consideration before changes were made.
Senator Gorst said: ‘I have in the past supported proposals brought by Reform Jersey to move the minimum wage up faster and not many months ago I supported an increase.
‘It has to be on the proviso that we work with those sectors that struggle with margins and we can encourage efficiencies within business so that it offsets the detrimental impact.’
Deputy Moore added that she wanted to see more companies sign up to pay their staff the living wage – an independently set minimum hourly wage to achieve a reasonable standard of living.
She said: ‘I appreciate that a lot of work needs to be done to take people on that journey but it is great to see companies starting to sign up and I hope more start to do so.’
Deputy Mézec cited the growing gap between the Island’s highest earners and its lowest and joked the Island had the ‘indignity’ of falling below Guernsey in terms of its minimum wage – a comment which drew a few laughs from the audience.
He added: ‘We are seeing the poorest people in Jersey become poorer and that is not sustainable. It shouldn’t be beyond the wit of mankind to say “if you are working hard you should get this basic minimum salary”.’
Meanwhile, Deputy Vallois said that increasing the minimum wage would reduce the strain on the Social Security Department and the States’ bill for income support.
‘We have a lot of people arguing with us to drop the income support bill,’ she said. ‘The issues that we have is if we don’t raise the minimum wage that income support bill will go up.’
She added there needed to be a balancing of government policies between the needs of Islanders and the needs of businesses.
The panel also spoke about promoting and investing in education to address an apparent skills shortage while addressing population growth concerns.
Senator Gorst and Deputy Moore both mentioned a ‘Jersey university’ could be one way to balance the need of business and the environmental and population concerns many Islanders have. Deputies Mézec and Vallois both spoke about creating a system which allowed ‘life-long learning’ and allowed Islanders to develop their skills beyond school.
The event was held at the Royal Yacht Hotel.
