Growth
Our growth, save for the bounce following Covid, has been poor for more than a decade. Growing regulation, compliance burden, connectivity problems and better opportunities elsewhere have led to poor performance - we need to find a way forward which produces growth which is keeping pace with our growing costs.
Finance Sector
Our highest contributor to tax and the cost of public services needs a reboot, bringing all sectors together to share their concerns and highlight opportunities, which can be turned into a government risk appetite statement for the regulator. Business and regulator working hand in hand to understand and manage emerging risk, whilst enabling us to take advantage of opportunities like green finance, humanitarian finance, AI and crypto currency.
Connectivity
We need people to be able to visit easily and at the lowest possible cost, without government providing subsidies from dwindling revenues. This will require us to properly evaluate our current arrangements and whether government should be stimulating the market, rather than owning its main participant - Aurigny. Added to that, we need to enable investment rather than prevent it through the removal of restrictive land management and other processes which hinder investment.
Infrastructure
Other than the project to implement fibre broadband, we have had 15 years without government investing adequately in our physical infrastructure, which is a major driver of economic development. Stabilising our revenues and costs will allow us to start major projects in education and health, before the end of the next term. Before we can do that we desperately need stability in government to bed down the revenue making decisions, which have already been made.