It's Not Just The House Of Common Villains Who Are At It

Now you've got to admit that the UK taxpayer is getting twitchy about expenses' claims. Jersey has decided to bail in and have some fun too.

A review of public sector expense claims has been launched following Friday’s revelations that the Chief Executive of the Department of Health had claimed for missed guitar lessons.

Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf said that the review would ensure that all claims were ‘appropriate’. It is understood that it will focus on the procedure used to sign off senior officers’ expense claims.

The Jersey Evening Post understand that such claims are approved by a Chief Officer’s finance director. Questions are therefore being asked about how appropriate it is that a boss’s claim is being put before one of his or her slaves.

There is, at this stage, officially no suggestion that Health chief Mike Pollard, who earns in excess of £150,000 a year, broke any rules or guidelines in claiming for his lessons.

States Chief Executive Bill Ogley (him of the mugshot) said that he was confident his senior colleagues would be shown to have behaved properly. That of course gets him not randomly sacked for nicking loopaper or something as an excuse to clear his chair for somebody slightly less politically switched on.

It's too parochial for the G.O.T. to inflict video pain on the guilty ones but in Jersey this will be big potatoes (sorry for the pun).