Government spends our money without adequate accountability. It is a danger always, but more so if no Gibexit treaty is agreed. If no treaty is reached, the likelihood exists that Gibraltar will be forced into breaching UK government borrowing guidelines. Then what, direct UK intervention?
A UNIQUE FAILING
Gibraltar does not have a Public Accounts Committee (PAC), despite that the UK government consider that “an effective PAC is vital to the transparency of, and accountability for, public expenditure.”
Roy Clinton MP, the GSD Shadow Minster for Public Finance and Value for Money, has recently said, “It is frankly embarrassing that Gibraltar still does not have a Public Accounts Committee to follow up the findings of the Principal Auditor and examine how well public funds have been spent. We are the only UK Overseas Territory not to have one, and size is not an excuse when much smaller territories such as St Helena and the Falkland Islands have them.”
The question that needs to be asked is, why does the UK government permit that situation to go on unchecked, when it considers that a PAC is a vital necessity? The fundamental need for a PAC has been emphasised by the UK government as recently as November 2021 in its publication, ‘Good practice in effective oversight of public finances in the UK Overseas Territories’ (the ‘Report’).
NO GIBEXIT TREATY WILL FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE GIBRALTAR
The flaw, that is not having a PAC, is always serious, but more so when our GSLP-Liberal Alliance Chief Minister, Fabian Picardo, warns us on GBC that not reaching a Gibexit treaty will bring about “a completely different Gibraltar”. He did so in the context of his admission that he would “tell … the truth, the unbridled truth …”
He went on to give the stark warning that if there were to be no treaty, “There will be a lot of obstacles in the way of fluidity at that frontier and that would cause a lot of logistical issues, also “economic issues”, which will be exaggerated by a “completely different Gibraltar”.
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