The meeting in Slough, England, which involved the Anguilla delegation, comprising Premier Dr. Lorenzo Webster and Parliamentary Secretary, Mrs. Quincia Gumbs-Marie, on Sunday, November 21, provided much information for Anguillians there and those who listened at home in Anguilla.
The occasion was advertised as a “Meet & Remembrance Event” hosted by the Premier and, to some extent, it was also intended “to commemorate those who died during the pandemic”. But it mainly turned out to be an opportunity for the Anguillians in Slough to bombard the Premier, in particular, and the Parliamentary Secretary, to a lesser extent, with a number of pertinent and searching questions. The two Anguillian leaders, however, acquitted themselves very well during the two-hour question and answer period. The Anguillian nationals included persons from Pond Ground, East End; South Hill; North Hill; and West End.
The following is a brief account of the question and answer period:
Minimum/Living Wage
One of the Anguillians in Slough raised the matter of a living wage as distinct from a minimum wage. Responding, Premier Webster stated: “We just had a meeting, two days ago, with an expert who actually looked at the UK’s legislation on minimum wage to develop it. This was at the top of our agenda in Anguilla to have minimum/living wage legislation. The problem in Anguilla, over the years, was to have minimum wage committees involving employers, employees, lawyers and the government. When you get those four groups together on a committee they sought to agree on how to come up with the legislation that governs the wage – whether it should be a blanket minimum wage; whether it should be by sectors. And that is something now that our strong Minister of Home Affairs, Kenneth Hodge, is looking to get done. A committee is coming into place to give us a framework about how to make this workable in Anguilla. We certainly feel that it is way past time to have a liveable wage for our workers. We also want to make sure that they have benefits because we know that the Labour Relations Act, that was passed in 2019, has a lot of gaps – and missed a lot of areas that it should have addressed.
“We have been in place since June 30 of 2020 and we have had to concentrate a lot on COVID, on survival; and keeping the people of Anguilla safe. Now that we have learned that we have to live with COVID, and can’t eliminate it, we have put in place measures so that we protect our people as best as we can. Now it is up to them to take personal responsibility. They have to do the hygiene; social distancing; wear their masks; get vaccinated. People get upset and say, why you don’t continue the curfews or shut the country down?
If We Don’t Die From The Disease, We Will Die From Hunger
“No. If we don’t die from the disease, we will die from hunger. So the people have to take responsibility for themselves. Now that we have gotten to this point, we have started concentrating on the other things that we went in Government saying what we are going to do for the people of Anguilla. So we have to get the minimum/living wage legislation in place…The Legislative Agenda we put out is very ambitious, but all of it has to do with getting legislation in place so that we can take care of the people of Anguilla.”
Premier Webster added: “Each Minister is putting together what is necessary for their portfolios. We have an aggressive agenda for the end of 2021, and the three quarters of 2022, to get in place so that Anguilla can continue on the right trajectory. We are certainly opened to suggestions. You all have been out here in the world, and you know what it takes to get things going and to boost the economies; the education of the people; and we are always willing to learn.”
Electoral Districts Budgets
Replying to another question, Premier Webster said: “We don’t have budgets for each electoral district. One of the things that we discussed, in our revamping of the Parliamentary Rules, was that each elected representative should have a budget that can be used for the development of that district. That is something that we are looking at. One of the things that we have been restricted to is to produce a Medium Term Economic and Fiscal Plan. It has to be approved by the United Kingdom Government because our national debt is so high. We have exceeded the borrowing guidelines, and we have exceeded our debt. We had zero reserves when we came in – and these were requirements which were put in place back in 2012 by the Framework for Fiscal and Sustainable Responsibility.
“Since we have to do that, the [the UK Government] told us we have to restrict our expenditure to 2019 levels. There was no COVID in 2019 and our healthcare costs have gone up significantly between then and now and COVID has now added to that. So we have to cut everything else – including our education scholarships in order to accommodate that, and stay within the 2019 expenditure levels. Our recurrent revenue can only be a certain amount given that we don’t anticipate that tourism will be back to its usual levels – at least for another year or so. That is restricting how we can budget. One of the positions that I have taken with the UK Government is that we need to be able to stimulate the economy – and the only way we can do that is to come up with projects that are going to be economically resilient to boost the economy.
“They have granted us, in the first instance, four million pounds which is not a lot, but it is certainly a start and we thank them for that. You will hear that in 2017 you got 60 million pounds to rebuild after Irma. We gave you up to 100 million EC for budgetary support to decrease the impact of COVID in 2020; we paid for your border security; we paid to improve your lab space – and to provide you with test kits and lab personnel so that you can have a place where you can test your people to make sure they are healthy; and we provided you with the vaccine. We allowed you to have the phased reopening of the country.”
Premier Webster took the opportunity to thank the Parliamentary Secretary for coming up with a plan in 2020 which allowed hospitality workers to get back to work although not at the expected level.
Tax Reform
Asked to comment on taxes in Anguilla, Premier Webster told one of the questioners: “We have a plan for tax reform, but we feel that it is very ad hoc in terms of how it is administered. One of the things that we did was that we basically took five taxes and made them into one. They were the Accommodation Tax of 12 percent; the Communications Tax of 15 percent; the Environmental Tax of 7 percent; the Interim Goods Tax of 9 percent; and the Entertainment Tax of 10 percent. We made them into one tax – the Goods and Services Tax at 13 percent.
“That was controversial because people did not really understand as much as they should what that means. It basically means that you have a certain framework, a more predictable way of determining what your revenues are going to be based on and that only business persons who are making 300,000 dollars [a year], or more, would be subject to the Goods and Service Tax at the rate of 13 percent. We are also able to exempt certain service areas such as fishing, farming and manufacturing. We have zero rate on basic food items – that means that instead of 13 percent it is at zero; and for water [we are offering the cost of] the first 130 kilowatt hours of electricity. Health and education are exempted…
“The other thing we want to look after is Property Tax. It was raised during the last Administration and was based on where your house was located…So I think that was terrible, and should be more equitable. We are right now looking at Property Tax. We said, for this year, we will give 5 percent discount if you paid it before the first of September, and then you will have another 5 percent discount. We certainly feel that this helped people to do that. There are arrears of 24 million dollars in Property Tax owed by people for their homes in Anguilla.
“When we came in Government, it was about 72 million dollars arrears owed to the Government from Accommodation Tax, Property Tax and other types of taxes. With an aggressive programme, we were able to get it down to like 56 million…That means that if we were able to collect some of that, we would be able to give certain breaks to reduce the price of services. We would not have to worry then about raising fees on health, water, ports and things like that.”
Move To Prevent Unelected Members To Vote in House
Another question put to Dr. Webster was with regard to the voting for the GST Act by the Attorney General and the Deputy Governor, the two unelected officio-members of the Anguilla House of Assembly. They voted for the Act, in June this year, thus ensuring its passage – much to the disapproval of the Concerned Citizens Group and other persons in Anguilla.
The Premier disclosed that the Government had now undertaken to ensure that unelected persons in the House of Assembly would not be able to vote again on legislative matters. He explained that the opportunity to prevent this was being taken by the Government during the current amendments to the draft constitution.
