Guernsey hits back at ‘bail out' claims

Guernsey has rejected suggestions the island could require a ‘bail out' from the UK taxpayer.

The state's chief minister, Lyndon Trott, refutes the island's ‘tax haven' status and says he cannot see any reason why Guernsey's economy would need an injection from the UK.

It has been widely reported, early drafts of The Foot review, designed to assess the heath of overseas jurisdictions, suggest Britain could be forced to bail out some of its offshore ‘tax havens' hit hard by the economic crisis.

Senior insiders believe such a move could cost UK taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds.

However, Trott says: "I cannot foresee any circumstances where the need would arise for the UK taxpayer to ‘bail out' Guernsey."

The island has no national debt, zero borrowing, fully funded public liabilities and unencumbered property assets of over £1.5bn, he says.

Trott also disputes Guernsey's label as a ‘tax haven', due to its OECD ‘whitelisting' in April and involvement in bilateral tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs) since 2002.

"The government of Guernsey welcomed the appointment of Michael Foot to lead this timely review, and we hope that one of its positive outcomes will be to increase understanding and reduce the misperception of Guernsey in particular, and crown dependencies in general," he says.