Selective Licensing Not Debated By PCC

Before Brexit and Donald Trump, there was a belief in the Western world that politicians strived to do the right thing and made decisions in line with their manifesto to improve the lot of their constituents. That all changed in 2010, when no party won a majority of the seats in Parliament and left with a coalition, the workings of government suddenly became clear.

The bad news is that Portsmouth appears to be no different, based on the recent attempt to introduce Selective Licensing….

The rot probably set in, in terms of public perception, with the 'weapons of mass destruction" justification for the Iraq war, the MP"s expenses scandal and the financial crisis in 2008, so by 2010 the public perception of politicians was somewhat lower than it had been 10-15 years earlier. Things got a whole lot worse when the machinations of government, normally hidden within the workings of the governing majority, suddenly became visible in the coalition.

The general public had not seen the trade-off"s made between minority groups in order to allow larger groups to achieve their aims, so the LibDems allowed the Conservatives to introduce tuition fees in return for a referendum on Proportional Representation. You can argue that they gave up a small election pledge to gain a larger one, but from a voter perspective, they gave up a promised voter benefit in exchange for a chance or making their future power and influence greater. Similarly, David Cameron thought he could fight off the threat of UKIP with a referendum which would give him the power to ignore UKIP and tell his euro-sceptic party members to shut up and accept the will of the people - that went well.  And then there was the 2016 election which backfired on Theresa May and her repeated attempts to get a deal through Parliament against the repeated attempts of different factions to either crash out or stay in or invoke another election.  Very few have been impressed by the inability of politicians of all hues to either make the big decisions necessary or to work together for the common good / best outcome.

What has this to do with Portsmouth?

Well, this month newly elected Labour councillor, Cal Corkery, tried to introduce a motion at the Full Council meeting which he hoped would improve the private rented sector in the city. As an organisation, we disagree with his logic and fear that Selective Licensing as he envisaged it would, far from improving the sector, potentially damage it - but more of that elsewhere. The important point is, that the Labour group had a proposal to put to council, asking that a feasibility study be undertaken into introducing city-wide selective licensing.

In the past, the general public would have expected such an idea to be debated and a vote taken, probably going in favour of the views of the majority party - but that is how representational politics work.  In fact, what happened would probably make a very entertaining stage play.

Firstly, the city legal team, being as risk averse as most legal teams, advised the Lord Mayor that a change in the Private Rented Sector could definitely have a financial impact for landlords and could also, possibly have one for tenants - therefore no landlords or tenants should be allowed to participate in the debate.

Any sensible Lord Mayor would have said that this is a request for a feasibility study. No landlord or tenant is going to gain or lose financially from a feasibility study into something we may or may not do and which we have not even defined yet.

A sensible but nervous Lord Mayor would have said, this is a request for a feasibility study so I don"t think there is a 'pecuniary interest" for landlords or tenants, but just to be safe, lets have the debate (during which everyone should make clear whether they have a potential interest and state what that is) and then lets exclude landlords and/or tenants from the actual voting.

Unfortunately, our Lord Mayor did neither of these things and 20+ councillors (out of a council of 42) left the room.

One of the people excluded was the Lord Mayor, so we then had no one to chair the meeting.  Historically, in similar situations, a previous Lord Mayor takes over and so it was in this case. Councillor Jonas was asked if he would stand in, someone then nominated him and someone else seconded him and he was elected to chair this particular debate of the (small) half of the remaining councillors.

Prior to all of this, the councillor responsible for Housing tried to make a statement to the full Council in an attempt to shorten / speed the debate but was stopped, as 'a point of order" (i.e. It being perceived to be against the rules) as he was trying to debate something ahead of the debate with people still present who had been excluded from the debate.  Are you with me so far? I have since learned that what he wanted to say was that a feasibility study had already been undertaken and was available should anyone want to see it - so much for free flow of information and transparency, but again, that is another issue for another time.

The highlight of the show was still to come.

To propose a motion, a councillor needs to propose it and another needs to second it. Obviously, Cllr. Corkery had proposed it but his seconder, being a tenant, was no longer present having been excluded.  Cllr. Corkery had foreseen this and found an alternative seconder but as his original seconder was on the agenda, he needed to propose a change of seconder in order for the new one to support the proposal and the debate to proceed.

However, there are rules in place to stop politicians making late changes and thus sneaking things through without the appropriate notice known as standing orders and although in this case, it was just a change of seconder and had no material effect on the proposed debate or likely outcome, there had to be a vote on whether to suspend the standing orders and change the seconder or not.

You would have thought, that this was just a matter of process - the new seconder would be accepted, Cllr. Corkery makes his proposal, councillors behave in the way we expect them to and debate the benefits and disadvantages of the proposal and then either vote for it, against it or suggest amendments which in their view make it more acceptable or appropriate and then vote on the amendments.

Well, boys and girls, we all now know that politics does not work like that.  People do whatever they can to achieve their objectives, whether it be lying about EU spend on the side of a bus or damning your opponent for using a personal email account even though your son-in-law is doing the same thing.

And so it was, Cllr. Corkery"s motion was never debated because the vote to change his seconder was defeated 9 votes to 8 and without a seconder, the vote could not proceed.  The cynical will see this as politics at its worst whilst others will see politicians using the system to achieve their objective as a triumph of the whole system.  What do you think?