Full Council

When you are in the middle of a speech in the Council Chamber and you look up to see all around you looking confused, save for the 3 strong Green Group, who were bouncing up and down in enthusiastic agreement, you begin to wonder if something has gone wrong. But I ploughed on on Wednesday when we had a meeting of Full Council. It had an unusual format leading to unusually high quality of debates. We had to meet for 5 minutes before the end of the year to formally ratify the new Licensing Statement for the City. ( which includes a strengthened Cumalitive Impact Policy for Headingley which I will blog on seperately. Inevitabley once a meeting of 99 busy people was in the diary people tacked on other business. We ended up debating 3 motions on 1. the Labour Groups desire to devolve £33m of of the Leeds/Bradford airport proceeds to individual wards 2. a Lib Dem attempt to reject national ID cards. 3. A Conservative desire to moan about Central Government housing building targets. Usually these sorts of debates take place after a tea break and hours into the meeting when we have gone through Council minutes. It was interesting to see that when we came to things fresh the debates were consistantly better quality and better tempered.



Its been a long time since I spoke three times in a single meeting but I felt inspired to put my two penneth in. Anyone that was there can comment on my performance in the comments section. On the Airport I raised the issue of Carbon. I'm actually not unsympathetic to the Labour Groups desire to see some Airport proceeds devolved to communities. But a Christmas gift to every ward in Leeds of £1 million each was in fact a wrecking amendment for the entire capital budget. If I'm honest enough to admit that some of things we have cited Airport cash for have already been announced then will labour be honest enought to admit that the proposed 12500 seat arena the city lacks could never be built with Airport money? Its also intriguing that the party of Keir Hardie wanted Wetherby to recieve just as much cash as Holbeck. Like many cities Leeds has some of the most deprived wards in Britain and huge chuncks that would fit happily into the Surrey stock broker belt. Why should one area recive exactly the same ammount of money as the other? My slightly left field suggestion was we should be more bothered about the Carbon Foot Print of the Airport money. We got the cash by flogging (our 40% of) a municipal air port. When they are privatised they tend to boom. More passangers, more short haul flights and more CO2. If we are building an Arena with some of the proceeds then we ought to ensure thats its an international calibre example of low carbon building.

On ID cards I was a little riskier. As, rather embarrisingly, Coun John Bale ( Con , Guisley and Rawdon) had made the liberal argument against ID cards better than i was going to I went onto the politics of Fear. Who actually benefits from this constant paranoia that we are all about to be blown up? I see to recall less angst in the 1980's when we gfaced a realistic prospect of nuclear anilahation. The reality of mass casuality terrorism like 9/11 or 7/7 is frightening but as frightening as some would have us believe? ID cards apart from being expensive, useless and illiberal feed into this creeping culture of fear.

Finally on Housing targets I ignored the actual motion and spoke about the need to building political support for more Houses. I'm sure the Conservatives didn't mean it but they might have sounded to an untrained ear like a NIMBY unpleasent rump not wanting more concrete near there leafy subsurbs. I agree with them as far as the onslaught of badly designed, shoe box type 1 and 2 bedroom flat developments go. Investment products for the buy to let industry. If we are to achieve political support for more homes then they have to be just that. Homes for families in communities that people ant to live in. I couldn't possibly comment on why I chose the Leeds Girls High School site as an example of how planning should work in a debate started by Cllr Andrew Carter.

I've never felt that talking is the important part of a Councillors role but there is a place for these big set piece ocassions. Others can judge what I contributed if anything but I did at least for once have a go.