'Cowardly politicians' blamed for debate delay

Deputy Sam Mézec blamed cowardly politicians for delaying a vote on changing Jersey's residential tenancy law.

A States minister has blamed "cowardly politicians" for delaying a vote on whether to change the island's rental tenancy laws.

Deputy Sam Mezec, the housing minister, brought forward plans to improve protections for landlords and tenants including limiting rent increases to 5%.

Politicians were due to vote on the principle of whether the law should be changed, with details of what the law would look like being debated in September.

On Wednesday, States members voted to refer back the plans to the housing scrutiny panel as they felt they couldn't make an informed decision.

Deputy Inna Gardiner called for the proposed changes to be referred back to the panel and said politicians were unclear on what they could and couldn't discuss.

She said: "It was really, really not clear what the members were deciding on when discussing the principles, and members said during their speeches that the scrutiny report with evidence would help them make informed discussions.

"In September we will have one debate, principles, second reading, third reading, with all possible amendments and input from the scrutiny panel, so the members can have a clear picture of what it means in practice."

Mezec said the delay was down to "cowardly politicians" playing "dirty tricks."

He said: "Members were too cowardly to decide one way or another to decide which way they wanted to go, so they decided to delay making a decision until after the summer instead.

"I knew there would be dirty tricks pulled. This is what happens when you have politicians who don't have the courage of their convictions, I think the public will be in despair watching this kind of thing."

He added: "What this means is there is a summer break where myself and my officers will be in union street working trying to make the best of this situation when its entirely possible in the summer that these people will vote the whole thing out anyway, in which case we would have wasted summer.

"It's another example of government working inefficiently because of bad decisions made by States members."