Communities and Local Government/Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

I hope that the hon. Member for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove) will forgive me if I take a slightly different view of the Queen’s Speech. The debate has been wide-ranging and I hope that previous speakers will forgive me if I do not pursue the cloned hybrid element of it but concentrate instead on the Mayor of London. I think that that will be a change. The proposals for enhancing the role of the Mayor of London will be spread over several Bills. I shall not, therefore, attempt to make a Second Reading speech, but I want to discuss the various proposals in a joined-up way. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling), I continue to serve on the London assembly. Indeed, we have been in harness together for the past six years. Like him, I previously spent some time as a London borough councillor. I am not sure what that says about our social lives before we became Members of Parliament but it has perhaps given us some idea of the practical problems of London governance. I was recently the deputy chairman of the commission on London governance, which was set up jointly by the London assembly and the London boroughs on a cross-party basis to examine the way in which we take forward the London governance settlement. Against that background, the Government’s proposals are disappointing and constitute a missed opportunity. Like my hon. Friends the Members for Croydon, Central and for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field), I have no problem with enhancing the power of the Mayor of London as a strategic authority. A devolved settlement is now accepted politics and I, for one, am glad of that. There is an opportunity to make that work better—that was the position that I always adopted as leader of the Conservative group on the London assembly. We now want to consider practical measures for achieving that. Sadly, the Government’s proposals fail to take advantage of the opportunity in two important ways. They fail to tackle a proper balance between central Government, the Greater London authority and the London boroughs—the three key players in governing London. The proposals, though welcome in some ways, do not go far enough in taking power from central Government and devolving it to London government. I shall give two specific examples. As my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central said, the proposals for the learning and skills councils are welcome as far as they go. However, from what we hear of the draft Bill, we are likely to face a convoluted method of placing the Mayor of London in a leading role in the learning and skills councils because it is proposed to make them fit the national template. That is a mistake. There is no reason why London, with a system of devolved government, needs the same template for the operation of learning and skills councils. I would be happy to give the Mayor much more direct control through the London Development Agency—the obvious linking point—over such matters. The Government could have gone further on health. I am glad that we now have a single strategic health authority for London. That makes sense. However, we could do more to give the Mayor and the Greater London authority, which have democratic legitimacy, a greater role in the development of health policy in London and the scrutiny of the working of the health service. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) is not present because I agree with his point about the democratic deficit in the health service. Primary care trusts are an obvious example.