Greater London Authority Bill

I start with a plea. The Bill that became the Greater London Authority Act 1999 was the second longest Bill in the history of Parliament, being exceeded only by a Finance Bill. It had 26 Committee sittings, with the Committee stage lasting two and a half months. As the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who has just left the Chamber, reminded us, there were more than 1,000 amendments. That Bill received intense scrutiny in Committee, but when it came back to the House on Report, vast chunks of the Bill were replaced without any debate whatsoever. Vast chunks of the Bill were then replaced in the Lords, and most of the Lords amendments that this House considered went through without debate because of a guillotine. Those amendments included measures on revenue-raising powers. I sincerely hope that this Greater London Authority Bill has a happier passage through the House. Conservative Members supported the Third Reading of the Greater London Authority Bill of 1999, but we tabled a reasoned amendment in which we accepted the principle of the authority, but expressed our reservations about the congestion charge, the nature of the assembly and the imbalance with the boroughs. As we come to review the workings of the 1999 Act, it seems we did not make a bad judgment at the time. The assembly’s operations are restricted and the congestion charge has had its problems. This Bill will diminish the boroughs’ powers even further. A voice for London is a good thing. The Mayor should speak for this major city on the world stage. However, the voice that we have at present has tarnished the image of London. The position of Mayor is one of not just responsibility, but integrity. The cheeky chappie stuff only goes so far; frankly we do not need the Nazi jibes, the scuffles outside parties and the cheap stunts, such as the trip to Venezuela where the Mayor was rebuffed to the embarrassment of the people of London. The people of London want a well run authority with no gimmicks. They want jobs, homes and security. The Bill addresses the question of homes. As you will have been able to tell by the number of interventions, Madam Deputy Speaker, many hon. Members have spoken about the interaction between planning and housing, although I will not go into that matter in great depth, especially bearing in mind your strictures. However, I have reached the conclusion that as the Mayor gets more and more powers to set the level of affordable housing, developers will become more and more wary about the number of houses that they build. In my constituency, I believe that too many one-bedroom flats and insufficient three-bedroom family houses have been built, but that should be a matter for Croydon council to decide. My second conclusion about the planning and development powers in the Bill is that if the Mayor is to have an even greater say on major developments, the borough of Croydon, which has several major developments in the pipeline, will find that developers will bypass the council and go straight to the Mayor. That will create a weakness in the system and diminish the powers of the authority. My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait) ably showed up the flaws in the Bill in her opening speech. I am still not sure of the direction in which the Government want the GLA to go. The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford), who cleverly took the 1999 Bill through the House—I was the Opposition spokesman at the time—said that there would not be a GLC mark 2. However, it is looking increasingly like that. After ten years of Labour, London has the only regional government that has got off the ground. Part of the motive was to give back a voice to the people of London, but a lot of it was to correct the imbalance of what was going on with devolution to Scotland and Wales and the embarrassment of the unanswered West Lothian question. There is a hotch-potch of responsibilities at present. The Government do not want London to have the same sort of powers as Scotland and Wales, but they do not want power to go down to the boroughs. Let me pick up a point made by the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) when he intervened to talk about what my former colleague Steve Norris has said. In a way, Steve Norris is right. The Mayor wants more powers. We should give powers to either the boroughs, or the Mayor, but we should not have a rag-bag in the middle with the powers divided. The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich talked about the question of devolved powers or strategic powers. I do not think that the right balance has been achieved. The Bill misses many opportunities. Making the Mayor more accountable for his strategies should be at the heart of the Bill. The assembly could effectively be reformed. Proportional representation has led to weaknesses in the way in which it operates. The assembly’s only serious power is the ability to veto the budget, but two thirds of assembly members are needed to do so. As the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington said, the Mayor can thus get his budget through the assembly by using a one third blocking minority, which is most of the Labour group and the odd Green—[Interruption.] A very odd Green. The combination of that blocking minority and proportional representation means that the Mayor is largely unfettered. Although this is not my party’s policy, I have always favoured an assembly that represents the 33 London boroughs. Such an assembly would build better bridges with the boroughs than the existing structure. The GLA sits aloofly above the boroughs, looking down on them, which was also a weakness of the old GLC. I know that my proposal is not popular with the assembly. I do not intend to be critical, but I think that direct or indirect elections on a borough basis would improve relations. Accountability would also be improved, because assembly members would be elected by the people of the boroughs. There is no way in which a Mayor who is out of control can be constrained. The leader of an authority can be removed by his group. The First Ministers of Scotland and Wales can be removed, as can Prime Ministers. However, even if every psychiatrist in Harley street declared the Mayor of London to be criminally insane, there would be absolutely nothing that anyone could do about it. One of the weaknesses of the Bill is the lack of provision for a recall petition, as it is called in the United States. Under such a system, an agreed number of signatures would result in a referendum on the status of the Mayor and his record would be put to test. There is a muddle of merging the powers of the executive and the legislature. Prime Ministers, First Ministers, MPs and councillors are all elected for a term of office in a legislature. However, if they move to the executive from the legislature, their roles in the executive are dependent on others. In countries in which the executive and the legislature are separate, checks and balances are installed in the system. For example, the mayor of New York can be removed by the Governor of New York, under certain criteria. The mayor of Paris can be removed by an Order in Council, under certain criteria. In my judgment, such a thing should be possible in London.