Greater London Authority Bill

I am talking about the effect across London, not just in an individual borough. The point of the Bill is for the Mayor to speed up the provision of affordable housing, and to provide more of it. By putting a brake on that, Opposition Members are damaging those families in overcrowded conditions. I know that the Bill is about the mayoralty and the Mayor’s role as an institution, but there have been some derogatory comments about the Mayor himself. The hon. Member for Croydon, South (Richard Ottaway), for instance, talked of the Mayor’s Venezuelan connection. The truth is, though, that the Mayor has a real record of achievement in London. He was very brave to introduce the congestion charge. There may still be congestion problems in London, but on the whole the charge is deemed to be a success. The Mayor has also invested a large amount in public transport and policing in London, which has benefited Londoners. I wanted to pick up those references to him as an individual, although I know we are talking about an institution. Although the Bill gives the Mayor more powers, they are fairly limited in many ways, and some of them are also quite weak. There are quite a lot of checks, one of which is in the parallel Bill, the Further Education and Training Bill. We discussed that yesterday in the Work and Pensions Committee, as the hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) said in an intervention. I have to say that the Learning and Skills Council has not been effective in upgrading the skills of Londoners and in meeting job market demands. Also, who is the LSC accountable to? It is better that it comes within the ambit of the Mayor. He will have an overall role—although a weak one—in bringing it together with bodies such as Jobcentre Plus, but he will not have what is needed: some carrots and sticks, for example to make employers do their job properly in respect of improving training. That is an example of there being a better power for the Mayor, but one that remains quite weak. There are also the housing and planning functions; I want to discuss planning in particular. There are the waste management functions as well. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), and with other interventions including by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn), that they are not really good enough for London in the current circumstances as there is a need to have much improved waste management. It is stated that other authorities will have to have a ““general conformity”” with the Mayor’s waste management strategy. What is a ““general conformity””? Does that mean that they can ignore it if they wish? That is not good enough. There should be a control over disposal, and I favour a strategic waste management authority for London as a whole, under the Mayor. One of the climate change powers is a duty to try to reduce carbon emissions. That is incredibly important, but just how far does it run? I hope that it runs a long way and that the Bill contains a lot of such powers for the Mayor, but I doubt that very much. I suggest that the Liberal Democrats and other Members explore that matter in Committee. Reducing health inequalities and improving public health is an important role. The Mayor will appoint the regional public health director for London. But, again, the powers are quite weak as all the myriad authorities and health trusts will actually have control—and all of them will have their own public health authorities as well. So the Mayor can play an important role on health, but I think that he will only really make an impact at the margins. The museum of London role is also important, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) said, the Mayor should play a much bigger role in terms of arts and culture in London. That takes us back to Tony Banks, who made a big impact when he played that role for Londoners. However, I want to talk about housing and planning in particular. Affordable housing is at the heart of this proposed legislation, and that is why I support it. I mentioned that there are a lot of people living in overcrowded and temporary homes, yet we will have population growth of 800,000 over the next 10 years so there is a great need to get on with building houses for families and others who need them. We must, however, be careful when we go on a big housing drive. We must not forget the need for quality—the properties that are built must be of good quality—and nor must we forget that London depends very much on its green spaces. If people are to have a decent environment to live in, the green spaces in many areas must be protected. Such considerations must be the counter to just pushing ahead—to the market approach to housing. They must be built into the plans as well. That leads me on to the Mayor’s role in strategic planning. I note that he will not get involved in most local applications; I think that it has been said that 99 per cent. will still be dealt with at local level. However, he will be able to call in strategic applications. Although I support that, I do not think that this system is appropriate overall. We should be looking for a different sort of system. Last week, I visited New Zealand with the Work and Pensions Committee, and I had the opportunity to have a cup of tea with Mrs. Daphne Steele, a great environmental campaigner in New Zealand who has been awarded a medal for her activities there. She told me about the environmental court system that New Zealand uses, which I found very interesting. She took certain major strategic planning applications to that court, and when the environment was taken into account in a fuller way by neutral judges—or by judges with a concern for the environment, at least—she won the day. Given the problems associated with climate change, there is a very real case for putting such major planning applications before an environmental court. An environmental court should be combined with a system of prior notification. It is clear that not all such applications should go before an environmental court, but it should be signalled that an application deemed of great environmental importance could go before such a court at the beginning of the process, if sufficient objections on environmental grounds were raised. Where the Mayor or the Government say that a particular application is in London’s or the national interest, what is the point of going through a long and arduous planning process? The planning inspector found against the Oxford immigration centre planning application, for example, but the Deputy Prime Minister stepped in and said that it was in the national interest. Why do we have that process for deciding on such an application, given that the decision is based in the first place on whether it is the national interest or the London interest? In such cases, an environmental court could consider what the major mitigating environmental factors are, and a system of prior notification could be used.