Greater London Authority Bill

I endorse everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling) has said. I should also point out again—I said this in Committee, but it is worth repeating for those who were not there—that he has chaired the assembly’s budget committee for a number of years. There is probably no one who knows more about the intricacies of the budget system than he does. We are discussing a particularly disappointing passage in the Bill. The Minister has missed an opportunity to restate the rebalancing that we all hope to achieve through the Bill. London government has moved on. We accept—or rather, almost all of us accept—that there is a devolved system of government for London. If that system is to work, it is right to look again at a sensible settlement between the two elements: the Mayor and the assembly. It has been suggested during the passage of the Bill by some Government Back Benchers that really, there is no equality of mandate. I dispute that. The members of the assembly are elected on the same day as the Mayor and by the same electors. Those voters expect the members to have an equal share in the governance of London. What has been missing throughout the Bill is the sense of entrenching partnership, and the provisions for the budget highlight that. I referred to the issue earlier in relation to transport, in that transport has to be delivered through a partnership between the Mayor’s organisation, Transport for London and the boroughs. The same ought to apply to the governance of the GLA, which should be a partnership between the Mayor and the assembly.