Greater London Authority Bill

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend’s intervention went straight over my head. My only thought on this subject is that I was in Cardiff on Saturday and Sunday, and I am not sure that that match was the best example ever of football. However, I did not watch it, so I cannot contribute anything further. I was about to thank my hon. Friends the Members for Bromley and Chislehurst and for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling), both of whom are my constituency neighbours, for their enormously useful contribution—minus the football remarks—to the Bill Committee, for their comments this evening, and in particular for their observations on the assembly budget. Their intimate knowledge of how the budget system works—or does not work—is very valuable to us all. I also thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) for tabling new clause 8, which we will support if it is pressed to a vote. I do not want to take up much more time, given that the arguments have been exceedingly well made. I am rather glad, however, that the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) is back in the Chamber, because he is responsible for the whole mess that assembly budget is in. It was during his stewardship of the original GLA Bill that the Government failed to take into account the impact of their proportional representation system, which means practically by definition that no one political party will ever get a majority—and deliberately so, as he clearly explained at the time. However, the difficulty was that, in line with the mindset of the first-past-the-post system, of which I am a great supporter, the Government imposed the three-quarters majority rule on the budget vote.