Greater London Authority Bill

For the official Opposition, this is one of the most important parts of the Bill, as it is the key point where powers are being taken away from boroughs and given to the Mayor. I thank the Minister for Housing and Planning for making the draft statutory instrument available to me. I realise that she made it available to the Committee in the middle of January, but when I tried to look for it, due to unforeseen circumstances neither the Vote Office nor the Library had a copy. I downloaded it from her office mid-morning in a bit of a panic, so if I miss any of the finer details I am sure that my hon. Friends who took part in the Committee proceedings will help me out. I want the House to consider the whole group of amendments and new clauses, because as I said, they relate to the crux of the Bill. We object so strongly to the taking of powers from the boroughs to give them to the Mayor that in Committee we tried to delete all the relevant provisions. Sadly, we failed, so we are returning to the charge in an attempt to constrain the powers that the Mayor is acquiring unto himself. We want the boroughs to retain as much decision-making power as they can, and we want the Mayor to know that there are significant areas in which he cannot involve himself. Those of us with experience of the Mayor’s activities over the past few years are conscious of the fact that even with his current limited powers he has intervened where many of us feel he should not. It is worth repeating a point I made on Second Reading. Broomleigh housing association—my local housing association—is part of the Affinity group, which joined the Sutton Trust to become Affinity Sutton. To make life even more complicated the association made a significant planning application for social housing in the borough of Sutton, which has nothing to do with the Sutton Trust. The Mayor intervened, which slowed down the process by at least a year, thereby making it even more difficult for people who wanted social housing to move in. The Mayor has already stuck his nose into many areas where many of us think he should not have intervened. The powers given to him by the Government under the Bill will make his capacity for intervention even greater, while taking significant powers away from the boroughs. We have tabled a long list of amendments and I hope that everybody will bear with me if I go through them all, even if only briefly. First, however, I want to put into context my position on overdevelopment, because the Minister referred to it in Committee. At the time, I managed to get out of the then Minister for London the information that he had every intention of doubling housing density in the borough of Bromley.