Greater London Authority Bill

I will concentrate my remarks on the two amendments in my name—amendments Nos. 28 and 29—which would affect the City of London Corporation. They would put the area covered by the City of London in the same position as the areas covered by the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation and the Olympic Delivery Authority, as land exempted from the Mayor’s new powers of intervention. The areas to be covered by Thames Gateway and the Olympics are in a sense very special areas, but their general features are probably much more characteristic of London as a whole than is the City of London. In Committee the Minister said that the land within the Thames Gateway and the ODA area were not excluded because there is no need to include them. Later, she said:"““the Olympics and the ODA refer to specific sites””," whereas the policies to be dealt with by the Mayor"““apply across London as a whole””.––[Official Report, Greater London Authority Public Bill Committee, 16 January 2007; c. 222.]" On those grounds there would seem to be good grounds to exempt the area covered by the City of London as well. The City is certainly a very specific and atypical area, and the policies applied there are not the same as in the rest of London. [Interruption.] I am slightly worried as I see in his place the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn), who, together with the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), has fought various battles about the electoral system that takes place within the City of London. There are, of course, other fundamental differences. For example, the existing order under the mayoral involvement is triggered on planning applications that make different height and size requirements in the City as against Greater London as a whole. It is very difficult to see how the areas covered by the Olympics and the Thames Gateway would therefore be more distinctive. It is not as though the Mayor does not already have some involvement. The City’s own planning regime has to be in general conformity with mayoral policies under existing legislation. Neither does the fact that the Mayor has taken on a role in supporting the Olympics and the Thames Gateway make the argument for treating them differently from the City. If a role as a cheerleader has ruled him out from considering applications, the Mayor would equally be disbarred from deciding applications in the City of London, as many of them concern tall buildings, as the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) pointed out in his powerful contribution earlier. That is a policy that the Mayor has said very firmly that he supports. I hope that the Minister will reflect on the case for the area of the City of London to be treated differently from the other areas to which we have referred—and therefore exempted. I would like to speak briefly to amendment No. 29. In July 2005, the Mayor produced for the consultation of the London assembly draft alterations to the London plan, which included a 10-year target for the City of some 1,700 units—in other words, roughly 170 units a year. In October that year, he published further alterations to the London plan, which included a lower target of 90 a year. The alterations were then subject to public consultation and, after an examination in public, were finally adopted as recently as December 2006. In the 18 months between the publication and adoption, the City argued strenuously that the figure of 170 units a year anticipated by the Mayor would actually be too high. With a 10-year cycle and assuming an average two-person household, it would have the effect of increasing the City’s resident population by about 3,000 people—in fact, by more than a third in that 10-year cycle. I have to say that the City’s population has been reduced year on year since the very first census of 1801—with the exception of the last 10 years, when it started very gradually to move up again. None the less, increasing it by a third over a decade would, in my view, be wholly unrealistic. As a result of sensible negotiation the figure was reduced to some 90 units a year, and the fact that it was accepted demonstrates that the original figure was rather too high. I hope that, under amendment No. 29, an application will not be regarded as being ““of potential strategic importance”” simply because it fails to comply with any policies in the development plans. I would like to associate myself with the earlier comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait). She made her case firmly, explaining why we believe that this is a step too far and would like to avoid having strategic planning powers passed on to the Mayor, particularly when the definition of ““strategic”” has been left so open.