Greater London Authority Bill

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for presenting the Bill and for updating the House on the Government’s thinking on the issues. The constitution of the Greater London Authority, composed of the mayor and the London Assembly, is a specialist subject. I declare my interest as an Assembly Member. I am deputy chair of the Assembly, and Brian Coleman, my chairman, is keeping a close eye on me below the Bar. I speak partly as an Assembly Member, but very much as a member of the Liberal Democrats, in which capacity I make clear my support for devolution, of which this is another step, from central government to London’s own strategic tier. The profile of the Greater London Authority—at any rate, the profile of the current mayor—is known to far more people than the anoraks. I will struggle today, and no doubt at later stages of the Bill, to retain the distinction between the office and the current office holder. One must do that. We are, however, also entitled to be informed by the experience of the past seven years. The constitutional arrangements should also be of interest to more people than the anoraks. The lessons on how a strong leader functions—I use the term ““leader”” semi-technically and refer to the office, not the incumbent—and what checks and balances are required will be considered in debates on another Bill very shortly. It was suggested to me that I should start my contribution today by saying, ““As I was saying””. It is certainly true that I was one of those who argued in 1999 against the strong mayoral model. So, too, did the then honourable Member for Brent East. Mayor Livingstone takes a different view. I believed then, and I believe now, that the council-leader model is a healthy one. As a close observer, I am interested to note that, as the GLA has continued to develop, many members of the mayor’s own political group who were on the Assembly have been appointed by him to an executive or quasi-executive role. There are lessons to be learnt about how that is sometimes required. I accept that the Bill does not change the executive/scrutiny split. I am an enthusiast for good scrutiny; it can be very powerful, although too often, as I have learnt, it is dependent on the media, who inevitably by nature tend to reduce much of what the scrutiny arm does to the lowest common denominator. During the Bill’s passage, we on these Benches will be asking questions about the balance of the relationship between the two arms of the GLA. Others may say that that amounts to seeking an executive role for the scrutiny body. That is not where I am coming from. The basis for that argument is very much public confusion about what the Assembly can do, a point that echoes something that the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, has said. My colleagues and I are frequently asked, ““Why don’t you stop him?””. It is entirely counter-intuitive to the electorate that, having elected 25 Assembly Members on the same day as they elected the mayor, the Assembly Members do not have a right to say no. Scrutiny is not, and should not be, opposition, although the Executive may characterise it as such. It has not been unknown for the current Executive to reveal in a press release that the scrutiny arm opposes their proposals even before we have been able to ask questions, which is substantially our function. In brief, a check is needed as well as a balance. We welcome the Bill’s strengthening of the Assembly’s position and the Government’s recognition of the dangers inherent in the Executive setting the budget for the scrutiny arm. I acknowledge that the current mayor has been generous in this regard. The Bill has several pages of formulae for the scrutiny budget, which are only a little less complicated than a Fair Isle knitting pattern. However, I put to the Government the Assembly’s view that, in giving it the power to increase its own budget up to a ceiling, the mayor should be precluded from reducing it to below a floor related to his own budget. Most importantly—this would be consistent with every other institution I can think of—the Assembly budget should be decided by a simple majority of its own members. If a mayor needs to persuade only one-third of the Assembly to oppose the majority of the Assembly, he will have a completely inappropriate power. I talk of the scrutiny budget, but that is a tiny part of the whole. The current budget of the whole GLA group—the police and fire services, transport and the London Development Agency, as well as the Greater London Authority itself—is now knocking £11 billion. The mayor sets the whole of that. The precept is the most discussed part of the budget, but it all comes from the taxpayer in some form and from the fare payer, so no wonder the ““council tax payer come national taxpayer come fare payer come Londoner”” finds it difficult to understand that the Assembly can block the mayor’s budget by only a two-thirds majority. To put it another way, the mayor needs to command only one-third of the Assembly to support his budget. In the context of power being best exercised at the lowest appropriate level, we on these Benches welcome most of the extensions of mayoral powers. No doubt we will debate how far the detail of any strategy should bind others, although any mayor should regard his greatest power as being how far he can influence people. Perhaps we will also debate whether the Assembly can amend a budget. It has long been a view in some academic circles that this is where a two-thirds majority in the Assembly might be better applied. On the extension of powers, my noble friends will deal with climate change and energy, and the continuing role of the Government Office for London, which, as is well known, has grown since 1999. On housing, I will confine myself simply to saying that broadly we support the Government’s proposals. I know that there will be comments on the mayor’s bid to run a single waste authority, which for good reasons signally failed to gather much support in the Commons, and on planning what constitutes a strategic application, in which the mayor should have a role and what that role should be. Many noble Lords will have received a briefing from Mr Livingstone in which he says: "““Proposed changes to planning will lead to a better balance between strategic and local planning considerations in London, and will significantly reduce the current dependence on a time-consuming appeals system””." I find it hard not to read this as meaning that the current mayor believes that he would be more likely than the boroughs to get it right—whatever that is—and that his taking over decisions would mean more consents. Whether or not the mayor is given additional planning powers, as has been said, it is important that his powers are exercised in an open and transparent manner. Who is consulted and how representations are heard are hugely important matters to developers and affected communities. A single person determining an application needs to be particularly energetic to ensure confidence. The procedure here is not a matter of mere bureaucracy. Communities need reassurance that they really have a stakeholder role and that it is not a meaningless phrase that the Section 106 arrangements should essentially be local arrangements. We talk of mayoral interventions. What we cannot know—I think that the noble Baroness alluded to this—is how far applicants anticipate encountering problems with the mayor and temper their applications accordingly before even submitting them. I very much welcome the Minister’s comments on this issue. I may not welcome them quite enough, but they are significant, and I thank her for that. As the Minister says, London is certainly shaping up to be the capital of the 21st century, but the GLA is still a work in progress. There is much that is good about its work so far. At this stage, it is inevitable that we, as always, look at what concerns us, and how we as Londoners have experienced that work. I will not take your Lordships’ time today to address every aspect of this largely welcome Bill. I am sure that the bumpiest ride will be with regard to the various planning clauses, on which concerns were so great that they were the basis for opposition in the Commons at Third Reading and have clearly led to much consideration behind the scenes since then. I suspect that the other bumpy ride will be over any changes to the budget process. I look forward to examining how the rest of the Bill will operate and what other changes to the Greater London Authority might help it operate more effectively and in a manner that Londoners would support. In other words, I look forward very much to scrutinising this Bill and in this House, if not always in City Hall, dealing with issues on the basis of a simple majority.