Greater London Authority Bill

My Lords, I realise that I lack the detailed understanding, knowledge and experience of the government of London demonstrated by many of the speakers in tonight’s debate. However, I wish to speak for two reasons. First, in the mid-1990s, I helped draft a document called the London Pride Prospectus. It was produced by the London Pride Partnership, a body called into being by the Secretary of State for the Environment at the time to give major stakeholders in London—politicians, business, NGOs, the unions—something to do in the absence of even the vestige of government at a London level. It was a splendid document, though I say it myself, but it sank without trace. Interestingly, one of the few things that all those who were involved in its production could agree upon was that it should have had a strong chapter about the need for a London tier of government—the one thing on which the Government would not allow us to comment. Secondly, I have spent a lot of time over the past decade involved in discussions about regional government in the rest of England, outside London. Although I share the criticisms of my noble friend Lady Hamwee about the structure of government in London, I feel that Londoners and politicians in London are fortunate in having a degree of devolved power, however limited, and wish that they had rather more. From reading the Bill and the debates on it in another place, it is clear that the governance of London is moving progressively further away from the remainder of England. London already has an elected mayor and elected politicians who can hold him to account. The Bill slightly strengthens this process and their powers. This situation is very different from the position in the English regions. The failed referendum on a modest proposal for devolution in the north-west has led the Government to shut up shop on regional devolution. Instead, they are conducting a review on what they charmingly call sub-national economic development and regeneration in England. One of the principal options which I believe is being considered is the development of the city region, based on what would be the dominant local authority in that region. The problem with that approach is that city regions outside London, unlike London itself, are not actually regions. Large parts of the country would not, by any stretch of the imagination, fall within such a region, north Yorkshire being an obvious example. The other problem which this approach—and, indeed, the Bill—fail to resolve is how to bring in to a democratic structure the functions of the government regional officers. They exercise considerable power yet are completely unaccountable to politicians in the regions they serve. I hope that before long—possibly under a new Prime Minister, although I am not holding my breath—we will be able to persuade the Government to revisit the question of regional government across England as a whole. In the mean time, we have this Bill. On the face of it, it covers a number of the principal public policy challenges facing London, including housing, planning, health and climate change, where powers are being reallocated. But the powers in the Bill are often inadequate or they are being reallocated in the wrong direction. For the powers of the Government Office for London, very little changes. It is surely anomalous to have devolved government in London yet a raft of fairly random functions still the responsibility of the relevant Secretaries of State rather than the London-wide political institutions. The role of the Government Office for London lacks all logic. The home page of its website explains that among its principal roles is, "““making London’s case in Whitehall””." Surely the only people who can make London’s case effectively in Whitehall are elected politicians, not civil servants, who can never have the same amount of clout. I can see no reason why GOL’s responsibilities, whether ensuring the delivery of Every Child Matters or attempting to tackle crime reduction, would not be better exercised by the GLA. In some respects, the Bill makes the muddle worse. It contains a provision to create a public health adviser to the GLA who, "““is in the employment of the Civil Service of the State in the post of Regional Director of Public Health for London””." As I understand it, this person is responsible to the Secretary of State for Health for carrying out public health policy across London and to the mayor solely in terms of health inequalities strategy. How can this person serve two masters? In particular, what happens if there is a dispute between the mayor and the Secretary of State for Health on the health inequalities strategy? Under the Bill, the Secretary of State can give the mayor a direction to change his strategy and the mayor must obey. Where is the poor old health adviser in these circumstances? He or she has presumably to acquiesce to the Secretary of State’s will, even though he or she will advise the mayor to adopt the strategy to which the Secretary of State has taken exception. Such a circumstance is by no means impossible to imagine, particularly if the national Government are led by a different political party than the one to which the mayor belongs. If it does happen, the health adviser is in an impossible position. He or she has been put in that position because the Government are not prepared to relinquish control of policy—in this case, reducing health inequalities—to the GLA. In any event, even if the mayor and the Government are not at loggerheads, what can the mayor do to implement his health equality strategy? All the troops who budget for implementation rest with the adviser, wearing his other hat as regional director of public health in London. They and their responsibilities should be transferred across to the GLA. Although that may seem a rather ludicrous example, it is a common pattern. The mayor is given a budget to draw up strategies because he is legally obliged to do so but no money to carry them out. I am not saying that developing and promoting a strategy is necessarily a waste of time; the role of the mayor in occupying the bully pulpit of politics can be very effective as far as it goes; but it does not go far enough. The inevitable response to huge strategy documents is to ask where the beef is. The answer all too often is that it remains with Whitehall. Noble Lords will be aware that more than 60 per cent of government expenditure in London is not controlled by the GLA and this Bill does nothing to change this position. In some respects it makes the disparity between the roles of the GLA and the resources available to the mayor even greater. To take one example from the Bill, the mayor is required to draw up an adaptation to climate change strategy for London. The strategy is to contain an assessment of the consequences of climate change for greater London and proposals and policies for adaptation so far as they relate to greater London. It is generally accepted that the most serious consequence for London of climate change is the possibility—or rather the near certainty—of significant rises in sea levels. The consequences without very dramatic and expensive preventive action are over a long period that central London simply becomes uninhabitable. So the Bill requires the mayor to consider this—which presumably he does, and he sees that this is a long-term problem facing the capital. What is he enabled to do under the Bill? He is allowed to produce a strategy document. Unless he proposes to evacuate the capital—and even if he does—there is a big price tag attached to protecting London from inundation. How is that to be met? As I understand it, the mayor will be as powerful as King Canute; he will be able to wave his adaptation strategy document at the rising tide but that, frankly, will be it. He should surely have powers to raise funds from Londoners to implement his climate change policy. A major effect of the Bill has been to set London boroughs and the mayor at loggerheads about actual or possible transfers of powers—and I, like other noble Lords, have had a number of representations from the two sides on this point—between the two levels of government in London, mainly with powers being transferred away from the boroughs to the mayor. I believe that that is the wrong and largely irrelevant battleground. This Bill should have made it easier for the institutions of London government to exercise real authority on those areas of public policy that are crucial to the long-term prosperity of the capital. It has, in my view, signally failed to rise to the challenge.