Greater London Authority Bill

My Lords, it is always dangerous to claim that one was the first to say something, especially in your Lordships' House, but I might make a modest claim to be one of the first London Labour Party members to have floated the idea of a directly elected mayor in London. That was in 1991, when as chair of that august body of comrades, the Greater London Labour Party, I introduced to its annual conference a report called The Future of London’s Government. Among many other demands, it modestly suggested that the idea of a directly elected Mayor of London deserved to be given some consideration. I merely note that the hostility to such a notion of the current incumbent of the mayor’s office partly explains my tentativeness at the time. But here we are, looking again at how we can best support more coherence in the governance of our capital, and in support of many of the proposals by Ken Livingstone and the mayor’s office. I feel that I have lived with the conversation about London’s governance for many years. My husband, John Carr, was a GLC and ILEA member, abolished along with the rest of them in 1986. It was a terribly unjust democratic act at the time, but we are not here to rake over old arguments—