Greater London Authority Bill

My Lords, with one major reservation, to which my noble friend Lady Thornton has already referred, I very much welcome this Bill. Many veterans of this debate will recall that I was the Minister who brought through the hefty GLA Bill in 1999. It was at the time the second-longest non-financial Bill that we had ever had: the longest Bill—the Government of India Bill—was never implemented. The Bill was also remarkable for the huge number of amendments which were brought to this House at relatively late stages. I would hope that we do not go through that same process on this Bill. I am glad to see that the Government concur with that. During those debates we had a lot of discussion about constitutional issues, which was quite bizarre because the Liberal Democrats wanted an assembly without a mayor and the Conservatives wanted a mayor without a directly-elected assembly. What scraped through therefore was an uneasy position, which has largely but not entirely worked. The tweaking in this Bill of the constitutional relationship between the mayor and the Assembly is needed and we will no doubt debate that later. In addition during those debates, there were suggestions from all sides of the House that more strategic powers should be put to the authority—whether it be the mayor or the Assembly— particularly for spatial development, environment and planning. I can tell noble Lords now that I had some sympathy with those arguments, although my colleagues in Government did not entirely, and there are two reasons for that. The good reason for approaching it with caution at that stage was that we were creating a new entity, something that had not been tried before. We were not recreating the old GLC and therefore we were right to be cautious. The bad reason was that it was already clear by that time who the leading candidates for mayor were going to be. There was some anxiety on the Labour Benches, although not for me, that the current mayor was going to run away with the Labour nomination—the reality proved to be slightly more complicated. The frontrunner on the Conservative Benches at the time was the noble Lord, Lord Archer of Weston-Super-Mare, who was also an active participant in these debates. All those anxieties probably prevented us going as far as we should in relation to some of the strategic responsibilities of the mayor. Nevertheless, as other noble Lords have said, we have seen that by and large the GLA has been a success, particularly in those areas which clearly require a strategic approach, such as transport. I therefore think it is time to revisit the strategic powers and that this Bill has probably got it right. I particularly welcome the commitment in relation to the climate change strategy. It is true that we may need to look at the wording, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, but it is an opportunity for London to take the lead in the climate change strategy through the action plan the mayor produced the other week to give us the lead. I hope that London can lead the way, particularly in areas such as distributed energy which are so vital to solving our energy problems. Here I declare an interest as a member of the London Climate Change Agency and, of course, as part of the Environment Agency. I also welcome the planning powers, and I do not really accept the criticism of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, on these. The original two-tier structure for planning powers was a bit too narrow and bureaucratic in the original Act. That does not mean I necessarily agree with the reported predilection of the mayor for extremely high buildings, but if we are to look at the thresholds again, the figures proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, on behalf of the City are too high and that in many parts of London no very important strategic buildings would ever reach those thresholds. We therefore need to ensure that the mayor does have wider powers in relation to strategic planning issues. On housing, in 1999 I was not convinced by arguments that the GLA should have housing powers, but I am now. We do not want to make the GLA a housing authority, but the fact is that noble Lords will have heard me bewail before the problems of housing policy in London. All parts of the housing market in London—owner occupation, private rented and social housing—are dysfunctional. There is a severe shortage of housing at the affordable end in all of those markets and the city is crying out for a strategic approach. The failure of social housing, which reflects housing stretch and the pressure of population resulting in the atomisation of families and other stresses particularly affecting low income families, is a real problem. Yet the current targets for new developments to provide affordable housing are not being met in a lot of London boroughs. Some are very low, such as Wandsworth at only 12 per cent. There is also circumvention of the requirements even in those boroughs which are trying to enforce the affordable housing quotas. I largely agree with what my noble friend Lady Jones said about the problems of housing in London, although I have said previously that I am not sure that the drive for local authorities to unload their housing stock through stock transfer and the creation of elbow length management organisations has necessarily improved the situation. Indeed, I am aware of a number of situations where that has made the position worse. The key issue is not who provides the social housing, but how much of it we have and what is its quality and affordability. One of the problems of housing in London at the moment is that the only people who can come in as new residents of central London are either extremely poor and therefore entitled to have their rent met by housing benefit in either private or social accommodation or they are extremely rich and therefore can afford the high prices for owner-occupied housing. One of the glories of London is that although it has rich and poor neighbourhoods, in rich neighbourhoods there has always been housing for the poor provided by social landlords and local authorities, while in poor areas there are always properties which benefit the rich. If we polarise our mixed societies within London both in terms of tenure and income, we will have a real social problem in the city. It is right, therefore, that, to tackle these developments and this shortage of housing, the mayor takes on some of the powers that currently rest in London and, in part, in the regional government office and exerts on the boroughs the kind of drive that my noble friend Lord Graham of Edmonton said was exhibited by Bob Mellish all those years ago, so that they deliver their housing targets. Noble Lords have touched on another area where the Bill does not go anywhere near far enough in giving the mayor powers: waste disposal. I have had a number of indications of support, not only in this House but from London business, the waste disposal industry itself, the Environment Agency, of which I am a member, and many others in London. It is only really the London boroughs themselves that oppose such a move. I find that bizarre, because, as my noble friend Lord Dubs and others have pointed out, there has been a serious failure by the London boroughs to deliver on the disposal and processing side of their responsibilities. I favour a strategic authority, a far more substantial body and process than the forum proposed by the Government, for three or four main reasons. First, the present structure is completely anomalous. We have a number of joint authorities that are rather shadowy and a number of single authorities that do not have the economies of scale they could achieve with waste disposal. We have waste moving across London in vast quantities, and a large chunk of London’s waste is being dumped one way or another on the neighbouring counties. Secondly, the system is a failure. Not only is London bottom of the league, it used to be fourth from bottom, so it is getting worse in relative terms. The majority of London boroughs are in the bottom quartile on recycling, and three of the bottom five authorities are in London. Only one London authority, Bexley, is in the top quartile. We have a bad record, which, in relative terms, is getting worse. Many authorities are not going to meet their target—including, if I might say so, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The boroughs have not done a good job here. Thirdly, we need a substantial amount of investment in infrastructure and a novel use of transportation in this area. A central strategic authority would be able to procure that, identify the sites and make maximum use of new technology, including energy from waste, about which my noble friend Lord Rooker was waxing lyrical at Question Time. I totally agree with what he said. That ought to be a function of a strategic waste authority. For all those reasons we need the waste provisions within the Bill to be substantially strengthened. The arguments of the boroughs against that do not add up. They argue that we should not have a two-tier structure, but in at least half of London we have a two-tier structure anyway, and we are talking about the disposal and processing side, not the collection side. The other argument seems to be that if we go through the process of reorganisation, we will miss our targets for 2010. We are going to miss those targets anyway, and the real problem is that we are going to lumber ourselves with a creaking machine for waste disposal within London that will lead us to a chronic failure to meet the targets in 2013 and 2020. I propose either to bring forward or to support amendments that would strengthen the provisions on waste in the Bill. For the most part, however, I wish the Bill good speed and certainly a faster process, with fewer government or other amendments, than the process in 1999, which so many of us in this Chamber remember with not quite affection.