Greater London Authority Bill

That is right because, as I said on a previous amendment, this arrangement is sui generis. I have been struck by the fact that some local authorities have given almost no resource to the scrutiny function. For example, an overview and scrutiny committee may be supported by half an officer who spends the other half of his time supporting the executive. I am not seeking to protect a part of the budget, other than proportionately to the Mayor’s budget. If the Mayor reduces his budget by 50 per cent, the Assembly’s budget would be reduced by that, but not more than that. The amendment would set a floor to ensure that the Assembly’s statutory duty of holding the Mayor or the Executive to account was not prejudiced by the Executive cutting the budget disproportionately. It should be there to support that function. I agree that the provision is not something that one has come across before, but one has not come across something like the GLA before. The whole thing is entirely new. I hope that that is of some help. The Mayor has said that such an amendment would put the Assembly on a privileged footing compared with the functional bodies, but that is not an appropriate comparison. The functional bodies are an arm of the Executive. As I said, this is about delivering the scrutiny function. The noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, is not in her place, but London First accepts and supports applying a floor as protection. Members of the Assembly, of all political parties, also support it. In a letter to noble Lords following Second Reading, the Minister said that if a Mayor set an excessively low budget, the Assembly would readily muster two thirds to amend the Mayor's proposal, but that is not my understanding of what the Assembly can do. That takes me to Amendments Nos. 30, 32, and 34 in which I propose that the Assembly needs to be in full control of its own budget, subject to a ceiling, and that that must apply through all stages of the budget-making process. We have returned to the matter of voting on separate components of the budget, which we may need to discuss further before Report. As the Assembly has understood it, it cannot effectively vote on the separate components. It has historically taken votes to show that it has, for instance, supported the police budget but not a transport budget. Still less can it vote on a line-by-line basis for particular projects. It has to vote at the very last stage for the total amount of the Mayor's budget. By making the Assembly budget a sixth component, without this amendment, the Assembly would not be able to vote separately on it. If, at the last stage, the Mayor put forward an Assembly budget that was unacceptable to the Assembly, its option would be to vote against the whole budget. There are often political reasons why that is not an acceptable way forward. In any event, it would be ineffective because it would only change the total amount of the Mayor's budget not the component parts. It would be up to the Mayor to reallocate. The other option would be to vote for the Mayor's budget because of the political perceptions. The Minister has said that to have a different arrangement for the sixth component would be inconsistent, but consistency does not always mean that the overall aim is achieved. The amendments would be consistent with the objectives of ensuring that the Assembly can set its own budget. Again, the amendments are supported by London First. Amendment No. 35, the third limb of these mechanisms, builds on the government proposals and would enable the Assembly to allocate resources within its budget. Without that, I fear that the Mayor could make the decisions and, for example, alter the amount that is devoted to the Assembly’s scrutiny programme or given to the party groups. I do not suggest favouring or disfavouring particular groups, because that might well attract challenges, but it would allow the Mayor to control the allocation within the budget. In the Commons the Minister said that this amendment was not necessary. He referred to Section 34 of the 1999 Act, which says that the powers of the authority can be exercised by the Mayor, the Assembly or both acting together. That does not seem to help us in this case. If the Government are relying on that, perhaps the Minister will explain it. I beg to move.