Greater London Authority Bill

Our names are attached to most of the amendments in this group. As the debate has gone on, I have become more and more confused, and I hope that the Minister will clarify matters. I am pleased that things do not operate in Essex County Council in the way that they will operate in London. I am going to depart from my notes because I want to clarify one or two points. We have talked about the Assembly having scrutiny powers, but it seems obvious that it should have the right kind of budget to carry out its scrutiny function. The Assembly is the right body to do that but it has to have some protection. As I understand it, there is no floor to the budget, as has been the subject of our discussion. The Assembly should be able to create a budget that is protected in some way, and I should like assurance on that point. We have talked a lot about scrutiny. If we have a strong mayoral model, the Assembly must have a strong scrutiny function and powers to create its budget, but that does not seem to be the case. We seem to have got confused regarding agreeing budgets line by line, and so on. We are giving a lot of extra power to the Mayor so that he is a strong Mayor, but we need to give equivalent power to the Assembly so that it can carry out the scrutiny. The amendment seeks to clarify that. This matter will clearly be the subject of debate not just in Committee but throughout the passage of this legislation. We need to understand it so that we know what amendments to put forward, or even to vote on, at later stages to ensure that the Assembly has enough scrutiny powers. I am concerned that we are not considering the matter sufficiently. The Assembly is elected on the same day as the Mayor and therefore it has a political mandate. Even if its Members are not from the same political party as the Mayor or the majority are not from the same party, they are still elected on the same day. The people of London will have voted for them and I am sure that they will want to see the checks and balances created by the Mayor. It might be sensible to insist that they are all from the same party, as that might work, but I know that we cannot do that. The whole thing seems very confusing to me. I support the amendments and I hope that the Minister will clarify the queries relating to the Assembly’s budget.