Greater London Authority Bill

As usual, I am very grateful to my noble friend for picking up the most important point of the argument. It shows that this is, once again, a variation on the debate about the balance of power between the Mayor and the Assembly and the threat that it poses to the successful model that we have of a strong executive Mayor with an Assembly holding him to account. It will come as no surprise to the noble Baroness that I cannot accept the amendments. Amendment No. 38 would require the Mayor to send to the Assembly any direction or guidance that he intends to issue. It would allow the Assembly to recommend to the Mayor within 21 days of receiving the proposed direction that he should not issue it, or should issue it with amendments. That sounds very much like a veto. It also imposes a duty on the Mayor to have regard to the Assembly’s recommendations and, within 21 days of receiving them, to prepare a statement setting out his reasons why any of the recommendations are not accepted. Amendment No. 73 makes a similar provision in respect of any directions issued by the Mayor under the GLA Act to the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. The Committee will be aware that the GLA Bill includes a provision at Clause 27 to give the Mayor a power of direction over the LFEPA. We shall come to that in due course. Amendment No. 78 defines a direction given bythe Mayor to include any general and specific directions—again, a much wider power—or guidance issued by the Mayor to any body on the exercise of its functions. These directions may be few but they are among the most important levers available to the Mayor to ensure that priorities and objectives set out in his strategy are implemented. They are the levers of change; that is what makes them so important. It is only right that the Assembly should be able to scrutinise the Mayor’s decision to issue a direction, but the difference between giving a retrospective power with a requirement to explain and the power to withdraw the direction is serious. The power to issue directions and guidance is part and parcel of the Mayor’s oversight of the functional bodies for which he is accountable, and it is crucial that the Mayor should be able to act quickly and decisively when necessary to issue directions and guidance to functional bodies about their performance and actions. Requiring the Mayor to wait up to 21 days for the Assembly to make its recommendations on his proposed direction would prevent him issuing urgent, or even timely, directions, and it could risk a hiatus of several weeks before the body receiving a mayoral direction became clear about what that direction included. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours for asking the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for examples. Disappointingly, she was not able to provide an example, but I can provide some of how it would harm the process. The current Mayor has already issued time-critical directions providing legal certainty to functional bodies that they can undertake particular urgent activities—for example, to TfL and the LDA in relation to Olympic preparations. It is possible that a future Mayor would want to act quickly and decisively through the use of directions immediately after being elected in order to implement his manifesto commitments—for example, in relation to public transport fares. Furthermore, the introduction of a 21-day period for Assembly consideration would affect the Mayor’s ability to use his limited powers of direction over boroughs, which are often time-critical. In particular, the amendments would cut right across the Mayor’s current power to direct a borough to refuse a strategically important planning application—a matter that we are all looking forward to debating next week. As under the existing Mayor of London order 2000, the Mayor has only 14 days to issue a direction of refusal to the borough, so these amendments would effectively make this power of direction unworkable. Similarly, the Mayor has only a limited window of opportunity to issue a direction to boroughs in relation to their waste contracts, so Assembly scrutiny before the direction was issued could slow the process down and make it more difficult for the Mayor to intervene. Finally, the Assembly already has ample opportunity and means through its existing scrutiny powers to scrutinise, retrospectively, any directions or guidance issued by the Mayor. Indeed, there arewell established mechanisms that support that; it is the best form of effective scrutiny. However well intentioned, what the amendments present us with would fundamentally alter the balance of powers in the GLA—a balance that at the moment creates the opportunity for the Mayor to act decisively for the benefit of Londoners. It would fetter that discretion, and that would be to the detriment of London as a whole. I hope the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.