Greater London Authority Bill

I am not quite sure whether the speech that we have just heard was in support of the amendment. One difference between the Lord Mayor and the Mayor is 5 million voters; another is that the City of London provides most of its generous hospitality from its private funds rather than from the taxpayer. I am surprised at the amendment, because both its supporters, the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, and the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, have worked extensively and for many years in the international field. I have sympathy with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, said. It is often said that the current Mayor visits Havana more often than he visits Havering—one might have some sympathy with him for that. However, the essential weakness in the amendment lies in what the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, said in her opening sentence. The amendment deals with the office-holder and not with the office. We reminded ourselves at the start of this Committee that it may sometimes be difficult for us to remember that we are dealing with the office and not the office-holder, given that we have so far had only one office-holder, and it is important that we try to do so with this amendment. London is by any definition—and there are many—a world city. Its population comes from pretty well every country in the world. It is right that the Mayor of London, whoever that may be, should seek to represent the communities in London with the countries from which they have come. That is quite an important role for the Mayor. One of the strong points of our winning bid for the Olympic Games was that we have many communities in London from virtually all the Olympic countries, and they will, to a greater or lesser extent, act as hosts. London, particularly the Mayor of London, should play a role on the world and European stages. It is right that that person should have some international stature. We may well question—we certainly do so with the current office-holder—how that function is performed; we may well question the office-holder’s priorities in carrying it out. The proper place for that argument is the London Assembly and among the London electors. It is not our role to legislate to restrict the Mayor. If the amendment were to become law, there would be some difficulty in determining the primary responsibility of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as distinct from the role to be played by the Mayor and the GLA. I was concerned by the amendment’s reference to ““other major capital cities””. I am sure that it is not the intention of its movers that London should have no relationship with New York, for example, which is not a capital city. Although I understand the purpose of the amendment and have some sympathy with what causes the movers to table it, I doubt its worth. A final and extremely important point—in a way this bears on what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, was saying—is that London is a major business centre. Quite properly, in association with what the Lord Mayor does—I join in that tribute—London must have, and should have, a relationship with the business community and business links across the world. Recently, we learnt that the largest number of people who come to London now as visitors and on business come from the Indian subcontinent. That is enormously important. Were the amendment passed and interpreted in one of the possible ways, it would restrict enormously a very important role that the Mayor of London should play. The argument and debate about how that role is played and the priorities within it are best left to the devolved power set up to deal with that.