I thank the Minister for his reply. With reference to Amendment No. 119, the requirement to appear before the Assembly, it was an expected reply, but the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, in his slip of the tongue when speaking against that amendment, illustrated part of the problem. He described the GLA as local government; then he recognised that in fact it is not local government. That is reminiscent of when he had to take the original Bill through the House eight years ago and was careful to point out to us time and again that the GLA was not going to be local government, certainly not as we know it. It could not be regional government, because we do not have that in England. I seem to remember that he settled for ““a unique form of government””, so we have unique government in London.
The GLA is the best or the nearest we have to devolved government in England, for the time being at least. I recognise that the amendment breaches a principle to which the Government held firm for the past seven or eight years, and I expected no answer other than the one that I got. Sooner or later, a central government or even Parliament will have to recognise that if we are truly to have devolved government in England—in this case in London Assembly—and if devolution is to mean anything, the devolved body will have to have the ability to require people to appear before it other than those who are part of what we now call the GLA family, in other words those for whom it has a legal responsibility. The issue has to be grasped sooner or later. I would have thought that a Bill giving at least limited greater powers to the devolved authority, as I shall call it, was a good opportunity to do that. Whether this is the amendment on which to base that may well be a subject for further debate, but the issue of principle has to be faced.
I leave a thought with the Minister and with all noble Lords. None of us question accountability to Parliament, but there is a difference between accountability, which is right, and answerability. If London’s government are to fulfil their function effectively, many of these bodies, including in this case the regulators, need at least to be answerable if not accountable to the devolved body.
I will not pursue the argument much longer on Amendment No. 120. I accepted that the phrase, ““may contain information about any other matters”” is a catch-all, and it could well include the efficiency or otherwise of the water suppliers, but in the eight years since we passed the original Act, issues of water supply and water leakage have become even more prominent. Listing it as the 12th item and thereby making it a requirement rather than something that the Mayor can include if he wishes would give it the importance the issue deserves and occupies in the minds of Londoners, especially if we have another summer like the one last year.
Greater London Authority Bill
Proceeding contribution from
Lord Tope
(Liberal Democrat)
in the House of Lords on Wednesday, 9 May 2007.
It occurred during Debate on bills
and
Committee proceeding on Greater London Authority Bill.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
691 c205-6GC 
Session
2006-07
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords Grand Committee
Subjects
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Timestamp
2023-12-15 12:45:55 +0000
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