Greater London Authority Bill

moved Amendment No. 4: 4: Clause 4, page 3, line 17, leave out ““chairman, or deputy chairman,”” and insert ““members”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I shall speak also to my Amendments Nos. 5, 6 and 8. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, has Amendment No. 7 in this group. We return to the Government’s innovation of confirmation hearings held by the Assembly for certain mayoral appointments. I repeat that I welcome this step. We discussed in Committee whether the provisions should apply to all mayoral appointees—not that the Assembly would necessarily require all appointees to undergo this process, but that it should have discretion over which appointees and officers it wished to deal with in this way. It was pointed out in Committee that it was not necessary for the Bill to be amended to extend the range of appointments in question because the Secretary of State would have the power to make an order to that effect. I would prefer all mayoral appointees to be subject to the process and leave it to the good sense of the Assembly to determine which to deal with by way of confirmation, but I am happy to seek a way of refining the matter. In successive amendments, I therefore propose certain specific additions with which I shall deal in a moment. The Minister said that the Government wanted the provisions to apply to ““key appointments””, but all the Mayor’s appointments to major bodies are key appointments. If they were not key appointments, they would be rubber stamps, which I hope is not the case. The first of my amendments would extend the provision to all members of the board of Transport for London. Again, the proposal is not personally motivated—the current members of the board of Transport for London have many admirable qualities between them—but it would be right for the Assembly to seek to have articulated what those qualities are. I say that in the knowledge that the Mayor has chosen to appoint a number of advisers to Transport for London. Confusion has arisen over what is brought to the party by advisers and by those who have a different function as board members. As the Bill is drafted, if the Mayor chose to chair Transport for London, the only confirmation hearing that could be held would be for the vice-chair. In the case of the London Development Agency, which is the subject of Amendment No. 5, I am again seeking to extend confirmation hearings to all members. I have observed from experience very close working between the Greater London Authority and the London Development Agency. I do not suggest that that is a bad thing, but the closeness has been such that it has been suggested in the past that the London Development Agency, which has funds at its disposal that are not at the disposal of the GLA, can be used conveniently as the Mayor’s piggy bank or credit card. It is important for there to be a process that enables such suspicions to be dispelled. Amendment No. 6 relates to members of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority appointed by the Mayor. Your Lordships may be aware that some difficulty surrounds the current round of mayoral appointments, of which some are statutorily to be nominated by the boroughs and some are to be Assembly Members, in both cases reflecting political proportionality of the boroughs across London and the membership of the Assembly. I hope that the difficulties can be resolved—indeed, that they are being resolved even as I am speaking. They have led to a serious situation that has caused what was described to me as a QC’s paradise, given the amount of legal advice that has been required during the past couple of days as a result of the Mayor’s indication that he does not wish to propose the current nominees, and to have the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority obtain advice that the position is irregular, unlawful and cannot continue because previous appointments have expired. I could talk about this situation at great length, but it would not be to the benefit of London to expose all the details. I hope that a solution that is satisfactory to everyone will be found. However, it raises the issue of who are the appointees favoured by the Mayor. To enable that matter to be brought into the public arena, I am seeking not for the Assembly to be able to block the appointments, but for it to hold a hearing which allows the appointees to answer questions about their abilities and expertise. That would be important. I relate this proposal to the two new appointments that the Mayor will be entitled to make under the Bill if it is enacted in its current form. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, wrote to noble Lords after the Committee stage. She stated in connection with LFEPA that the Mayor would make his appointments in line with Nolan principles and established good practice in public appointments. While I do not suggest that what the Minister said was inappropriate, the concerns that have arisen during the past few days lead me to believe that it would be in the public interest for the two new mayoral appointments to be subject to confirmation hearings, so that any concerns that what underlay the appointments was inappropriate could be dispelled. My Amendment No. 8 would exclude Assembly Members and councillors while they were in those positions, because those positions would have led to nomination. It is not special pleading, but there is a different constitutional position behind those appointments. I hope that your Lordships will understand that this is all proposed in a spirit of ensuring that the public have the greatest confidence that they can in how they are being governed. I beg to move.