Greater London Authority Bill

My Lords, I very much endorse and welcome my noble friend’s comments. Her memory perhaps goes back slightly further than mine, but I remember the GLC and appreciate that we are talking about a very different authority. The three government amendments to Schedule 1 respond, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, pointed out, to concerns raised in Grand Committee about ensuring that the Assembly has sufficient time to make a recommendation to the Mayor on whether he should appoint a candidate to one of the offices listed in Clause 4. Schedule 1 sets out the procedure for conducting confirmation hearings. Paragraph 4(3) states that the Assembly has three weeks, from the day that it receives notification from the Mayor of his proposed candidate, to make its recommendation on the appointment. The Government accept that the Assembly may find it difficult to make a recommendation within this timescale following an ordinary Assembly election. It takes time for any elected body to find its feet following an election, and the Assembly must focus initially on appointing its chair and deputy chair, which under Section 52 of the GLA Act it must do within 10 days of an ordinary election. Government Amendment No. 12, therefore, exempts the period from the day of an election until the day the Assembly meets to elect its chair and deputy chair from counting towards the three-week period within which the Assembly must make its recommendation to the Mayor. In practice, this means that if a newly elected Mayor notifies the Assembly of his preferred candidate for a relevant post shortly after being elected, the clock would start ticking on the three-week deadline only on the day after the Assembly elects its chair and deputy chair. As I said earlier, that must be within 10 days of an election. Turning to government Amendments Nos. 18 and 20, Schedule 1(9) precludes the Assembly’s functions in relation to confirmation hearings from being exercised by anyone other than the Assembly itself or an ordinary committee. This means that in practice the Assembly or an ordinary committee would need to meet in order to take any decision required under Schedule 1, including whether to hold a confirmation hearing with the candidate before making a recommendation to the Mayor. The Government agree that it would be sensible to allow the Assembly to delegate this decision to the chair of the Assembly. Amendments Nos. 18 and 20 do that by providing more flexibility for the decision on whether or not to hold a hearing to be taken quickly and potentially allowing more time for the Assembly to focus on the hearing itself and making a recommendation to the Mayor. Amendment No. 13, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, goes further and allows the Assembly to delegate to any Member of the Assembly any decision under Schedule 1(6) to decide whether a confirmation hearing should take place and what documents to request from the candidate. While it is sensible to allow the Assembly or an ordinary committee to delegate only to the chair of the Assembly, I would like to consider further the case for extending the scope of that delegation to any decision under Schedule 1(6). Turning to the other amendments in the group, I am somewhat incredulous, if that is the right word, at Amendment No. 9, requiring the Mayor to provide the Assembly with a candidate’s application form as part of his notification. I resist this most strongly. I can assure noble Lords that I have been involved in an awful lot of recruitment in my career, and application forms are not everything they sometimes need to be. But I really cannot see the need to descend into detail in primary legislation. The Mayor must already provide the Assembly with reasons why he should appoint the candidate to the given office. I think that those reasons will provide the information that the Assembly is looking for on the candidate’s background and to help it frame the questions that the noble Baroness mentioned. It would be in the interests of the Mayor to provide a full and robust rationale which, I am sure, would go far beyond an application form, given that he will want the Assembly to recommend in favour of the proposed appointment. The Assembly may also request any candidate to produce any documents relating to the proposed appointment which are in his possession or under his control. That is a wide power, and I am sure that the Assembly would want to make the most of it. The Assembly is free to draw its own conclusions should the candidate refuse any such request. Obviously, refusal to provide information could raise questions that the Assembly would want to pursue. There is absolutely no need for the Mayor to be required to supply further information.