Greater London Authority Bill

moved Amendment No. 91: 91: Clause 45, page 46, line 38, at end insert— ““(5) Where in consequence of payments made by the Greater London Authority under subsection (2), the Assembly exercise their power under section 61 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 (power to require attendance at Assembly meetings) in respect of the Board of Governors of the Museum of London, the Director of the Museum or its officers, the exercise of that power shall be subject to a like power exercisable by the Corporation. (6) In subsection (6) ““Assembly”” has the same meaning as in section 424(1) of the Greater London Authority Act 1999.””.”” The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 91 takes forward, in a slightly different form, the amendment that was tabled by my noble friend Lord Jenkin in Committee and to which my noble friend Lady Hanham spoke so ably from the Front Bench in his unavoidable absence. I will not repeat in detail today what my noble friend so lucidly told the Committee then. As I said when I spoke to Amendment No. 79, I am speaking today in his unavoidable absence. The nub of the issue is the parity of scrutiny arrangements between the City and the GLA once the half-share of funding currently met by the Government is met instead by the GLA. The City will continue to meet the other half, as it does now. That issue, as I will explain in a moment, also ultimately bears on the independence of the board of governors of the museum. The position under the Bill is that, under the new arrangements, the board of governors and its officers, including officers of the City of London Corporation, will be subject to the London Assembly scrutiny powers in Section 61 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999. The effect of this was ably explained by the Minister in Committee, when she said: "““This means that the Assembly may require the governors or staff of the Museum of London to attend proceedings and give evidence, or produce documents in their possession or control, which is relevant—I stress, relevant—to the funding relationship which the museum will have with the GLA. The Assembly’s scrutiny will, of course, focus chiefly on the Mayor’s exercise of his functions relating to the museum. It may also look at the museum’s use of those funds that it receives from the authority and the museum’s financial health as a whole, including the levels of funding from other sources, such as the City Corporation, and the use it makes of those funds””.—[Official Report, 14/5/07; col. GC 25.]" I should mention that the scrutiny power is available to the London Assembly in relation to any body that may be lucky enough to receive a grant from the GLA. Unlike for a charity or other deserving cause that receives a grant, the funding relationship of the museum to the GLA is intended to be permanent, so the GLA will acquire a continuous oversight role in respect of the museum. The board of governors and its officers will be in the same position as the board and officers of the functional bodies of the GLA, such as Transport for London, whose scrutiny arrangements are also governed by Section 61 of the 1999 Act. However, the museum is not a GLA body. The board of governors is, as the Minister emphasised in earlier exchanges on this subject, independent. It is intended that this status should remain. I do not make any sort of case against scrutiny, but, as proposed, the powers to call the board and its officers to account, under substantial criminal sanction if they do not—Section 64 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 provides for a term of imprisonment of up to three months—without giving a counterbalancing power to the other half of the funding relationship, namely the City, could result in the relationship between the museum and the GLA becoming skewed. The Minister appeared to recognise this in Committee when responding to the earlier amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Jenkin. She said: "““In practice, we would expect the City and the Assembly to work together co-operatively to establish a robust scrutiny regime for the museum””.—[Official Report, 14/5/07; col. GC 26.]" She preceded that comment by reference to the City’s ability to agree with the museum its scrutiny arrangements as a condition of the City’s financial support. That, however, presupposes the power to set such conditions. The only power dealing with scrutiny that I have been able to find in the current legislation is in Section 5 of the Museum of London Act 1965—I differentiate that from the 1986 Act—which requires reports to Parliament. But that provision of scrutiny is being repealed by the current Bill. The other provisions in existing legislation dealing with financial support by the City make no reference to the City’s ability to subject that support to conditions relating to scrutiny. Given that the function has until now been provided through Parliament, that absence is unsurprising. In these circumstances, I should be most grateful if the Minister could confirm that a power to require collaborative scrutiny arrangements with the GLA is available to the City. If it is not, the Minister will understand why I will contend that further provision to facilitate the arrangement that the noble Baroness anticipated in Committee is needed. I beg to move.