Greater London Authority Bill

In our judgment, the other place has clearly and significantly improved the Bill in this case and I hope that we maintain the amendment, because, with every respect to the Minister, he places undue faith in the working of the current model. He suggests that it is a model and a system of governance that has served Londoners well. I am not sure that Londoners whose council tax has increased by more than 100 per cent. during the Livingstone years will regard it as a model that has served them well at all. For a model to be effective it is important that it is comprehensible to the electors it serves. Part of the argument advanced for the creation of the Greater London authority was that it would be a more transparent form of governance for the city. However, the budgetary arrangements and the two-thirds majority requirement are manifestly opaque; they bear no relation to anything that happens in local government either in the UK or almost anywhere else. It is suggested that the proposal is incompatible with a strong-mayor model. That is not the case. The most obvious example of a strong-mayor model, which is frequently prayed in aid in these circumstances, is the situation in the city of New York, where the city council has the power to amend the mayor's budget by a simple majority. The council has always had that power and several members of the London assembly—I should declare an interest as a member—had the opportunity to visit New York last year, to talk to members of the budget committee and the mayor's office to see how the budget-setting process worked. At the end of the day, strong mayors have always been able to get the budgets they need to pursue their policies in New York. The idea that the process ends up in deadlock is not borne out by the facts; it is pure scaremongering invented by those who support giving the Mayor altogether too much power, concentrated in one pair of sometimes rather unsteady hands. In New York, there have been two successive strong mayors, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, both of whom have been able to get the supply they required through a city council that was between 80 and 90 per cent. Democrat—the opposite party to theirs. If they can do it, under a system that requires a simple majority, I am darned sure that any Mayor of London, of any party, can do the same. I am equally sure that the next Mayor of London will have no difficulty in doing so.