Greater London Authority Bill

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should have been more patient, because I was dealing first with the lack of transparency. The Government set out transparency as one of their criteria, but have largely departed from it. I shall finalise that point. The process is opaque; it makes no sense to the average citizen that their assembly member and the majority of the assembly voted against a budget that was imposed on them anyway. In fact, for the past three years the assembly budget has been cooked up by a back-door cabal. To get the number of votes he required to block any amendment, the Mayor did a backstairs deal with the Green party. So peculiar was that deal that in its first year it involved him buying the support of the Greens by giving their party money to oppose policies that he was asking the assembly to vote him money to pursue. That is about as bizarre as it could be and if it does not bring politics into disrepute, I do not know what does. Such a situation could only happen in Livingstone-land of course, where the logic is entirely different to that which applies to ordinary human beings. It is also far from transparent and hints at another feature of American big-city politics that I hope we do not want to import—pork-barrel politicking. That is the risk we run when a budget can be put together by stitching up backstairs deals as happens at present. We want to bring things transparently on to the floor of the assembly and to have the debate there. That is an entirely comprehensible proposition; it works well everywhere else in the UK. A final point that is worth mentioning is that the Minister said that, under a strong model, the budget should be amended only when there is broad support for doing so. First, that is not necessary intellectually for a strong mayoral model to work, as has been demonstrated in the American examples; but in any event, like it or not—I personally do not, but it is a fact of life—the assembly is elected under a proportional representation system. Therefore, in fact, to amend the budget, even by a simple majority, it is necessary in practice for more than one party to come together. So a mayor of one party and a completely dominant opposition party in the assembly could not block each other and get into deadlock. In fact, the assembly would have to work on a consensual basis even to achieve a simple majority. That might be a healthy thing. The interesting observation that I found from many people in New York, both officials and consumers, when I discussed their budgetary process was the fact that a measure of creative tension was judged not a bad thing, because it also required the mayor and the city council to work in sensible partnership. That would be an altogether more mature and healthier situation for governance in London. The Government are therefore wrong to seek to disagree with the Lords amendment. The Lords were wise in asking us to reconsider. Their amendment improves the Bill, and we will certainly resist any attempt to remove it.