Greater London Authority Bill

I should like to deal with the detail of the amendments fairly briefly, before coming to the underlying principle, on which our stance is different. I do not quarrel with the detail of the amendments that the Minister has put forward. It is obviously right and sensible to place the requirement in Lords amendment No. 16 in the Bill. We argued for that in Committee and I welcome this recognition of our argument. However, that does not alter the fact that we thoroughly dislike the principle underlying the amendment, namely that the Mayor should have the ability to take planning applications away from the boroughs and decide on them centrally. In our judgment, that is a profoundly anti-localist, anti-devolutionary measure. The amendment at least makes the operation of an undesirable system more acceptable in regard to practical issues, so we will not seek to oppose it, but that does not for one second mean that we think that this is a wise course of action for the Government to embark on. On Lords amendment No. 12, although it is perfectly sensible to pass back issues of detail on reserved matters, the underlying principle of letting the Mayor get involved in the first place is, in our judgment, flawed. The degree to which the Bill will allow the Mayor to interfere in planning matters far more than before is a much greater recipe for conflict than any of the issues concerning the budget and the Mayor and the assembly that we have discussed. The history of London government is full of tension and conflict between the upper tier and the boroughs. That was so with the old Greater London council and elsewhere.