Greater London Authority Bill

My Lords, I can understand that noble Lords on the Conservative Front Bench do not want to speak on this issue because they got into an embarrassing position with their colleagues in another place. Not for the first time, noble Lords on the Conservative Front Bench in this House showed rather more good sense than their colleagues down the corridor. Before I start, perhaps I may present the apologies of my noble friend Lady Hamwee who cannot be here this afternoon at this final stage having followed the Bill through so far. Sadly, she has to attend a funeral of a very close and long-standing colleague. Secondly, I should again declare my interest as a Member of the London Assembly. I want to make two points because we have debated this issue long and hard in this House—in Committee, on Report and at Third Reading. First, the movers of this amendment, and I include myself as one of those, do not raise this issue out of some motivation to defeat Ken Livingstone because we cannot do it in the Ballot Box. We have made clear throughout that that is absolutely wrong. In evidence of that statement I remind the House that when the original Bill was going through eight years ago we moved a similar amendment on term limits. At that time Mr Livingstone agreed with the amendment. At some point during the past eight years he has come to a different view; so be it. When the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, moved an amendment in this House, we made it clear that it would be wrong to introduce term limits applicable at the next election so close to that election. There is no argument about that. It would be wrong and we have been clear about that from the start. The amendment that we proposed—similar in intention but a little different in wording—made it very clear that implementation of this clause would apply only to the elections after 2008. Let us get that one out of the way first of all. The second point, to which the Minister referred again this afternoon, is that it would be contrary to the British tradition of political life. When we introduced an elected executive Mayor of London, that was contrary to the British tradition of political life. Traditionally in this country, the British system has been a parliamentary system. Local government in this country is modelled on a parliamentary system. The devolved Assemblies—Parliament in Scotland and Assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland—are parliamentary systems. Whatever one's opinions on the rights and wrongs of it, vesting power in one executive mayor is, in effect, a move to a presidential system, away from a parliamentary system. There are different views about that system. One may well support it, but it is without question contrary to the British tradition of political life. When making such a change, it must be right that we properly consider the checks and balances on the power vested in one person. Limiting the number of terms is, legitimately, one of those checks. I understand that there will be different views—indeed, that is why we are here today—but let us be clear about what we are debating. We are not debating some manoeuvre to get rid of the current incumbent, nor are we trying to subvert in some way a British tradition. We are dealing with a wholly new system that the Government seem intent on pursuing in local government. It is therefore right that we should at least consider what is done in other countries that have a longer tradition, experience and history of presidential systems—and not only the United States, where the system is not universal. That is why we have proposed and still support the idea of term limits. Clearly, it is not appropriate to pursue it any further today and we will not do so.