My Lords, I support Amendments 6 and 7. I am a former leader of Bristol City Council and have raised this issue in the House before. The fact that a city may opt to have an elected mayor does not mean that the city wishes to keep the mayor in perpetuity. Some allowance should be made for the authority, whether or not it is a combined authority, as in this case; I will return to that later in the Bill when I refer to existing city authorities. It seems to me that the people who are being governed need to be able to express their view. In Bristol, a petition has been signed by I do not know how many thousands expressing the wish to have the right to change the system. That does not necessarily mean that they are rejecting the mayor. I know the mayor well because he is a former colleague. I would not wish this to be an intervention that talks in any way about the specifics of the situation in Bristol, but I support the amendment because local government is constantly changing. That does not mean to say that you would want to change frequently, but if we are to govern by consent, as many Members have said in our debates, people must be reassured. The Minister has already said that the Government will not impose mayors on
authorities and the amendment is in that spirit: it says that, should there be a mayor, the combined authority will have the chance to set up proceedings to ask the Secretary of State to revoke the order and thus change the system.
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