My Lords, this has been an interesting short debate. Our starting point is to favour the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Smith of Leigh for there to be an independent panel. I accept that there are issues. The noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Heseltine, made points about making sure that it is truly independent, and there is no reason why that independence could not take account of international experience as well. A potential issue about the linkage is that the role of the mayor will not necessarily be constant and homogenous between different authorities. Sometimes the function of the mayor might be the full Monty, as it were, but sometimes it might be much less so. Therefore, we are going to have to have some form of assessment if we are going to do that fairly. It is reasonable for there to be further thinking around this.
Linking pay to the pay of the highest-paid leader of a constituent council could be a route, although in a sense what this amendment says is, “The Secretary of State decides but it must be no larger than”. That seems to put the onus back on the Secretary of State, so the principle we would support is some independent assessment, taking account of the real value of the job. I entirely accept that this would be a very powerful and important job.