My Lords, I thank noble Lords for contributing to this very brief debate; it is about time we hurried up a bit on the Bill.
I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, about local authorities. I decided, earlier in my career, that I would eventually become a full-time local politician and therefore I lost out on my chosen career—I probably would have been paid more money. I am sure that the noble Lord made sacrifices; if he had gone into business and used his strategic mind there, he probably would have earned a lot more money than he ever did as a Cabinet Minister or an MP. So we all make choices. It can be a dilemma, because sometimes people have to say to their families, “I really enjoy doing this job, but I’m not going to get paid as much as I might in another job”. The Minister will recall that her successor as leader of Trafford had to make that personal choice. That was a very sad loss for others, as he was making a very good contribution, but he decided that he needed to support his family more. So we make those choices.
We also need to think about the fact that the new mayor and the new combined authority’s work needs to be judged in the cockpit of public opinion. If it is perceived that people are getting overpaid, that will detract both from the reputation of the mayor and from the work of the elected members.
This is a difficult issue, and certainly we need to think about it. If we just leave it to local members to decide, as the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, said, they will be totally criticised for that, and that would be unfair. However, we also need to respect that not all those positions will be exactly the same. The theme of
the Bill has been flexibility, so in a sense there needs to be flexibility there. With those comments, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.