My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, and in particular to my noble friend Lord Scriven for pointing out the importance of the Freedom of Information Act and its provisions in this respect.
I share some of the concerns of the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley of Knighton and Lord Heseltine. I understand exactly the points that are being made. However, the Secretary of State would, as part of this amendment should it succeed, be able to state in regulations how this would be managed.
This is an extremely important issue. This amendment is not asking for commercially sensitive matters to be revealed when it would not be in the public interest to do so or for informal day-to-day meetings with officers to be included. We are saying that the Secretary of State should recognise that the accountability of an elected mayor does matter. The Secretary of State should therefore regulate to ensure proper access to meetings and information to avoid a slide into greater secrecy in decision-making.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, said that the same rules should apply as for local government—if I recall correctly what he said. I understand that perspective, but we are talking about a single elected person. There is no precedent for the scale of the roles to which they are about to be elected, for the reason that existing mayors in some of our cities and towns have more limited powers. Here, there is to be significant devolution of power from central government across Whitehall and Westminster. There is not even the scrutiny system that is provided within London through the GLA—and we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, earlier about how the London system does not work terribly well. So I am still very concerned by this situation.
The public right of access to meetings and information must not be diminished as a consequence of this Bill. That is the risk that the Bill introduces. As a consequence of that, I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.