Greater London Authority Bill

My hon. Friend makes a valid point about the Assembly’s powers under the Greater London Authority Act 1999 in holding the Mayor to account. However, I do not think that any Labour Member would be prepared to give up his or her seat in order to welcome him back among the ranks of the parliamentary Labour party. In 2002, the Assembly’s own planning advisory committee said:"““If the Mayor refuses to go public of his own accord, we may have no option but to call upon the government to amend the ""Greater London Authority Act 1999 to require him to hold his planning decision meetings in public.””" I understand that the Mayor has indicated that he might be prepared to consider holding his meetings in public. [Hon. Members: ““Where?””] My hon. Friends may well ask. We would all like to know where and when the Mayor plans to hold his planning meetings in public, but if he continues to make those decisions behind closed doors, at the behest of advisers— however professional and skilled—and does not allow objections to be heard in open forum, only my learned friends will be the gainers. The Mayor would be judge and jury and his decisions would not be open to challenge. Surely the Minister can convince us that the statutory instrument will cover that. If it does not, that affords another opportunity for evidence-taking sessions to discuss the matter with the interested parties. Delays are endemic in planning, and the Mayor’s current powers build in delay. A few days ago, the Barker review suggested methods—with which we may or may not agree—of speeding up planning decisions. It is unfortunate that Kate Barker did not consider the current position in London or the new proposals. The Government’s target is that 60 per cent. of major planning applications should be decided in 13 weeks. The Minister said that there could be changes to the terms of the statutory instrument, which might reduce the delay. Will the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), who is to reply to the debate, confirm that the Mayor can no longer intervene just as a committee is about to meet to determine a planning application but after borough officers have recommended refusal? Will he also confirm that, if the Mayor wants to force changes to a proposed planning obligation, he can no longer take over a relevant planning application after the borough has granted planning permission but while the obligation is being negotiated? That matter is also fertile for evidence taking. The two new powers on housing and planning remove powers from local communities and their elected representatives—those who know their areas and what the people want and need. Any London Member of Parliament knows that we already face a revolt over the Government-imposed targets for housing. The Government imply that they apply only to the leafy suburbs, but inner-city councillors or residents associations tell the same story. They know what their local people want and need because they live among them. By and large, they are not re-elected unless they deliver. A recent opinion poll for London councils found that 54 per cent. of London residents oppose the Mayor’s having more planning powers, in contradiction to the opinion poll that the Mayor commissioned. He has the right to ask the questions, but the London councils’ opinion poll, which represents all the London boroughs, found that 54 per cent. of London residents opposed the Mayor’s having more planning powers and 75 per cent. believed that local councils should have them. I shall advise my hon. Friends to vote against the Bill tonight on the basis of the provisions for housing and planning alone, because they constitute a naked grab of power away from locally elected authorities. Clearly, the Government do not believe in their rhetoric of devolution to local level. However, we do not object only to the powers on those two matters. Some themes that run through the Bill and the Greater London Authority Act 1999 are inconsistent and need rationalising. The Mayor is obliged to produce a plethora of strategies, apart from those that he has devised off his own bat, and the Bill imposes more. I shall not weary the House with the detail, but boroughs are required to ““have regard to”” some, be ““in conformity with”” others and ““in general conformity with”” yet others. The Mayor and the boroughs should work together in partnership. We believe that the boroughs are the genuine voice of local communities, and that they should be—and are—responsible to those communities for the policies that they implement. They should not be the resentful and unwilling processors of mayoral policies, with which they and their residents disagree. We will, therefore, try to amend the Bill so that the boroughs must ““have regard to”” the Mayor’s strategies. That will ensure that whoever is Mayor takes the London boroughs with him on his strategies, and that borough councillors feel that they own the ideas. Acceptance in local communities will be easier and the resentment that is building about centrally imposed plans and strategies will be reduced. A second theme that runs through the Bill and the original Act is the lack of coherent thought given to appointments to the various bodies for which the Mayor is responsible—or perhaps the appointments system reflects whatever paranoia either the Mayor or the Government suffered at the time. I hope that hon. Members will excuse me if I run through some of the variety of appointments. The London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority is one of the least criticised of the functional bodies. It was put severely to the test on 7/7, when we were all exceedingly proud of the men and women on the front line, who put their lives at risk to deal with the crisis that engulfed our city that day. Of course, mistakes were made and lessons were learned. However, it is relevant to note that the membership of the board currently includes eight representatives from the boroughs. The Bill takes two borough representatives away to give the places to the Mayor to represent ““other interests””—perhaps friends of Ken—but the saving grace are the many borough representatives, which ensures that decisions made by LFEPA are owned by the boroughs. Let us consider Transport for London—the least responsive and most arrogant of all the functional bodies. Its board membership currently includes one elected politician—the Mayor. Lord Toby Harris—a friend of Ken—is a member. I hesitate to describe the rest of the board as ““friends of Ken””, but it does not contain a single representative of the London boroughs. The Bill removes the current ban on political representatives on the board, for which I offer much thanks, but it would allow the Mayor to appoint an assembly member or a member of a London borough—doubtless a friend of Ken—and the Transport for London board will not be any more responsive to the travelling public across the capital. I, for one, would still have no confidence that Transport for London would care a jot more about my constituents than it does now, when it is about as responsive as a slug.