Greater London Authority Bill

I have sympathy with my hon. Friend’s point, which was also made earlier in relation to the behaviour of Transport for London. It is a piece of pure fortune that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central and I happen, temporarily, to wear two hats. That gives us a measure of privileged access that our other hon. Friends representing London seats do not have. That point is a further example of the underlying problem to which the budget is fundamental. The Government said in Committee that they were accepting the assembly’s concerns about the budget by protecting their own element of the budget, through the separate budget component. With respect, that is a small recognition and a small concession. As on a previous occasion, I do not say that it is nothing, but it does not go anywhere near far enough, for the following reason. There is a ceiling, but there is no floor to protect the assembly’s budget from the Mayor’s depredations—and his attitude towards the assembly was amply demonstrated by his interjection from the public gallery during the budget debate. However, even that would be a small thing when set against the real cry that most Londoners would want to make, which is, ““I elect my assembly member to have a hold over the Mayor””—not a stranglehold, to prevent him from doing what his mandate says, but in the same sense that Parliament has a hold over the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he comes to seek supply. It is not unreasonable to say that if we have created a deliberative and, in a small way, legislative body—the assembly’s only quasi-legislative power is in relation to the budget—it should operate through the ordinary majoritarian process that works everywhere else in the United Kingdom. What is so peculiar about this one budget, of all the budgets of any publicly elected body in the UK, that it has to be dealt with by a two-thirds majority? That makes no sense, and the strong-Mayor model is no justification for it. I am sorry to have to remind the Minister that on Second Reading, I told him that he had a chance to be the Alan Curbishley figure of this Bill by salvaging something from the wreckage. I am sorry to have to say that on current form, neither the Bill nor our mutual football team are looking in much better shape than when we set off. I am beginning to think that I should have had more hopes of the Minister than I had of West Ham United redeeming themselves. I say these things with a very heavy heart, as Members know. I hope that the Minister will cheer us up by saying that the Government will reflect on this issue and give the assembly the basic power that every ordinary Londoner standing on the terraces of Upton Park would say, were they asked, it ought to have, as a matter of common sense.