Greater London Authority Bill

My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate, with contributions from a wide variety of perspectives and backgrounds, including the repertory company of the noble Lord, Lord Graham, and the nuptials of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley—about which the least said, the better, I suspect. Mayor Livingstone has been compared to Wallace and Gromit and King Canute. Those are probably the friendliest epithets I have heard levelled against the mayor for some time, and I am sure he appreciates just how benign the level of debate is in this place. On these Benches we have always supported the concept of democratic London-wide government. We have always had, and continue to have, reservations about the mayoral model that was chosen, but the Minister will be pleased to know that we will not be challenging the Executive/scrutiny split and re-running those old battles; on the whole, we accept those. The fact that we will be dealing with amendments in Grand Committee, where we cannot divide, shows that we have moved a long way towards accepting the status quo right across the Chamber. There are a number of benchmarks against which we will measure the Bill’s value. First, does it really devolve power from Whitehall down to City Hall? Secondly, are the powers devolved to the most appropriate levels in London? Thirdly, are all decision-making bodies truly accountable to citizens of the city? I agree with my noble friend Lord Newby that it is difficult for the Government to continue to justify the level of spending and decision-making by the Government Office for London. This is an arm of Whitehall—it is not devolutionary in any sense. The Government may be able to justify the presence of Government offices in other regions where there is no genuine regional executive body, but this does not apply in London. Can the Minister tell us why the Government consider it necessary for GOL to have more staff and a higher budget now than it did before the mayor and the Assembly were established? Can she explain why GOL has a remit in transport issues when we have Transport for London and why the whole alphabet soup of organisations and partnerships dedicated to sustainable communities and neighbourhood renewal is managed from the Government Office for London and not from City Hall? If the mayor is to have extended powers, we wish to see them devolved from central government, rather than taken up from the boroughs, except where there is a clear case for a London-wide perspective. The noble Baroness is of course aware that there is much concern that the planning powers proposed in the Bill will result in the mayor taking an unhealthy interest in individual planning applications which really ought to be determined at borough level. Many noble Lords have referred to the fact that it is important to determine exactly what is meant by ““strategic””. That should be defined during the passage of the Bill; we do not want the mayor’s approach to ““strategic”” to be like something from Alice, where a word means exactly what someone chooses it to mean, nothing more and nothing less. It would be very easy for a strategic London-wide plan to be framed in such a way as to tie the hands of boroughs on individual planning applications as well as having interference by the mayor on individual applications. Similar concerns will arise over the role of boroughs in providing affordable housing. The exact degree of individual council discretion needs to be explained and discussed as the Bill goes through its stages. This leads to my third point about accountability. Using planning as an example again, it is crucial that citizens know exactly who has decided the application in their neighbourhood—the council, the mayor through one of his powers or the Secretary of State through the appeals mechanism. If true accountability is to exist, a number of things need to be in place. The Bill, along with its predecessor, needs to be akin to a written constitution for London, setting out roles and responsibilities of all bodies with a role in London governance. Without that, we run the danger of organisations engaging in mission creep and the creation of large and bureaucratic functions. Not only is that costly, it makes it very difficult for citizens to know exactly who has made the decision on their behalf. That, in the end, is the essence of the democratic process—knowing who is exercising power and having the ability to remove them if they fail to exercise that power in line with the wishes of the electorate. The democratic process has to operate in a way which gives voters an effective choice. We on these Benches have always had concerns that the mayoral model, in which all executive power is concentrated in the hands of one person, will seldom result in that person being the first choice of the majority of the electorate. We are discussing the mayoral model rather than the current incumbent, but the danger is that if a majority of those have not voted for the mayor, they feel alienated not just from the mayor but from the political process. The problem is exacerbated in that the London mayor can serve unlimited terms of office. Democracies the world over have recognised the dangers in that, and have one-term, two-term or three-term limits for executive appointments. Given the mayoral power over appointments to a whole range of bodies, it is not difficult to see how, over time, the whole machinery of government can be unhealthily dominated by one person. The process of confirmatory hearings proposed in the Bill is welcome but will not overcome all the dangers inherent in the system. Finally, there is the question of scrutiny, which plays an essential part in providing the transparency that is essential for democracy to work. For scrutiny to function it must be independent and that independence must include its finances. It still concerns us that the Assembly is still not sufficiently financially protected from the mayor and we shall seek a strengthening of the Bill in that regard. It will always be the case that any incumbent mayor will tend to see scrutiny and opposition as the same thing and seek to blunt the teeth of both. We welcome the chance to develop London governance in the light of the first seven years’ experience and we welcome the wide consultation that took place before the Bill was published. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, to a certain extent the Bill will provide an opportunity to rehearse some issues that will emerge when the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill comes to this House in the summer in that the so-called strong mayoral model will now be extended to the rest of the country under the terms of that Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, said that one benefit was that we know who to call, and she may well be right; but we also have to know that they are going to pick up the phone and that if they pick it up they are going to listen. We support devolution from Whitehall to City Hall but we will use the passage of the Bill to seek assurances that devolution, however welcome, must not come at the expense of scrutiny, transparency and democratic principle.