Greater London Authority Bill

I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss consultation, because it is so important. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness for making the distinction between the Mayor as a person and the Mayor as an office. We all agree about the importance of public bodies engaging in proper, meaningful consultation as they develop their strategies. That is a crucial role in the process of making policy. I am very grateful that the noble Baronesses, Lady Hanham and Lady Valentine, have drawn attention to the strengthening that we have offered in Clause 2. The GLA Act obviously placed a very wide range of duties on the Mayor in terms of consultation. Clause 2 takes the argument and opportunity for the GLA significantly further by these additional powers. The provision strengthens the requirement on the Mayor to have an explicit regard to consultation processes. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, asked me about that. The key is the explicit ““have regard to””. That is tied in with the requirement on the Mayor to write to the Assembly in responding to any recommendation that it makes explaining his reasons for not accepting it. That is an incredibly valuable power and I am glad that the GLA has welcomed it. At the moment the Mayor must carry out two stages of consultation on his strategies. That is deliberately so, because a proper distinction has been made between the GLA family, which he consults at the first stage-the Assembly and functional bodies that he consults on drafts for or revisions to strategies-before moving on to consult more widely at the second stage. He is specifically required to consult the London boroughs during the second stage. This is where the consultation carries more force, given the breadth of experience in delivery offered by the London boroughs. We think that the two-stage process works well by allowing the Mayor to take full account of views within the family, as it were, before consulting outside. The amendment would require the Mayor to have regard to comments made by any representative body of the London boroughs, such as London Councils, when he consults on his strategies. For the reasons I have just given, we cannot accept it. Such bodies make an important contribution to the development of strategies at the second stage, after the Mayor has consulted the Assembly and the functional bodies. Taking fully into account the responses made in consultation is an important new requirement in the sense that the Mayor has to respond explicitly and transparently; indeed, he has a firm track record of adjusting his proposals in response. My final argument has already been made by the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, who said that, if one allows the London councils to have a role at the primary stage, one would need to ask who else might legitimately come forward speaking for London interests and say, ““Why not us?””. The body so ably represented by the noble Baroness is London First, but that would not be the end of it. We would be opening up the first stage to another raft of potential consultees and thus diluting the distinction that we want to make between the GLA family in the first instance and the second stage of consultation. So, with regret, I have to resist the amendment.