Greater London Authority Bill

I, too, made a note, as the noble Baroness was speaking, that what cannot be anticipated by any consultation strategy is the outcome. To that extent, I share some of the noble Lord's views. Of course there should be a strategy, or maybe several strategies. The noble Lord said jokingly that there may be a series of them, but in fact different policy strategies require different forms of consultation and different exercises. I did not think in time to look this up, but I believe that there are Cabinet Office guidelines on this subject, which I suppose provide for a minimum of what is good consultation and how one deals with it. The Minister may be able to tell us about that. Having said that, I do not want to be entirely hostile to the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham. I share a lot of her concerns. The Minister in the Commons said in Committee that he was, "““sure that the Mayor carefully considers all responses””.—[Official Report, Commons Greater London Authority Bill Committee, 18/1/07; col. 326.]" I have heard the Mayor say so many times. I will share with the Committee the fact that I have said as the Chair of the Assembly, in order to get it on the record, that it is a great pity that the minutes do not record the Mayor's facial expression as he is making such comments. It would take quite a lot of psychological analysis to go down that route, and I will not do so. However, the fact that he has to say that he takes account of the responses does not mean that he agrees with them all—he cannot agree with them all. I wish that I could think of a way of strengthening the amendment in order to ensure a more robust process, but the rules—or guidelines, at any rate—are already there, and it would be hard to show that they were not followed.