Greater London Authority Bill

Like the previous two speakers, I have interests to declare. My noble friend has already declared my interest as a Member of the London Assembly. Through that, I am also a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority. Entirely unrelated to that, I am also a London borough councillor. I have much sympathy with the wording of the amendment. It is a statement of good practice. It is a useful statement. I would hope and expect that every consultation would provide that information before it began. I fear that, all too often, that does not happen. As my noble friend said, I am less sure that we could have one strategy that covers every consultation in whatever circumstances. Rather, we should have a statement of good practice at the start of each consultation. I am a little more concerned about some of the things that have been said in this short debate that seemed fundamentally to misunderstand the purpose of consultation. Consultation is not and is never intended to be a referendum. It may well be—it often is—that the greater number of responses comes from people against the proposal being consulted on. That is the nature of life. That does not necessarily mean that the decisiontaker has to abide by the weight of response. The purpose of consultation is to enable the decision-taker or takers to make better-informed decisions and weigh up all the pros and cons. I do not want to go too far with this particular example, but I and my party happened to oppose the extension to the congestion charge. However, in considering that, the Mayor should have taken into account the interests of London as a whole, not just a particular area. The point of consultation is that it should better inform decision-takers. It should not be a referendum. The other point is that the word consultation is sometimes used too loosely to mean communication. In any consultation we should be clear what is up with options for change, for variation or even for rejection and what is not. I am not sure whether it is legally possible for the Mayor to have done this in the example we were using, but let me use it as an example. The Mayor was clearly minded, rightly or wrongly, to extend the congestion charge. It would probably have been better if he had made that absolutely clear to start with and if he had had a consultation not on whether he should do it, but on how he should do it, and the details on how it should work. Whether that was legally possible is, in a way, irrelevant to the argument I am making. My purpose is that, when consulting, people should be clear about the purpose of the consultation and what options are up for change, and what is simply communicating, quite properly, what you intend to do because that is what you have been elected to do.