Greater London Authority Bill

This has been a very interesting debate. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Harris for opening it so widely and forensically and for the views expressed around the Committee. A distinction is to be drawn about what we want from good consultation and good communication processes. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, made a very helpful point. So much of what has been said could be achieved by improved processes and improved communication strategies. That might address the point raised by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. But that is not what this amendment is about or what it would achieve. There are clearly issues that we hope the Mayor will listen to closely, and it will be fascinating as the ways of the Greater London Assembly are unveiled before us in Committee. Clearly, there are ways of doing things and it is very interesting to know, for example, that there are internal communication and consultation strategies. The amendment would require the Mayor to prepare a consultation strategy, which would include, among other things, his procedures for consultation, persons to be consulted and arrangements for publicity and public participation. That is extremely prescriptive without being able to guarantee—setting aside the debate that we have just had on outcomes—that the processes would be better. That is why I think we have to resist it. I take the point made by my noble friend Lady Turner. We do not lightly put bits of legislation into force, either because they are redundant because they are achieved by other means, or because we feel like it. If I had said that we can just add another strategy to the many strategies we are adding in, I think that the noble Baroness would have looked askance at me. Obviously, we want everything that goes into the Bill to serve its precise purpose. Although the amendment has provoked a very useful debate, it would do nothing more than add to the bureaucratic burden. It has the capacity to be time-consuming and costly, and I do not think that it will bring about any improved processes. It certainly would not guarantee any more favourable outcomes in terms of any expectations that anyone might have. I can see that one of the recurring debates that we will have is about the congestion charge and who will listen to whom. My sense is that when the Mayor decided to go ahead with the western extension of the congestion charge following public consultation, the exact nature of the zone and treatment of discounts was significantly modified in the light of consultation responses. So I do not think we can take that as read. Indeed, I could and probably would give different examples at different times of our debate. Also, I do not think it is true that the Mayor ignores the views of consultees, not least because he has already published summaries of public consultation processes on a voluntary basis for several statutory strategies.