Greater London Authority Bill

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tope, for saying almost exactly what I was going to say. It is an extremely difficult debate to have without being accused—as we were by the noble Lord, Lord Harris—of having other alternatives behind this. That is exactly what I expect from him, in his usual kindly way, as he smiles over his glasses, but it is not true. As the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said, there has been no opportunity to revisit this since the Greater London Authority Bill became an Act. In the light of thinking about it further—I suppose in fact in thinking of the lack of control that there is in the system on the Mayor—we believe there is nothing else in our local government where there is one person who is all-powerful. There is no one but the electorate, once every four years, who can stop the Mayor in this system or can do anything to stop the policies. The Assembly can scrutinise, as we have now put aside the amendment that the Assembly should have to approve strategies. There is not even that power. The Assembly has a scrutiny role. There is nothing between elections that anyone can do. If you have a Mayor who had even more ambition than the current Mayor, no one could stop him. The Government could not stop him, and the Assembly could not stop him. There is no control at all on the Mayor. There should be a limitation on the amount of time for which he holds power; that should be the way that things develop.