Greater London Authority Bill

moved Amendment No. 14: The noble Baroness said: Amendments Nos. 14, 18, 20, 21 and 22 are all intended to ensure that the procedure supports rather than thwarts the arrangements that will be put in place for confirmation hearings. Under the Bill as drafted, the Mayor notifies the Assembly of a prospective appointment or appointee and the Assembly has to decide whether to hold a hearing. That will require the Assembly to meet, which requires notice of a meeting. Under the Local Government Act, which applies to Assembly meetings, five clear days’ notice has to be given. I have referred to the Assembly, but it could be the full Assembly or a committee of the Assembly. In either case—and I say this from experience, some of which has been quite bitter over the past seven years— ensuring that there will be a quorum available for a full Assembly meeting or for a committee if it is called at short notice is not as straightforward as those who do not know about these things might think. We are already about a week into the three-week period. Then the Assembly decides to hold the hearing, for which it has to notify the candidate. To do that, it informs the head of paid service, who has to send a registered or recorded delivery letter giving at least a week’s notice. We are now probably beyond the second week of the three-week period. Heaven forbid that the Assembly might want to seek some further information or a period to reflect on it. But what we have at the moment is a three-week period with all these constraints; everything which has to be done before the Assembly makes its recommendation to the Mayor. I absolutely accept that it would not be desirable to prolong this process any more than is absolutely necessary. That would not be fair to the candidate and it would simply not be good practice. The amendments are designed to retain what I suspect the Government think is most important in all this. Amendment No. 21 seeks to shorten the first leg of this by allowing a single member to decide whether to hold a hearing. That might sound rather dramatic, but the Assembly’s practice has developed in a way which almost invariably seems to satisfy everybody, with conventions in place whereby decisions are frequently delegated to the Chair in consultation with the Deputy-Chair and the leaders of all the political groups on the Assembly. That works well. If it did not work well in a particular instance, the Chair would be open to being questioned in public. I believe that the Standing Orders and the Act provide for this. At the extreme end, there could be a motion of no confidence in the Chair. Therefore, Amendment No. 21 seeks to change the restriction regarding what can be delegated to a single Member. Amendment No. 18 would shorten the period of notice to a candidate. Again, we have practical experience in this regard because on a number of occasions the Assembly has, under the terms of the Act, summoned people to appear before it. The practice that has been developed is to seek a convenient date and as soon as possible to start discussions with the person you are summoning or requesting to appear. Again, there is plenty of experience of this. Therefore, reducing the period from one week to three days is not proposed with the expectation that something would be banged off in the post and the candidate would have to turn up in very short order without any practical notice. Amendment No. 14 deals with a different situation. After a mayoral election, there is likely to be a raft of new amendments. Protocols will be put in place in the authority on how this will be dealt with, but a new Mayor flexing his muscles might not be enthusiastic about prolonging a process. However, he might be very enthusiastic about making new appointments. To allow the Assembly to deal with new appointments in an ordered fashion and not try to get a whole lot done in such short order that the hearings are not held in a proper manner, I propose to extend the total period from three to six weeks; that is, six weeks within which the Assembly is to give its views to the Mayor. Amendment No. 20 builds on something that the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said. It concerns the answers that a candidate should give in response to questions. She expressed an expectation that a candidate would answer questions and that, if that were not the case, the Assembly could draw its own conclusions. The schedule does not require a candidate to answer questions. The additional words that I propose in Amendment No. 20 come straight from the existing Act and are used in connection with the questioning of certain office holders which the Assembly is currently entitled to undertake. It would require oral answers to be given at the hearing so far as that was reasonably practicable, and if that was not reasonably practicable it would require a written answer to be provided within a time limit. I hope that the Minister will understand what lies behind all this. We in no way intend to subvert or alter the character of the Government’s proposal; we wish to assist the process to be more effective and to achieve the very interesting arrangements that the Government are proposing. I beg to move.