Greater London Authority Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Newby, has highlighted an important issue. What is disappointing about his amendment is that it is so weak and watery. There is clearly a need for co-ordination of government departments’ activities in different parts of the country; that is the purpose and raison d’être of government offices. The situation in London is unique, because London has the Greater London Authority. I shall not get into the unique animal pedantry that the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, suggested might be helpful on this point, but I make the point that this is the only part of England where there is an elected body that is coterminous with a government office region. Therefore, there is a direct one-to-one relationship with an elected body, and it is the only one where we have an elected body that is charged with a whole series of strategic purposes, including the creation of regional strategies—a matter the noble Lord, Lord Newby, highlighted—which is something that the government office thinks is its responsibility to carry out. I do not want to get into the argument of whether the Greater London Authority is a regional authority, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then perhaps we should treat it like a duck. The reality is that it is the only elected strategic body that has boundaries that are directly comparable with a government office region. The points the noble Lord, Lord Newby, made about the lack of accountability of the government office are particularly pertinent, given the resistance there has been to the requests from the Assembly for people from the government office to attend on a regular basis to answer about some of the work they have done and some of the actions that have been taken. The Minister, in responding for the Government to this amendment, needs to give a very clear account of why there is a distinct case for a Government Office for London. If there is such a distinct case, why does it need overlapping functions with the Greater London Authority? More particularly, perhaps they could explain why it would appear that the Government Office for London, which has the benefit of a strategic authority in that area, seems to require additional resources compared with other government offices, and why the arrival of the Greater London Authority has meant that there are now more resources in the government office than there were before the arrival of a strategic authority? Prima facie, that gives the impression of a government office there to do a different function: to try to restrain the activities of the Greater London Authority. If that is what is intended, the Government should be a little more open and honest about that purpose, and we should have a little more accountability aboutwhat the office is doing, given that the GreaterLondon Authority is directly elected by the people of London.