Greater London Authority Bill

My Lords, I hope that my noble friend will not feel tempted to accept the amendment. As the noble Baroness who moved it rightly pointed out, we have discussed this matter again and again. I took the trouble to look up what we said in Committee and saw that on that occasion the wording was precisely the same as Amendment No. 2. We had a very thorough discussion about this in Committee and on Report, as has been said. I was opposed to the amendment from the very beginning because it seemed to be an attempt to redefine the roles of the London Assembly relative to those of the Mayor. If we had wanted a more powerful Assembly, we should have opposed the abolition of the GLC. You cannot now write back into the powers of the Assembly powers that would have once belonged to the GLC or a similar body. We have a very different legislative framework now, which has been accepted by everybody, and I do not think that at this stage of the Bill we can revive this discussion, which has taken up quite a lot of time at each stage.