Localism Bill

My Lords, I can perhaps offer a slightly more friendly response to my noble friend Lord Tope’s more recent speech than I did to his previous suggestions. The proposal in Amendment 96B and the consequential Amendment 98G—that the new standards function set out in Chapter 5 of Part 1 of the Bill should be a joint duty of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly, as it now is—is one that we are open to considering and seems to have common sense behind it. I can see the benefit of ensuring that the mayor and the Assembly are given equal roles and responsibility for promoting and maintaining high standards. On Amendments 98A, 98B, 98C and 98D, we see that there is a specific issue here for the GLA in terms of the delegation of decision-making by the Assembly to employees of the authority and we are happy to consider it further. I am not convinced that the same issues apply to other local authorities that have the benefit of Section 101 of the Local Government Act 1972, so perhaps it is not necessary for the amendments to be drafted in quite such wide terms. I am therefore happy to undertake to further consider all these amendments with my fellow Ministers and we can return to our discussion on Report.