Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

My Lords, we are trying to create world-class prestigious authorities to negotiate on behalf of our major urban areas a massive range of opportunities. I ask the noble Baroness what she thinks about having a directly elected Bristol mayor in Tokyo negotiating a billion-pound investment for the city when, in the fortunes of life, the mayoralty is relatively politically unpopular—and they will be, as we all are. The Japanese negotiators will say, “It is all very well for you to come all this way, but you may not be the mayor in six months’ or a year’s time. We have seen someone from one of the German Länder where there is no question about their future. They all know where they will be. So I am sorry, Mr Mayor of Bristol, you go home and sort out your future and then come back to us”. That is a classic example of exactly what we are not trying to achieve in the new dynamism of localism.