I understand absolutely that it is a different ball game when corruption is involved, as with some of the issues associated with Tower Hamlets. I am not talking about that. My experience of both district councils and county councils is that there may be a regular turnover of leaders within the four years if they are not driving through the agenda on which their group fought the election and they have failed to deliver the manifesto. Leaders on Norfolk County Council, in that case from the opposition party, have been overturned. In my city council, the leader has to be re-elected each and every year and there is occasionally, if not regularly, a change of leadership in the course of that because the leader has lost the confidence of their group. That is perfectly proper and usually happens because the ward councillors, one-third of whom may have had elections each year, are getting that feedback on the door-step from their constituents.
In other words, there are quite effective, if subtle, ways of ensuring that the current leaders of local authorities continue to deliver their manifesto and carry the consent of their group, who are also regularly standing for election. However, as far as I can see, once a mayor has been elected, he or she is free from any such scrutiny, let alone from recall, by his or her electorate. The leader of a group is indirectly elected, and can be recalled by that group; the mayor is directly elected but apparently cannot be recalled by the electorate. Could the Minister help me on this?