That is a very good question and rightly asked. Where the difficultly comes is that no one is imposing a deal. The Government are not saying that A, B, C and D must happen—the noble Lord shakes his head, but I had the privilege to sit in some of the negotiating discussions that have taken place and know that no Minister is saying that this is the prescription. That is what we would have done. All my life, that is what happened: it was not a question of whether an area wanted power over housing; it was a question of filling in 75 forms before building a council house. I had all those forms on my wall in the Department
of the Environment—70 forms, about the slope of the roof and the pitch of the eaves. That is what we did. And here we are talking about trying to impose some sort of structure of deal in the detail, which the Government are not going to do.
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In the big conurbations, the position is black and white. In the very different areas that make up much of rural England, or the mixed suburban areas, it is for the local people to come forward with a proposal. If they come forward with a proposal which simply says, “Give us the power and we’ll get on with it”, there is not a ghost of a chance that they will get a deal. The party opposite, which took as much power away as anybody, would not have given them a deal on that basis. So it is a waste of time pretending that they could have the sort of deal that they want without the change that is fundamental, which is to create leadership commensurate with these responsibilities.
It is for them. They will look at their circumstances, which will be very different, and they will design the leadership model they want. I am not a member of the Government, but I personally cannot conceive of a leadership model coming forward that does not involve a directly elected mayor. I had the privilege of advising the Conservative Party before the coalition Government and I was absolutely clear that there should be mayors, because I have seen it work all over the world—it does work and it is much better than what we have got in this country. However, if someone can come up with something that is credible and is able to persuade the Government that they can bear the responsibilities on offer to them, they may be successful, but it is for them, not for us. That is why I do not pretend to give a specific answer to the noble Lord, because I do not know of an answer that is other than the mayoral one. Somebody may think of one, so that would be looked at. Frankly, within six months, my guess is that this debate will have moved on so fast that we will know whether there are alternative structures that are acceptable.
For the vast majority of cases, my own view is that there will be mayors. From the more advanced conversations that are going on—largely among councillors who come from the parties opposite; they are the people making the pace, to be frank—my guess is that the mayoral model is the one that will survive and emerge. Four or five years from now, people will wonder what we were arguing about.