My Lords, I am, of course, grateful for what my noble friend has said about competent authorities. I know that he has a great knowledge of, and esteem
for, local government. My problem remains, although I have studied carefully what he said. I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Snape, that I have no vested interest in this, because my council is a London area council and we come within the London arrangements, although I will have some points to make on Clause 21. In his opening remarks, my noble friend talked about the advantage of mayoral arrangements; there is a centralised decision-making element—I think that probably came in guidance or advice he had received. This is the problem, because, as I said in my previous intervention, this is a small part of a wider policy; there are certain people inside government who wish to create centralising models. It is an idea of managing the country by larger functions, which are responsible to, and look upwards to the Treasury and the Government for guidance—we see it in education, with the emergence of regional schools commissioner. That is not the philosophy I believe in, as a Conservative; I believe, as I said earlier, that we need more dispersed authority.
My noble friend is right that it is clearly open to any sort of authority to go ahead; however, there are more obstacles put it in the way of other authorities, whereas the mayoral authority can leap forward. My noble friend Lord Horam must be right: the Government cannot keep taking on these functions to take all these decisions. I do not want to stray into education, I know we are in Committee, but can the Government and their institutions make every decision for every school or group of academies around the country? We do not have enough civil servants to do that. We do not have enough civil servants with the competence to take decisions about transport in different counties all over the country. Devolution is a marvellous idea, which I strongly support, but what creeps into legislation time and again is not devolution but control masquerading as devolution. So when I hear talk of centralised decision-making, I believe that I am looking at the tip of the iceberg of a philosophy of government which is not one I share.
Although I am extremely grateful for what are in many ways the reassuring and typically courteous remarks of my noble friend, I would still find it very difficult to support any legislation that gives an advantage to a putative mayoral authority, not just an existing one, above any other form of authority. It would mean that someone in a department somewhere can say, “Look, you guys. You can have what you want if you do what we say”. Power should come from the people through local government and through local authorities coming together. I give notice to my noble friend that I am still uneasy about these proposals.