My Lords, I accept that a mayor, were he or she so minded, could act in that way. However, I have to say that the current mayor has shown no interest whatever in conceding anything to any of the boroughs, let alone to one single borough. We could get to a state in which the mayor allows one borough—I will not name one, although Bromley comes to mind, remembering the trouble we had with the introduction of the Freedom Pass—to opt out and the mayor could accept that, but I would not want to put that responsibility on some future mayor.
It would be much better if we stuck to the majority principle that we were talking about just now; the boroughs should have the right themselves to opt out of the scheme. I would hope that they would not do so, but they could have the right to opt themselves and their area out of it, but not the right to either stop it for everywhere else or rely on the benevolence of the mayor—little of which we have seen recently—to opt
that borough out. So a much better way would be to reword the amendment. I suspect that the noble Lord is not going to press this to a vote tonight, although a lot of people in London think he is: much better that we come back on Report with clearer, better wording to try to achieve what we want to do.
I think, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said, that what this amendment is actually about is the relationship between an executive Mayor of London—in a sense, a presidential system—and the borough councils, which are essentially a parliamentary system. Nobody has given enough thought, and there are many other examples, to how we match the mismatch between a presidential and parliamentary system. We have a situation now where the boroughs are all, in a sense, elected parliamentary bodies, with borough council leaders playing an increasing role through London Councils in the running of London, and a presidential-style elected mayor who has all the power vested in the mayor, with none vested in the boroughs and none, for that matter, vested in the London Assembly either. I say that with some regret after serving as an assembly member—indeed, as the leader of the Liberal Democrat group there—for eight years.
I hesitate today to ask for a reconsideration of the government of London—I am not sure I would want to go through all of that again—but that is, in essence, what this amendment is about. If we can agree a slightly different form of wording for this to come back on Report, I should be happy then to give it my support.