Schedule 1
Greater London Authority Bill
11:30 am
Stephen Pound (PPS (Rt Hon Hazel Blears, Minister without Portfolio), Cabinet Office; Ealing North, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman reminds me of a saying of Ernie Bevin, one of my great heroes, though a trifle left-wing, I have to say, for modern Labour tastes:
“If we had a little less democracy and a little more trust, we could get a lot more done in this country.”
I would not subscribe to Ernie Bevin’s dictum, but nor would I subscribe to the Boss Prendergast machine that we seem to be hearing about from the hon. Gentleman. We seem to be hearing a description of a city Administration that is more akin to James Michael Curley in Boston in the 1930s—a gloriously, magnificently corrupt Administration, it has to be said—than what we are actually faced with. There are checks and balances within this. Our duty as a Committee—it is an extraordinary privilege to sit for the first time on a Committee that contains four Fulham season ticket holders, particularly as that represents about 50 per cent. of the attendance—is to allow the disinfectant of sunlight to enter in while still allowing the smooth running of the operation of the GLA.
Were we to enter the strange, dystopic world described from the perspective of Surrey Heath, of political pals and people to whom favours are owed and to whom nods and winks are exchanged in the fetid walkways of the Thames side, people who somehow have some sort of political debt that can be repaid only by a position on the Museum of London—