Clause 13
Greater London Authority Bill
5:00 pm
Andrew Pelling (Croydon Central, Conservative)
First, I shall approach some of the amendments that have found their way to the Committee in the context of support either from a majority or from all members of the London assembly. This afternoon, we have already secured the passage of clause 12, which will provide the assembly with the ability to set its own budget, bringing it in line with other devolved assemblies.
In the context of the two-thirds majority rule, there is the danger that the assembly will in practice be left unable to divine upon its own budget. The proposed process confuses the assembly’s role in respect of the Mayor’s budget for the entire GLA family, which comes from expenditure of more than £10 billion and will obviously be higher after the reforms in the Bill come in, with its role in determining its own requirements and resources.
The power to amend the Mayor’s proposed budget for the assembly by a two-thirds majority will enable nine members out of 25 to decide whether the Mayor’s proposed budget for the assembly should be amended. Thus, the assembly itself will not be in control of its own destiny in progressing its own budget on its own decision. That does not serve the Government’s good policy intentions of allowing the assembly to set, or even to protect, its own budget.
When the Mayor was quizzed at the London assembly on 13 December, he said that he did not consider he should have anything to do with the assembly’s budget. The Bill includes complex formulae that set an upper limit—a ceiling—on the Mayor’s ability to amend his proposed budget for the assembly, but it does not set a floor, or lower limit. To theorise for Labour Members, a Conservative Mayor might cut a very large part of the assembly’s budget because there is no protection, or floor. Effectively, there is no meaningful protection should the Mayor propose unreasonable cuts to his budget, either in one year or cumulatively over time.
The Bill contains no provision for the assembly to determine the allocation of resources within its overall budget. Instead, the Mayor could decide to transfer significant resources within the assembly’s budget, perhaps to the disadvantage of the assembly’s individual party groups or, if he or she were feeling the heat, to take away resources that would give attention to areas of scrutiny that he felt were giving him too much trouble.
Amendment No. 43 would put in place a floor below which the Mayor could not reduce the assembly’s budget in any one year by ensuring that the Mayor could propose to reduce the budget requirement for the London assembly only when he was proposing to reduce the Mayor’s component budget requirement, and then only by as much as the Mayor was reducing his own mayoral component budget. Thus, if the Mayor were proposing to reduce his budget by 2 per cent. on the current year’s figure, he could propose to reduce the assembly’s budget only by a maximum of2 per cent.
I recognise that the Government were very conscientious in their original consultation, but during that consultation the assembly sought a means of protecting its resources from a Mayor who might seek to cut them if it was particularly effective in holding that future Mayor to account. The Bill proposes that that protection be provided by giving the assembly the ability to set its own budget in certain circumstances by amending the proposed assembly component budget put forward by the Mayor.
As the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington said, large sections of the Bill contain complex formulae, the sole purpose of which is to impose a ceiling on the amount by which the elected members of the London assembly could, if they were able to achieve the support of two thirds of members of the London assembly, amend the budget for the assembly proposed by the Mayor. However, while a ceiling is proposed for the assembly, there is no such limit on the amount by which the Mayor might seek to reduce the assembly’s budget.
The amendments would not prevent the Mayor from proposing any reduction in the Mayor’s budget. It must be right that where there is a general reduction in the GLA’s spending, the assembly should have to bear its proportion of any such reduction.