Clause 13
Greater London Authority Bill
5:52 pm
Jim Fitzpatrick (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of Trade and Industry; Poplar and Canning Town, Labour)
I think that interventions by my hon. Friends—especially those by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North—have helped clarify several of the fundamental issues that are at stake. One is whether a two-thirds budgetary requirement should exist. Another is whether there should be a strong executive Mayor or a stronger assembly. A further point is whether it is conceivable that, having separated out the assembly budget as a separate component, assembly members would not be able to vote collectively to protect their own separated and transparent budget. The Government certainly believe that assembly members can and would work in concert in that situation.
Before making some general comments on the amendments and new clauses, let me deal with the New York examples quoted by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst. I said earlier that we could benefit from his expertise, and, clearly, this is a case in hand.
I am advised that, although it is true that council members in New York city can block the Mayor’s budget and develop their own policies, in practice what happens is that because New York city council members are numerous—there are 62 of them—and are all elected by local constituencies, they do not have the strategic city-wide mandate that our assembly has and therefore tend only to threaten to block the Mayor’s budget when they are seeking support on local issues. They threaten to block early on in the process, given that the effect of blocking would be to hold up city services and investment beyond their constituencies. They seek accommodations with the Mayor, and there will always be some horse trading, negotiations and accommodations being sought with any mayor. In their case, perhaps it is to gain additional resources for local budgets. They act as advocates of local agendas, not necessarily as sources of alternative city-wide policies.
In short, although council members can block the budget, they almost always do so only on a local-issue basis because of their local mandate. The model is quite different, although the hon. Gentleman has the benefit of having visited New York on a fact-finding mission, which I have not done, and studied it himself.