Clause 16
Greater London Authority Bill
6:30 pm
Michael Gove (Shadow Minister (Housing), Communities and Local Government; Surrey Heath, Conservative)
I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation. However, as suggested by the interventions from my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central and the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington, that explanation, while fine as far as it went, begs one or two questions.
On the nature of the circumstances in which, as my hon. Friend pointed out, both the Mayor and the deputy Mayor may be unable to act, the Minister said that the chair of the assembly should be responsible for introducing the budget. Part of the debate among Government Members was about the importance of maintaining a pristine distinction between those charged with executive functions and those who are part of the scrutinising body.
The clause makes it clear that when the deputy Mayor is responsible for introducing the budget, he or she absolves themselves of their assembly role and takes on a quasi-executive function. What ramifications will it have for the chair of the assembly if he or she is called upon to introduce the budget? In the event of the Mayor and the deputy Mayor being unavailable, at what stage in the budget-setting process will the chair, who will introduce the budget, have the power to acquire executive responsibilities?
We are pursuing this matter because an attempt is being made to provide for the eventuality of the Mayor being unable to act. We all appreciate the importance of the strong-Mayor role, but while the Government are anxious to ensure that there is a difference or distinction, it seems that that distinction or difference would be blurred in those admittedly unlikely but important circumstances.
Some clarity or clarification may be helpful on the circumstances under which the Mayor might be unable to act. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington drew attention to that implicitly in his intervention. The Minister explicitly acknowledged the action of the Standards Board, which deprived the Mayor of his powers a little while ago. While we all deprecate the circumstances that created that situation, we have to recognise that the Government have so far been insufficiently clear on how the functions—