Clause 29
Greater London Authority Bill
10:30 am
Bob Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst, Conservative)
Can the Minister help with my question? Under the budgetary procedures for the assembly, the Mayor is obliged to respond to those matters on which he disagrees with the assembly’s proposed amendments. On first reading—as it is sometimes called for shorthand purposes—the assembly can amend the Mayor’s budget. He must respond in writing when he drafts his final budget and say why he disagrees with the assembly’s amendments. In practice, we receive about five lines on paper—just about enough to comply with the Wednesbury reasonableness test—to say that he disagrees with the assembly’s amendments because they are not consistent with his policy and what he believes to be the objectives that he was elected to carry out, as my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, Central said.
I do not understand how such a provision will produce any other result from the Mayor. He will stick just within what is required by his lawyers to keep him within the law. If there were no hold over him in respect of the assembly having the ability to amend the strategies, all that will happen is a banal throwing back of them in his face. I accept that the provision is well intended, but I cannot help but feel that it has the whiff of a compromise that has been cobbled together by the Labour party so that the assembly is bought off with a minor right to have regard taken of its comments because the Mayor would not take the logical step of giving the assembly real teeth with which to amend the strategies. It is regrettable, therefore, that in this case, as with the previous clause that we referred to, the Government have ducked the chance of seizing an opportunity.
Tony Travers, the academic referred to on a number of occasions, has talked about the logic of developing a legislative role for the assembly in the sense that if it could amend strategies, that would require the Mayor not just to come back with a bland response, but to deal with the assembly. That would be a healthy thing. For these purposes, as we have said in debate on previous amendments, that could be achieved by some qualified majority, which is more than the simple majority that Conservative Members would prefer. However, we could live with that for the sake of compromise.
However, I still do not understand from the Minister how this measure will achieve much for the assembly in practice. It may require the Mayor to go through a formulaic process, and I suppose there is a point that that is more transparent than simply saying no without stating any reason. I go with the Government as far as that, but the point made by me and by others is that the way the Mayor operates—it could be any Mayor of any political party, because the nature of the post means that it is likely to attract big personalities, who sometimes have big egos—means that there is every risk that, under the current regime, any Mayor might give the assembly pretty short shrift in giving any reasons to it. Would it not be much better to give the assembly the ability to amend strategies? The Mayor would then have to take the assembly’s comments seriously.
In a nutshell, having regard is a very worthy concept, but to have regard and then make a rather basic gesture in response is not much of a power for the assembly to have. That is what practice tells us we are likely to get from the Mayor, unless this measure is significantly strengthened.