New Clause 1
Greater London Authority Bill
3:30 pm
Greg Hands (Hammersmith and Fulham, Conservative)
I shall be brief, because the number of speeches that I have made against the congestion charge extension in recent years probably runs into double, if not triple figures. I shall speak briefly about the experience of some of us in west London on consultation, on both the original zone and the extension. The consultation strategy is at the heart of the amendment, and no one doubts the power of the Mayor, of whatever party, to introduce a congestion charging scheme. It was specifically referred to in the 1999 Act.
There is a clear need to reform the way in which consultation is undertaken. At the moment, there is a statutory duty to consult, but there is absolutely no duty to listen, to have regard to, or even to read the submissions to the Mayor. There is not even an obligation to open or count the letters or e-mails that come flooding in. It gives politics a bad name when people are asked for their views and no regard is paid, or seen to be paid, to those views. If we are to have a system of directly elected mayors—there is a lot of merit in that—we must have a system whereby the mayor is accountable, and if he or she undertakes a consultation strategy, there should be an obligation on him or her to note the results.
People say that the directly-elected-mayor model leads to better and quicker decisions, but a corollary is the long consultation process. Ironically, even those who believe in extending the congestion charge, or are in the original congestion charging zone, would take issue with the length of time that it has taken between the first proposal and its implementation. The current system gives rise to poor and slow government. The proposal for a congestion charge extension was first made in 2003 and will be implemented next month. The consultation was overwhelmingly opposed to the proposal, but the Mayor decided, none the less, to go ahead. There was always a suspicion that he would go ahead with the scheme regardless of the consultation.