New Clause 46
Greater London Authority Bill
12:45 pm
Andrew Pelling (Croydon Central, Conservative)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for mentioning the New York City charter. He is a little unfair in suggesting that the process I have outlined departs very far from the New York charter. While I would not wish to be charged with plagiarism, the structure of the new clause relies heavily on the provisions in that charter. Indeed, I positively decided to use that model because it has been so successful in the governance of New York city.
One of the benefits of that approach is that it will give ownership both to the assembly and to the Mayor by allowing the Mayor and the chairs of the functional bodies to appoint the board, which will appoint a director of the budget and performance office. There will be that involvement and support through that appointment process. Under the new clause, the director would be appointed in such a way that he or she was an independent person, free from party political affiliation, who had the particular qualifications to support that office.
The new clause would promote good discipline as regards the £11 billion that is spent annually on the London Assembly, £44 million for every sitting between election cycles of the assembly. Money would be directed to an effective budget and performance office that Londoners were able to recognise as an excellent and independent source of information on the performance of the functional bodies of the Greater London authority—an office that was free from the spin of the politics of the assembly or of the Mayor through The London Paper—so that people could feel confident that they were making a real judgment on the quality of the performance as regards £11 billion of public expenditure.