New Clause 15
Greater London Authority Bill
10:45 am
Michael Gove (Shadow Minister (Housing), Communities and Local Government; Surrey Heath, Conservative)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I apologise for not welcoming you to the Chair at the beginning of the sitting, Lady Winterton. I was temporarily distracted by the confusion, as much in my mind as in that of the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington, about which of us was speaking at the moment when the clock froze the debate last Thursday. I associate myself with the Minister’s comments—it is a great pleasure to see you refereeing what I suspect will be the final stages of our deliberations.
New clause 15 is an attempt to deal explicitly with a controversy that has arisen around this Mayor. It has been our intention throughout the debate to separate as much as possible the personality of this incumbent from the broader office of the Mayor, for obvious reasons. However popular this incumbent might have been, one cannot expect him to continue in office throughout our lifetime, and we need legislation that is appropriate for whoever might occupy the office. Inevitably, though, for as long as there has been a mayoral office in London, Ken Livingstone has been the occupant, and his exercise of those powers has to an extent defined in the public mind what the Mayor’s job could and should be.
There is legitimate controversy about many of the Mayor’s decisions and the powers that he has exercised. We have had an opportunity to revisit some of those matters—the congestion charge, housing, planning—and we accept, although we as Conservatives might take a different view, that the Mayor is within his rights to exercise the powers allotted to him by the House to shape London in line with the vision that is his mandate.
However, we are genuinely concerned that the Mayor is overreaching himself by attempting to use the office of Mayor of London—and, by association, the prestige of our capital city—to pursue a foreign policy that is out of kilter with the views of a majority of Londoners and in opposition to the Government’s own stated goals. We are all aware that in the 1980s various local authorities attempted to use public money to effectively turn local authorities into lobbying groups for international policies. There were lively debates about whether that spending was legitimate or ultra vires. The new clause would clarify for this Mayor and, if the Government are willing, other local government figures, what is legitimate in spending on contact with foreign cities and other nations.
It is entirely appropriate for this Mayor and other local figures to develop close ties and bonds with comparable cities and bodies in other nations to help them in the exercise of their duties. Whether it be town twinning, visiting other cities that have hosted the Olympics or travelling to New York or Sydney to discover how one city hones its policing or another its planning policies, such activities are entirely legitimate. There has recently been controversy about the amount of time that the Mayor spends in the air, and the Greater London assembly has pointed out that in the past year he has been responsible for something like 13 or 14 intercontinental flights. It is not our business on this occasion to object to the Mayor travelling: it is how he uses his journeys abroad that concerns us.