New Clause 15
Greater London Authority Bill
10:45 am
Michael Gove (Shadow Minister (Housing), Communities and Local Government; Surrey Heath, Conservative)
The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I shall come to the role that the Mayor envisaged Venezuela playing in London. One of the technical problems with the Mayor’s attempted oil deal with Venezuela, which on the surface might have been attractive to some Londoners, was that any petrol that he managed to secure would have been subject to excise duty and other taxation. That would have meant that any saving for Londoners was minimal. Whether those excise duties are too high is a matter for the Treasury. I simply point out that, not for the first time, the Mayor was on a fool’s errand in economic terms.
The hon. Gentleman and I have mentioned Cuba and Venezuela, and we must address how the Mayor has used his office to carve out a distinctive foreign policy for London. It is not one that reflects particularly well on London, because there has been a striking connection between the people whom he has seen. He has sought to use the prestige of his office and the money of London taxpayers to support and burnish the reputation of some of the least attractive leaders in the world. Cuba is a country that, for understandable reasons, occupies an honoured place in the minds of some people on the radical left. It is entirely understandable that the romance of the Cuban revolution, which led to the replacement of the Batista regime, can still entrance and enchant some. The reality of the revolution is now the betrayal of many dreams: the incarceration of gay men and women, the suppression of dissent and the limiting of political freedom where it matters most.