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Mr. Lansley: My hon. Friend makes his point very well. From my reading of the Green Paper, and from my knowledge of planning issues, it seems to me that it would be very difficult in relation to any major development and planning issue that arose in London to know how the Secretary of State, who remains a court of appeal in relation to the powers of the Greater London authority and the boroughs would exercise his powers if the Government office for London were absorbed into the Greater London authority.
I suspect that the Green Paper is moving towards a situation in which the Greater London authority is both analogous to a county council, as one would understand the term outside London, and would exercise many of the powers and responsibilities of the Government office. Yet outside London these are separate bodies, and for jolly good reasons.
I come now to the second issue arising from the amendments. Why 7 May 1998? What is important about that date? From the electoral administration point of view it is cheaper and easier to have the votes on the same day. I entirely take the point, as a saving of £2 million to £3 million could be achieved. However, when examined in rather more detail, it becomes a little more strange.
How will the boroughs interact with the referendum? Existing councillors of London boroughs were elected in 1996 and therefore without a mandate in relation to the Government's proposals. I suspect that, although London boroughs will have their own views on the referendum, they will be unable to acquire a mandate--which they might seek to do--at the local government elections next May to influence the introduction of legislation. They would benefit from the Government making further and faster progress in presenting their proposals through a White Paper and a draft Bill, so that councillors and candidates can seek a mandate to change the governance of London.
At the moment, the boroughs will not interact with the referendum because they will be conducting their own campaign. Technically, the borough elections will be held without knowledge of whether the people of London support a mayor and an assembly.
Mr. Wilkinson:
Is not the most likely reason for selecting 7 May for the referendum that, without the election taking place on the same date, the turnout in the referendum would be totally derisory? It would be even worse than the Welsh referendum, and it would be
Mr. Lansley:
I am delighted that my hon. Friend has made that point, as he has saved me the trouble of having to do so, and he made it better than I would have done. I am sure that he is right.
I shall dwell not so much on the politically manipulative aspects of the Government's proposal as on the constitutional aspect. It seems highly undesirable in constitutional terms for the Government to invite the people of London to vote on the referendum issues, which relate to the governance of London after 2000, while the people of London should focus in the local government elections on the government of London and the policy issues that affect London from 1998 to 2002.
Mr. Pickles:
Does it not go a stage further than that? Will not the people of London elect their various borough councillors not knowing whether they will be stripped of power?
Mr. Lansley:
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, the council candidates who will present themselves to the electorate in the run-up to 7 May 1998 will be unaware of the context in which the second half of their term will be conducted--with what powers, under what circumstances, and so on. From 1998 to 2000, they will know that they are exercising the current set of powers and be able to deal with the issues, but they will have said to the electorate, "Give us an opportunity to run this borough through to 2002." But for the subsequent years, 2000 to 2002, they may not have the power.
Sir Paul Beresford:
Or the money.
Mr. Lansley:
My hon. Friend makes a good point. The money will have gone--indeed, I suspect that a great deal of it will have gone--into the coffers of the Greater London authority, perhaps substantially more than is currently spent by the London boroughs.
Let me return to the question of political manipulation. It seems to me that, in the run-up to the 7 May local elections next year, the decision to hold a referendum on the same day will have a political impact. It is a perfect device employed by the Government to avoid addressing some of the real issues. By that time--in this context, the presence in the Chamber of the Minister for Transport in London is helpful--the Government should have begun the process of telling the electorate what they meant by "an integrated transport strategy". It was clear that they had no idea what that meant when they secured office on 1 May.
The same applies to the questions that were presented in the Green Paper in relation to the government of London. It turned out that the Government's policy consisted of 60 questions--or however many were involved in the transport strategy document.
When we come to the elections next May, the Government will doubtless say, "Don't worry precisely what we mean by an integrated transport strategy in London now. You can vote for a Greater London authority." The Green Paper, which I consulted, makes it
clear that there will be something even better: a genuine integrated transport strategy. I quote from the Green Paper. The heaping up of adjectives before the word "transport" knows no end.
It strikes me that the device that is being used--the holding of two elections on the same day--is intended to allow the Government to escape from the critical issues, and, in many instances, to escape the criticisms that will fall on Labour local authorities in such areas as Hackney and Islington by saying, "With one bound you, the electorate, will all be free. The critical issue is whether you vote for a Greater London authority. If you do, all your problems will disappear in the future, because the Green Paper says that the Greater London authority will be more effective"--and all the other adjectives that go along with whatever the GLA is supposed to do.
There will be a very undesirable conjunction on 7 May. I understand that, in practice, it is an administrative convenience, but I feel that administrative convenience should take second place to political need and constitutional desirability, and I consider it constitutionally desirable for the Government to proceed. I see no reason why such a timetable should be used, and no argument was presented for it on Second Reading.
It would be entirely consistent with the Government's timetable to introduce the mayor and assembly in 2000, and to bring in legislation in the parliamentary Session of 1998-99. It would be perfectly possible, in advance of that, to hold a referendum in, let us say, September 1998. It would be perfectly possible, in advance of that, to present a White Paper and a draft Bill. The Government would have to go a long way to convince Conservative Members that they were not competent to achieve that.
Such action would put things in their proper order. Perhaps, when we consider other issues in relation to the Bill, we shall suggest ways in which the Government's failure to spell out what they intend to achieve, and the way in which they will achieve it, can also be put in order.
Mr. John Horam (Orpington):
If I understand the Government's position rightly, the commitment made by the Minister in response to the genuine unease that is felt about the problem means that they are saying that they will produce a White Paper in the spring. I do not know where the Minister made that commitment, but I understand that that is the nature of it.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Ottaway) pointed out, the first question to be asked is what is meant by "the spring". The Minister should tell us exactly how much time he would expect to elapse between the publication of the White Paper and the referendum that he expects to take place on 7 May. Are we talking about four weeks, six weeks or two months? "Spring" is an extraordinarily elastic term, which allows the Government to do pretty much what they want. If the Minister is really talking about producing a White Paper at the very beginning of a local government campaign in London, I think that that would be a travesty of any proper consideration of the Government's proposals, separate from the existing governance of London.
There is a more important point that will have a resonance for hon. Members who are long enough in the tooth to have been in the House for some time. White
Papers can be pretty white. White Papers can be pretty elementary, and pretty skeletal. I do not make that point in a party sense; I am talking about Parliament versus the Executive--the way in which the Executive treats Parliament.
When I was on the Back Benches under the last Government, I was shocked and scandalised--and said so in a debate--by a White Paper produced by my own Government proposing the privatisation of the railways. I felt that it left unanswered so many fundamental questions about--for instance--the way in which the privatisation would be carried out that it constituted an abuse of the procedures of the House.
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