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Mr. Pickles: Do you find it a little peculiar that you got the same number of responses in your constituency as the Minister got--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): Order. The hon. Gentleman should know better. He should not talk about my constituency. He means the hon. Lady's constituency.
Mr. Pickles: I am so sorry--the hon. Lady's constituency. Is the hon. Lady surprised that she received nearly the same number of responses from her constituency as the Minister for London and Construction received from the whole of London? Does she think there is something wrong with the consultation exercise that the Government did?
Ms Buck: I am not in the slightest bit surprised. The response rate was extremely good, although I have not prepared statistical notes on the subject. I am not sure what aspersions the hon. Gentleman is casting on the consultation process, but I think that we have been getting a good solid response on the subject, both in the Government's consultation process and in my local consultation process.
The single most important issue raised by constituents was that of the London environment, including transport and all the issues relating to the quality of the environment. Unbidden--given that they were sent a fairly straightforward tick-box questionnaire--people wrote screeds and screeds on the subject. A consistent theme emerged--that London's environment and transport are undermined by the lack of a coherent London government that is able to speak up for London. People feel that London has been the loser on every front, from its economy to its arts, its transport, its environment and its economic regeneration, because not one organisation has a democratic mandate to speak for Londoners. London's voice is lost in the bewildering plethora of quangos and Government agencies that claim to speak for it.
Conservative Members are as wrong to claim that there is public indifference on the subject as they are wrong to claim that the one subject that excites people is the number of questions. Give people a specific opportunity to comment on the subject, as I did and as the Government have done, and people will respond very positively and welcome the proposal.
As several of my colleagues have said, we have to thank the Greater London council for some of that positive response. I do not want the Greater London council recreated. Ten years on, life has changed. [Interruption.] I mean that. We cannot go back. Some of the functions that have been devolved to boroughs have been satisfactorily taken on and absorbed by the boroughs.
However, the GLC was absolutely right to reach out to communities that had been abandoned by central Government, then run by the Conservative party. It excited people; it engaged in a new sort of politics. It talked to the black and minority ethnic communities of
London, to young Londoners and to people with disabilities. It addressed issues involving women and domestic violence. Those issues were not touched by the institutions of Government and, rightly, were not a primary concern of individual boroughs.
I hope and believe that some of those characteristics--not functions--of the GLC, such as its sassiness, its unconventional nature, its inclusiveness and its outward-looking approach, will characterise both the new authority and the mayor. A Government office for London with an electoral mandate is not good enough: we want more than just a managerial approach, although good management is important. We need more if we are to promote our city internationally, to fight for our share of resources among the world's capitals and, very important, as I said on Second Reading, to fight for London's fair share of resources with the national Government--an issue which continues to concern me and many of my colleagues.
The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield said that he feared the inexorable growth of the ambitions of the Greater London assembly. That is specious nonsense. The functions proposed for the London authority are ambitious. We are talking about economic regeneration and strategic planning in an enormously divided community that faces a great many challenges. We want to look at the arts, at grants, at the management of transport and the environment--all those issues come before we start to look at the devolved boards, the development agency and the fire and civil defence authority. That is more than enough for an assembly to do.
We have spent a great deal of time on the potential conflict between the assembly and the mayor. That argument seems to have been Opposition Members' only attempt at an intellectual justification for opposing one or other of the Government's proposals according to their political taste. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) also touched on that issue in Committee. He upbraided me for an alleged inconsistency in my promotion of the government for London--the assembly and the mayor--because I referred to a single voice. I am prepared to concede his point on linguistic grounds, but the point is not that the mayor and the authority should speak on the same issues in exactly the same tone--precisely the opposite is true. There should be a creative tension between the two: the assembly will scrutinise the mayor's work and the mayor will provide dynamic leadership. The combination of those two will make the system work.
The mayor and the assembly will provide a voice that is different from the current voice. The board of the 32 boroughs that Opposition Members propose would have at least 32 voices. It is clear that on a number of crucial issues the representatives of Barking, of Westminster, of Kensington and of Barnet have different agendas--and it is completely right that they should. That is why we have local authorities which fight their own corner, and why central and outer London often have different agendas. That is why we need something different from a borough-based representation in a pan-London authority.
The mayor and the assembly will have different but complementary and balancing roles. They will both speak with democratic legitimacy. If necessary, we should allow
differences of opinion and allow the debate to be played out in public as that is right and healthy. They must speak for London as a whole, not its component parts.
Mr. Eric Pickles (Brentwood and Ongar):
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck), but she is wrong in many respects, and in one important respect in particular: she says that we oppose the proposals. We do not oppose the proposals. We have tabled a constructive reasoned amendment. That is unusual on Third Reading, and has not happened for several years, but there is a clear determination among Conservative Members not to deny the people of London a say.
The hon. Lady seemed a little confused about the fact that I was amazed by the returns that she had had. She sent out 10,000 forms and received 1,000 back. That is no criticism of the hon. Lady; a 10 per cent. return is terrific. However, a substantive point needs to be made.
I see the Minister for London and Construction wincing in his seat. Had he been as successful as the hon. Lady, he would have received not a paltry 1,200 returns, but more than 700,000. No doubt there are those in the Prime Minister's office at this moment who will look through Hansard and say that the hon. Lady must receive rapid promotion.
Ms Buck:
Does not the hon. Gentleman appreciate that the representations made to the Government were representative of organisations, so the 1,000-plus forms received by the Government speak for tens of thousands of Londoners in voluntary, community and residents organisations and other representative capacities?
Mr. Pickles:
I do not want to do anything to prevent the hon. Lady's rapid promotion, but I must point out that the representations that the Minister received were from individuals as well. Anybody could write in. The Government did not invite only big organisations. They said, "Let's have a voice from London. Anyone who is bored on the No. 11 bus can write in," but not many people did. That is the important point that the hon. Lady must understand.
The way in which these debates have been conducted places a heavy burden on another place. Only there will there be a possibility of allowing London a voice. The Government have shown an unwillingness to listen to or address the argument. Opposition was dismissed. We heard such cutting put-downs as, "You are missing the point," and, "If you are making a point, you have failed to make it," and, "We are not listening to that."
In this Chamber, Disraeli and Gladstone have stood. Churchill made great speeches.
Ms Glenda Jackson:
They would not have said that.
Mr. Pickles:
The hon. Lady is probably right. In those days there was a tradition in the House of addressing
There was not going to be a Report stage. Everything was pre-organised. Instructions went down from on high to the Minister not to take any amendments, because the Government did not want to be troubled with a Report stage. In place of argument, we have either had a chorus of, "We're the masters now," or a trip down memory lane and recollections of the Greater London council.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) referred to the maximum attendance of Labour Back Benchers. There are seven Members present who are not members of the payroll vote. For most of our deliberations, the Opposition have outnumbered Labour Members. I understand that a call has gone out to try to fill the Chamber.
The hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) spoke about the terracotta army. There are people in the parliamentary Labour party with a voice. I have been approached by London Members who have grave reservations about the single question in the referendum, and who support the calls of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats for two questions, but who are not prepared to vote against the Government's proposals because of the changes in the rules of the parliamentary Labour party which mean that, were they to speak up for what their constituents want, they would be debarred from standing for Parliament again as a member of the Labour party.
During the trips down memory lane, we heard how wonderful the GLC was. The hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North was the first Back Bencher to suggest that the GLC was less than perfect. The recollections might be justified if there was to be a return of the GLC, but clearly there is not.
There is an unwillingness even to argue the case for a mayor, in conjunction with a strategic authority. Unless we get the opportunity in another place to present those two questions, the Government will win the argument by default, because they do not need to address these important questions.
On Second Reading, the Minister for London and Construction promised that we would find out why it was essential that there should be a mayor, in conjunction with a strategic authority. The first time that we got any idea why those arrangements were so important was at 6.35 pm on Monday, when the Minister said that there were four reasons why it was important to have a strategic authority alongside a directly elected mayor. I shall paraphrase what the hon. Gentleman said.
The first reason is that that is in the Green Paper. The second reason is that there is no simple second question that can be asked. The Minister said that again today. The third mighty reason, which perhaps Disraeli might not have received from the Dispatch Box, is that the suggestion is unworkable. The fourth reason is that we need a clear question. Those four reasons could be put into one: "We will not have it, because we don't want to have it." That is not an answer. The Minister may not have realised it at the time, because the sad death had not yet been announced, but that could have been the memorial lecture for Dr. Hastings Banda. It was a non-answer.
Elsewhere, we were told that the mayor would be too powerful. That is the only real answer that we have received. The hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North said that it is immensely important that there should be creative tension between a directly elected assembly and a directly elected mayor. Apart from the statements that the Government do not want it, that the mayor would be too powerful, and that we need creative tension, no arguments have been articulated in the Chamber. It is the duty of another place to ensure that the arguments are put together.
The Conservative party believes that there should be two questions, as do the Liberal Democrats and the London Labour party. The intervention of the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Mr. Fitzpatrick) was a brave attempt to smooth over the cracks, but it was a little like the late Emperor Hirohito saying at the end of the war that events had not entirely gone to his satisfaction.
Anyone who reads the papers or surfs the net knows that the London Labour party wants two questions. Anyone who heard the contributions of the hon. Member for Brent, East knows that the Labour party in London wants two questions. The only people who seek to deny them that are those on the Government Front Bench.
If there is to be a strategic authority, a clear case must be made for it. With the exception of the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North, Labour Members reached no real consensus as to what the authority should be. The majority of contributions on Second Reading favoured a return to the GLC. Almost every Labour Back Bencher described the Greater London council as a marvellous body that delivered many benefits to Londoners. I agree with those Ministers who said that that was nonsense. With a lump in their throats, Labour Members described the new authority as GLC mark 2--a variation of "The Empire Strikes Back"; a revenge for the 11 years when London was denied such a body.
However, Ministers have been keen to stress that there will be no return of that evil empire and that we have nothing to fear. They claim that the strategic authority will be quite different from the GLC. Yet the Green Paper remains vague--perhaps such documents should be vague--as to the form that the authority will take. One thing is certain: its power will come not from Government but from the boroughs. The strategic authority will be the dumping ground for problems in London.
Labour Members already claim that the Greater London authority will deal with all sorts of matters. The hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Colman) made the ridiculous suggestion that the authority should consider the problem of aircraft noise--in spite of the fact that most aircraft have left the Greater London area within 90 seconds of take-off. Before the recess, the Minister for Transport in London said that the authority would consider the finances of London Underground--despite the fact that that issue will be resolved long before the body comes into being.
We had a clear example this morning of how the authority will be used as a dumping ground when the Minister for the Environment appeared before the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs. He spoke in a most courteous manner and was asked by the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Brake)--who is in the Chamber and will
no doubt seek to catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker--a straightforward question about what part the Greater London authority would play in addressing the problem of air pollution. The Minister said that the Greater London authority would be the "ideal" body to monitor that problem.
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