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6.41 pm
Sir Sydney Chapman (Chipping Barnet): It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Ms Ruddock). I hope that she will not be embarrassed if I say that my only disappointment is that we no longer hear her from the Government Front Bench.
I was also interested to hear the contribution of the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone). He prayed in aid the Marquis of Salisbury, who was the Prime Minister at the turn of the century and who, unknown to me, tried to finish off the old London county council. I can only say that my view of the Cecil family has undergone a dramatic change in the past few weeks.
The Greater London Authority Bill is a very important and very long Bill. It has 277 clauses, 243 pages and 21 schedules. Obviously, it will take a little time to go through it clause by clause, line by line and word by word in Committee. In light of what the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) said, it might be helpful if I make a public declaration here and now to the effect that I have absolutely no intention of standing as mayor or for membership of the assembly. When the House has heard my contribution, it will understand why, and doubtless greet it with a great sigh of relief.
I regretted the fact that the referendum consisted of only one question. I accept that 72 per cent. of the people who took part voted for a mayor and an assembly. My party voted yes, but we wanted a mayor and not an assembly. I think I am right in saying that the Liberal Democrats wanted the assembly but not the mayor. We have to look to the future now, and accept that we have to make the mayor and the assembly work, but I think
that it was a mistake for the Government to insist on just one question. They could proceed with much greater confidence had there been separate questions, but that is all in the past.
I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard) that the assembly should be informal, and have the minimum necessary powers. It is important that the mayor has direct contact with the 32 boroughs. I accept that he will, but it would be better if the assembly contained one representative from each borough, preferably the leader, and, of course, the City of London. We are introducing into the governance of London not only a mayor and an assembly but the London development agency on top of the existing unitary boroughs. We are also keeping the Government Office for London. If we are not careful, the governance of London will be suffocated.
I have not read every word of the Bill, but I have read most of it. Ministers might call me to account, but my impression is that it will encourage bureaucracy, sow confusion in the minds of Londoners as to which body has which powers, and cause dissension between the assembly and the mayor. The assembly and the mayor will both argue that they have been directly elected, and will seek ever more powers. Empire building is inevitable, no matter how hard the Government try to control it with legislation. I am absolutely convinced that the result will be an unnecessarily costly exercise, which will take powers and influence away from the London boroughs.
We can have differences of opinion about this, but since the abolition of the Greater London council in 1986 and of the Inner London education authority in 1990, the governance of London has come closer to its people through being managed by the boroughs.
It is all very well for hon. Members to say that there is an overwhelming wish for a Greater London body to be re-established--I am not making a party political point, as abolition took place under the Conservative party--but had my constituents been asked way back in the 1960s whether they wanted to leave Hertfordshire and join Greater London, I know what 95 per cent. of them would have said. However, the compensation of joining London--or one of the compensations, as there may have been a few--was that education moved nearer to the town hall. The town hall, although it was in Hendon rather than Barnet, was nearer to the people of Barnet than was Hertfordshire's county hall. There were pluses and minuses.
Given the resolution of the people of London to have a mayor and an assembly, we want to ensure that both work in the most cost-efficient, fair and effective way possible. The Secretary of State referred to the successes of London. Those successes have increased rather than diminished in recent years. I know that the hon. Member for Deptford, like all hon. Members, cares deeply about the terrible social problems in our capital city. I share that concern and the resolve to do something about them, but I do not think that the creation of a new tier of government will necessarily solve them.
I stand to be corrected, but I do not think that the White Paper, which was published just before the referendum--I was grateful for that--made it clear that the authority would have powers to impose new taxes on motorists. I
remember warning that the referendum should take place after the Bill had been passed, so that Londoners would know exactly what they were voting for.
I said that Green Papers can be quite different from White Papers, that White Papers can be different from Bills, and that Bills can be different from Acts of Parliament. I remember likening White Papers to bikinis--what they reveal is interesting, but what they conceal can be vital. Some of my constituents will feel slightly aggrieved that the Government did not, as it were, come clean on their desire to give the authority the power to impose new taxes on motorists, a measure included in the Bill.
The White Paper claimed that the Government themselves would meet most of the cost of running the Greater London assembly and the office of mayor through grant. I am aware that 80 per cent. of the expenditure on local authorities' responsibilities in the capital is met by revenue support grant or by the taxpayer rather than the council tax payer. I believe that more funding of the new structure will have to come from Londoners, which gives me the gravest suspicions.
The Government claim that the Greater London authority will simply assume responsibility for the present £3.3 billion expenditure a year. They calculate that the administrative cost of setting up the assembly and the mayor will be about £20 million. I doubt that; I shall be interested to see the administrative cost for the first year. I wager that, whatever it is, it will be more than£20 million. It will have doubled in five years.
I have seen such things happen in the Council of Europe and the Western European Union. Once such a body--doing wonderful work, I am sure--is created, there is an impelling imperative to find more work. The functions--if not the powers--of the assembly are comprehensive. I draw hon. Members' attention to clause 14. So far as I can make out, the assembly has the right to investigate and report on virtually anything. It will take that opportunity. Hon. Members may say that that is a good thing, but I am not so sure. Such a power will create an overweening bureaucracy, which will be very costly.
The Deputy Prime Minister kindly allowed me to intervene on the subject of planning. I declare a possible interest. For many years, I have been a non-practising chartered town and country planner, and I am a fellow of the Royal Town Planning Institute. I mention that because, for the first time, I have heard the phrase "spatial development strategy", which will become the responsibility of the mayor.
I note that London boroughs' unitary development plans will be required to conform with that strategy. Although I have no objection to that in principle--it seems eminently sensible in principle--I think that, in practice, at least some London boroughs, including mine, might be concerned. Barnet was the first London borough to put into practice its unitary development plan, which is coming up for renewal. There might be a problem fitting in such a revision and renewal when the mayor introduces his spatial development strategy.
Will the Minister say whether applicants and appellants under the development control system will retain the same rights, especially those of appeal to the Secretary of State, once the mayor has the right to direct a London borough--the local planning authority--to refuse an application? I, personally, would like the Secretary of
State's power to be retained, and the mayor not to be given such a power to direct. I firmly believe that such matters require co-operation between the Secretary of State and the local planning authority. As the mayor will appoint members of the planning committee and the London development agency, it is important that there should be no conflict of interest.
Mr. Burstow:
The hon. Gentleman is raising a very important point about the relationship between the boroughs and the GLA. Does he share my concern that, if the mayor directs an authority to refuse planning permission, costs might be imposed on the authority following an appeal, which would not have been imposed if it had taken a different decision unfettered by the mayor?
Sir Sydney Chapman:
That is a possibility. Such balances must be weighed up. As the Secretary of State already has call-in powers for any significant planning application, I do not see the need for the mayor to intervene.
Ms Glenda Jackson:
Perhaps it would be helpful and put the hon. Gentleman out of his misery if I reassured him that appellant rights will indeed still rest with the Secretary of State.
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