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Mr. Hughes: I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. Additionally, between 75 and 80 per cent. of Assembly Members would have to decide the matter. I cannot imagine a London electoral result--it has not happened this century--in which 75 per cent. of electors vote for people from the same party. Therefore, a decision to pass a no-confidence motion would have to be taken by Members of two or more parties.
Assembly Members would also be aware that they would have to account to their electorate for their decision to get rid of a mayor. As the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Sir S. Chapman) said, if they act irresponsibly in voting for such a motion, their electorate probably would not take a favourable view of it.
Mr. McDonnell:
The hon. Gentleman was unusually disparaging about my earlier remarks. Nevertheless, we are now debating the key issue of natural justice, which we shall have to resolve. If allegations have been made against someone, should he or she immediately be penalised because of them, before a full investigation has been conducted to determine the truth?
A number of us--including the hon. Gentleman--have dealt with miscarriages of justice cases, in which it has been discovered that, because of the failure of an investigation, the climate of the hunt has led to someone being pilloried and removed from a position, despite subsequently being found innocent. The issue of whether there should be a suspension mechanism, rather than a rejection mechanism, must be reviewed as we have not yet found the appropriate mechanism.
Mr. Hughes:
I always try not to be disparaging about the hon. Gentleman. There may be arguments for suspension, but if the Bill receives Royal Assent with no such provision, the press--not the elected Members of the Assembly--will decide whether the mayor resigns in the event of a serious allegation. I would far rather that 80 per cent. of the Assembly, rather than the press, decided.
I wish to strengthen the point made by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet, who is an experienced London colleague. Let me be modest about my colleagues. Let us imagine that a Liberal Democrat mayor is elected next May, as we increasingly expect. Let us imagine that a Liberal Democrat mayor comes to office with huge support from the London electorate, as is increasingly
possible. Let us imagine that we do not sweep the board in the Assembly, and that there is a coalition of 19 members coming from the other parties, while we have all the others. If those 19 vindictively and conspiratorially decided that the best form of government was not available to Londoners and that they wanted to vote out the Liberal Democrat mayor, the point made by the hon. Gentleman is the answer.
If they did so, the candidate could stand again--and probably would, depending on the party's view. However, the electorate would decide both on that candidate and on the people who got rid of the mayor. The history of this place shows that when, for other reasons, it kicked out people such as Bradlaugh, the electorate sent them back. In the end, the electorate won the day.
If we want to improve confidence in public life, the amendment must be accepted. It may not be the amendment that my colleagues and I would have wanted to table, nor is it theoretically the best in the world. It is not the amendment that we might have had had a royal commission inquired into the matter in five years' time. It is not even the amendment that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington might have come up with after reflection and consultation. However, at the moment, it is this or nothing.
If the Government turn this amendment down today, they will send the message that they want the office of mayor of London to be more autocratic than any other position in British constitutional life. They will want to give the mayor more power, and others less control over the mayor.
I hope that the House will support the amendment that was passed by nearly two to one in the Lords. If this place reverses the amendment, I hope that the Lords make one last stand--some of them have not much more to lose. If they go out for the last time next week, it is better that they do so with a bang than a whimper. They could do no better service than to say to the Government that there will be a power for Londoners to have a no confidence vote in their mayor and to get rid of him if that is appropriate.
Mr. Gapes:
I am grateful to be called at this point in the debate, as it is always a pleasure to follow the sanctimonious nonsense of the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes). I and others had to sit in Committee through hours and hours of it, and we have just had another example from the hon. Gentleman.
The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey talks about democracy, and then invokes the hereditary peers as a means of defeating the democratically elected Government--a Government elected on a mandate to establish the mayor and Assembly. He says that, if the democratic decision of this House goes once more for the Government's proposal, the hereditaries and his friends in the Conservative party in the House of Lords should vote down a democratically elected Government. So much for the democracy of the Liberal Democrats.
The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey talks about the public not having much confidence in politicians. They certainly do not have much confidence in Liberal Democrat politicians--that is why the party only gets 11 per cent. in the opinion polls, and why there are only 46 of them in this democratic place. They may have more in the House of Lords at the moment, but they do not have democratic support in the country.
I wish to refer to the hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Woodward), who is not here at this moment. I must say that I preferred the approach in Committee of the hon. Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Ottaway). The hon. Member for Witney cast a series of slurs and smears at Labour politicians and others unable to answer them. If that is the way the Conservative party intends to fight the Assembly and mayoral elections, we will have the dirtiest election campaign that this city has ever seen.
I hope that the Conservatives think carefully before going down that road, as those who live in glass houses should be careful when they start throwing stones. I suspect that it would rebound against the Conservatives--and their candidate for mayor--among the general public.
Mr. Brooke:
My hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Woodward) was entirely open handed in terms of the strictures that he raised, and he referred to the conduct of the London borough of Camden between 1965 and 1975. Between 1968 and 1971, the Conservative party was in control of the London borough of Camden, and I was a member of it. Although I did not intervene on my hon. Friend to say that I resented his strictures, I do not think that he can remotely be described as having cast slurs.
Mr. Gapes:
As always, we benefit from the great advice and sagacity of the right hon. Gentleman, who entertains us with his insights into politics. [Interruption.] I am glad that the hon. Member for Witney has come back into the Chamber, and I hope that he heard what his right hon. Friend said.
Clearly, we are involved in a new concept, and we are employing two different electoral systems, neither of which is used for the election of local councillors or Members of Parliament. The system for electing the mayor is the supplementary vote, which means that whoever is elected as mayor of our city will have a substantial first preference and a large second preference, giving them the support of more than half the people of our city.
Members of the Greater London Authority will include people who--for the information of Liberal Democrat Members--have been democratically selected by the Labour party. That process included ballots in borough pairings to select candidates for the 14 constituencies, such as the one in Redbridge and Havering, in which Labour party members voted overwhelmingly for our candidate, and selection for the top-up party list, which will be used if we do not win many seats. I suspect that we will not need many people on our top-up list, because we shall win many of those constituencies. However, all parties will probably benefit from the top-up.
The Greater London Authority will also include members who, given that they pass the threshold of5 per cent., will have received very few votes. That is
presumably how the two or three Liberal Democrat members of the authority will be elected. Although they may win one or two seats, they will be reliant, to some extent, on the top-up list. Such members will not have received a great personal vote; they will have been elected by virtue of their place on the party list.
So the mayor's democratic mandate will be different from that of the 25 authority members. Yet the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition proposes that 19 of the 25 members should have the ability to remove from office somebody who might have secured the votes of 1 million, 2 million or more Londoners--by methods that could be subject to political intrigue reminiscent of the behaviour of Republicans in the United States.
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