Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 71)
WEDNESDAY 8 SEPTEMBER 2004
PROFESSOR TONY
TRAVERS
Q60 Sir Paul Beresford: So the possibility
of a sensible move to put into the bill a "sunset referendum"?
In two years, if we do not like it can we take it out?
Professor Travers: Personally,
for what it is worth, I do not have hugely strong feelings about
referendums one way or the other, and if there were to be a sunset
referendum test in a number of years it would give everybody powerful
incentive to make sure the thing worked so that if such a referendum
took place those who wanted to keep it kept it.
Q61 Mr Betts: Powers in terms of
the Regional Development Agency, what effect or influence do you
think the Regional Assembly would have there? Just looking at
the government's policy statement, it seems that what they are
saying is that the RDA will continue to be responsible for developing
the Regional Economic Strategy. It is then going to be published
by the Assembly, who can make some modifications to it, but the
Assembly and the Agency have to have regard to government guidance
in preparing the strategy. It seems very much that the government
is going to tell the regional bodies what to do, the RDA is going
to get on with drawing it up and then the Assembly is going to
read it and put the commas and the dots in the right place. Is
that a cynical view?
Professor Travers: No, I think
that is a reasonable description of at least an element of the
way in which the London Development Agency and the Mayor have
worked together. Using the London system as a model for what might
happen in England, the Mayor has slightly more directed appointment
powers over the LDA than the Regional Assemblies would over the
RDAs because I think I am right in saying that the regions outside
London would have to get the government's approval for appointments,
which I am sure the Mayor of London does not. There is no question
that, if you look at the operation of the LDA, it receives 100%
of its income from central government and has targets set by the
Department of Trade and Industry that give it a fairly limited
area within which to work if it is to hit those targets, yet it
is the Mayor who appoints the board members of the London Development
Agency, and the Mayor of London—I do not need to tell the
Committee—has his own view about the economy. So there is
a conflict of accountabilities there between an RDA system which,
after all, outside London has had longer to develop and is undoubtedly
part of the national government machinery for delivering regional
economic improvement—or it seems to be that—and the
powers of the new Regional Assemblies to appoint the members and
presumably to direct policy. So I think inevitably there will
be a tension.
Q62 Christine Russell: Can I ask
your views on the proposed size of the Assembly? The GLA has 25
members, is that correct?
Professor Travers: That is right.
Q63 Christine Russell: In your experience
is that about the right number or are they overworked, under worked?
Is there sufficient capacity for everyone to have a proper role?
Professor Travers: I think the
London Assembly has still failed to find a role for itself; I
think its Assembly members are in some ways 25 politicians in
search of a role. But I think it is worth saying that the London
Assembly members are in a different position to those in any region
set up outside London, for the simple reason that outside London
the model would be more like traditional Parliament or local government
because the parties that would make up the Assembly would have
to constitute an executive in the normal way and choose a leader,
whereas in the London model the executive and leadership bit is
all done by a separate election, and that means the Assembly members,
and particularly in the first four years when the Mayor was an
independent and all 25 members were from parties other than the
Mayor, were put in a very awkward position. The fact that the
party groups are very small creates—I am not a psychologist—unusual
dynamics. It is difficult to whip a group of nine. Everybody knows
everything about everybody and you do not have the anonymity that
makes it possible for Whips to do whatever they do! So the London
Assembly members act either in the sense of requiring to create
a group or to be part of a group or a Party that becomes part
of an administration, with other members being backbenchers, and
they are very small groups. I think that this has made it very
difficult for them to identify a role and I do think, having listened
to the earlier questioning, that the issue of scrutiny, which
this House and some Committees in this House have developed over
the years, is not one that has immediately embedded itself at
the GLA. One of the ways you can follow this is that the GLA,
I think in common with Scotland and Wales, has taken officers
from this House in the hope to use their expertise to help to
develop the scrutiny role, but even that has not worked very successfully
at the GLA.
Q64 Mr Betts: To follow up the point
that was made earlier, is there a potential conflict between the
London-wide members and the constituency based members on the
GLA, whether the problems in Scotland have been repeated in London?
Professor Travers: Interestingly
I think there was an expectation that citywide members, London-wide
members without a constituency might be seen as second-class or
a bit like Aldermen in the old system of local government—
Q65 Chairman: Aldermen were first
class!
Professor Travers: I am sorry!
Different class—to be politically correct—differently
abled. I think that in truth the GLA, partly because of the relative
uncertainty of all Assembly members as to exactly what they were
doing, this difference has not been quite as difficult; the difference
has not proved quite as problematic as might have been expected.
So I do not think it has been a key issue of the GLA; I do not
think that difference has identified itself between a class of
the directly elected and a class of the citywide. I do not think
it occurred in quite the way that some expected.
Q66 Mr Betts: When the GLA was being
advised was there an attempt to build some form of consensus and
acceptance of this method of voting because it does seem as though,
in looking at the establishment of the Regional Assemblies, there
has been virtually no attempt at all to win people in the regions
over to this form of voting or indeed to get their views on it.
Professor Travers: I have to agree
with you. I think that the voting system, which is not, for most
of us in Britain, the cross on the ballot paper with the stubby
pencil, the arrival of these new systems of voting and, in the
case of London, two elections for the same Authority on the same
day, was not well explained. Even at the second election it is
alleged that people did not fully understand the ballot paper.
So I think there is an education role very importantly needed,
which I do not think has ever been fully explained to the London
electorate. Whether they would learn over time, of course, is
another matter. The electorate is adept over time at learning
how to use any system, so perhaps it would eventually learn. But
there is a need for education, I think there is no question.
Q67 Mr Clelland: We have talked about
different classes of member but what about different classes of
employee? Has the Greater London Authority managed to draw a distinction
between employees serving the Executive and those employees serving
the Assembly?
Professor Travers: I think the
honest answer is not. Again, I was trying to be fair to the government
earlier on. I think the GLA legislation, when it was created,
attempted to make the Mayor and the Assembly work consensually
by making the Mayor the executive but giving the Assembly the
power to appoint all the senior officers. In fact, given that
the Assembly is also supposed to scrutinise the Mayor in national
political terms—a bit like allowing the Opposition to appoint
the Senior Civil Service—it is not, in my view, a particularly
appropriate way of making an authority of this kind work. So I
think that the staff of the GLA have found life very difficult
because they are appointed by the Assembly, with a small number
of exceptions who are direct mayoral appointments, and that has
made their lives as the deliverers of the Executive's policies
difficult, and what has happened in fact is that the Mayor, as
the Executive, operates through his office directly to senior
board officers, bypassing the staff and bypassing board members.
It is more like an American model of government, and I am not
sure that this would necessarily work in quite the same way in
the Regional Assemblies outside London. Your question certainly
begs this bigger question of how a single group of staff can reasonably
work for an Executive and a scrutinising body at the same time,
and I do not think it has worked particularly well at the GLA.
Q68 Mr Clelland: We are discussing
the draft Bill here for the Regional Assemblies. Do you think
the Bill adequately deals with this point, or should there be
something included in the Bill, which will deal with that separation
of responsibilities?
Professor Travers: I certainly
think that the legislation should make it clear that the Executive
on any Regional Assemblies and the scrutiny function have reasonable
independence of each other in the way that these Committees employ
officers of Parliament not of the government to oversee the Executive
at national government level. I think that some independence between
these two processes is essential, yes.
Q69 Christine Russell: It is certainly
true in two tier authorities that the poor old district councils,
who collect the council tax, get the blame when the county councils
put up their council tax. Do you think the same occurs with the
GLA in the London boroughs, in that the voters just do not distinguish
between who they are exactly paying their bill to, and do you
think some mechanism should be put in the Bill to make the accountability
much clearer, or should we just change the collection system and
make each "body", if you like, responsible for collecting
its own levies?
Professor Travers: I think going
back to Sir Paul's question and to answer yours, there is no question
that perhaps the single issue that caused the greatest rift between
the boroughs and the Mayor of London in its first couple of years
was the disagreement between the boroughs and the Association
of London Government and the Mayor over a particular precept which
was seen as too high, because the boroughs do feel that it is
their single unified bill that the public sees as being what people
pay and that a sharp rise in the GLA precept is blamed on the
boroughs. So I think the answer to the question is that there
is a problem here, it has been one that has existed in local government,
as we all know, for many, many years, and could only be separated
by separate billing. I have never fully understood myself why
separate billing need be terribly expensive given that it could
still go out in one envelope. It could all be done bureaucratically
with two separate very, very distinctive bills, to make clear
that one is from one authority the other for the other, but there
we are; we have been discussing it for a long, long time.
Q70 Chairman: Would it not be logical
though to have a different basis for the precept other than the
council tax—some other form of funding?
Professor Travers: As I said,
Chairman, I think that for the regions outside London, as for
the London authority, it is important, if they are to work effectively,
that they have a reasonable basis for generating their own resources,
and if as part of doing that they were also perhaps to have a
different tax that would make it even clearer still. For example,
the business rate, which I know this Committee has considered
very recently before, might be made available to regions, leaving
the council tax to the lower tier, to the local tier of government.
I think that would make accountability even clearer.
Q71 Chairman: Very briefly, the GLA's
audit experience, is that one that the Bill more or less builds
on in the English regions? Is the audit working well?
Professor Travers: I think audit
and best value and so on for the GLA are only now fully biting.
I think it is a bit early to judge, to be fair, Chairman. So I
think I had better not try to answer the question in any detail
because I am not sure that I am aware that there has yet been
a great deal of published audit outcome about the GLA and its
groups' first four years, but I have no doubt it will be interesting
to read when it is fully published.
Chairman: On that note can I thank you
very much for your time.
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