New
Clause
12
Amendment
of TCPA
‘(1) TCPA 1990 is
amended as follows.
(2) In
section 12(3C) leave out “be in general conformity with”
and insert “have regard
to”.
(3) In section
13(1A) leave out “is in general conformity with” and
insert “has regard
to”.
(4) In section
13(5A) leave out “is not in general conformity with” and
insert “does not have regard
to”.
(5) In section
15(2A) leave out “are in general conformity with” and
insert “have regard
to”.
(6) Leave out
section 21A.
(7) In section 26
leave out subsection
(2)(bb).
(8) In section 74
leave out subsections (1B) and
(1C).
(9) Leave out section
322B.’.—[Michael
Gove.]
Brought
up, and read the First
time.
Motion
made, and Question put, That the clause be read a Second
time:—
The
Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes
10.
Division
No.
20
]
Smith,
Ms Angela C. (Sheffield,
Hillsborough)
Question
accordingly negatived.
New Clause
14
Vacation
of office by Mayor following petition and recall
ballot
‘After section 16 of
the GLA Act 1999
insert—
“16A
Vacation of office following petition and recall
ballot
(1) The Secretary of
State may by regulations make provision for, or in connection with,
requiring the Mayor on receipt of a petition which complies with the
provisions of the regulations and a recall ballot of eligible voters in
London to vacate office, in such circumstances as may be prescribed in
the regulations.
(2) The
provision which may be made by regulations under subsection (1)
includes provision—
(a)
as to the form and content of petitions (including provisions for
petitions in electronic
form),
(b) as to the minimum
number of electors entitled to vote for the Mayor under this Act who
must support any petition presented to the Mayor during any period
specified in the
regulations,
(c) for or in
connection with requiring an office of the GLA to publish the number of
electors who must support any petition presented to the
authority,
(d) as to the way in
which electors are to support a petition (including provision enabling
electors to support petitions by telephone or by electronic
means),
(e) as to the action
which may, may not or must be taken by the Authority in connection with
any petition,
(f) as to the
manner in which a petition is to be
presented,
(g) as to the
verification of any
petition,
(h) as to the minimum
and maximum number of days in which a ballot should be
held,
(i) as to the format and
wording of the recall
ballot,
(j) as to the date on
which, or the time by which, the Mayor must vacate
office,
(k) for or in
connection with enabling the Secretary of State, in the event of any
failure by the Authority to take any action permitted or required by
virtue of the regulations, to take that
action.
(3) The number of
electors mentioned in subsection (2)(b) is to be calculated at such
times as may be provided by regulations under this section and (unless
such regulations otherwise provide) is to be 10 per cent. of the total
number of electors participating in the Mayoral election preceding the
date of any petition.
(4)
Nothing in subsection (2) or (3) affects the generality of the power
under subsection (1).”.’.—[Michael
Gove.]
Brought
up, and read the First
time.
Motion
made, and Question put, That the clause be read a Second
time:—
The
Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes
9.
Division
No.
21
]
Smith,
Ms Angela C. (Sheffield,
Hillsborough)
Question
accordingly negatived.
New Clause
15
Limits
of the general power
(No.2)
‘After section 31(6)
of the GLA Act 1999
insert—
“(6A) The
Authority shall not by virtue of section 30(1) above incur expenditure
in promoting activities or relationships which are primarily the
responsibility of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office or the Department
for International Development, although this does not prevent the
Authority incurring expenditure in co-operating with or facilitating
good relations with other major world cities and regional
authorities.”.’.—[Michael
Gove.]
Brought
up, and read the First
time.
Michael
Gove:
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second
time.
I apologise for
not welcoming you to the Chair at the beginning of the sitting, Lady
Winterton. I was temporarily distracted by the confusion, as much in my
mind as in that of the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington, about
which of us was speaking at the moment when the clock froze the debate
last Thursday. I associate myself with the Minister’s
comments—it is a great pleasure to see you refereeing what I
suspect will be the final stages of our
deliberations.
New
clause 15 is an attempt to deal explicitly with a controversy that has
arisen around this Mayor. It has been our intention throughout the
debate to separate as much as possible the personality of this
incumbent from the broader office of the Mayor, for obvious reasons.
However popular this incumbent might have been, one cannot expect him
to continue in office throughout our lifetime, and we need legislation
that is appropriate for whoever might occupy the office. Inevitably,
though, for as long as there has been a mayoral office in London, Ken
Livingstone has been the occupant, and his exercise of those powers has
to an extent defined in the public mind what the Mayor’s job
could and should
be.
There is
legitimate controversy about many of the Mayor’s decisions and
the powers that he has exercised. We have had an opportunity to revisit
some of those matters—the congestion charge, housing,
planning—and we accept, although we as Conservatives might take
a different view, that the Mayor is within his rights to exercise the
powers allotted to him by the House to shape London in line with the
vision that is his mandate.
However, we are genuinely
concerned that the Mayor is overreaching himself by attempting to use
the office of Mayor of London—and, by association, the prestige
of our capital city—to pursue a foreign policy that is out of
kilter with the views of a majority of Londoners and in opposition to
the Government’s own stated goals. We are all aware that in the
1980s various local authorities attempted to use public money to
effectively turn local authorities into lobbying groups for
international policies. There were lively debates about whether that
spending was legitimate or ultra vires. The new clause would clarify
for this Mayor and, if the Government are willing, other local
government figures, what is legitimate in spending on contact with
foreign cities and other
nations.
It is
entirely appropriate for this Mayor and other local figures to develop
close ties and bonds with comparable cities and bodies in other nations
to help them in the exercise of their duties. Whether it be town
twinning, visiting other cities that have hosted the
Olympics or travelling to New York or Sydney to discover how one city
hones its policing or another its planning policies, such activities
are entirely legitimate. There has recently been controversy about the
amount of time that the Mayor spends in the air, and the Greater London
assembly has pointed out that in the past year he has been responsible
for something like 13 or 14 intercontinental flights. It is
not our business on this occasion to object to the Mayor travelling: it
is how he uses his journeys abroad that concerns
us.
Mr.
Greg Hands (Hammersmith and Fulham) (Con): Does my hon.
Friend agree that it is not so much the Mayor holding foreign policy
views that we object to as when they conflict with his primary duty to
serve the people of London? In November I chaired an open meeting
relating to a bus route in my constituency, the C1. Everybody
was there: myself, the two leaders of the council, the neighbouring
council and two officers from Transport for London. Unfortunately the
current incumbent Mayor was unable to be there because he was on a
flight to
Cuba.
Michael
Gove:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that
point. Most Londoners would consider that if the Mayor had a choice
between travelling on a British Airways flight to Cuba and working out
how to make the C1 bus route work more effectively, his job would be to
concentrate on the C1 rather than turning a flight to Cuba into his own
version of Air Force
One.
Tom
Brake:
Might not the Mayor have been in Cuba
seeking to secure a deal for cheap oil on which to run the
C1?
Michael
Gove:
The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I
shall come to the role that the Mayor envisaged Venezuela playing in
London. One of the technical problems with the Mayor’s attempted
oil deal with Venezuela, which on the surface might have been
attractive to some Londoners, was that any petrol that he managed to
secure would have been subject to excise duty and other taxation. That
would have meant that any saving for Londoners was minimal. Whether
those excise duties are too high is a matter for the Treasury. I simply
point out that, not for the first time, the Mayor was on a
fool’s errand in economic
terms.
The hon.
Gentleman and I have mentioned Cuba and Venezuela, and we must address
how the Mayor has used his office to carve out a distinctive foreign
policy for London. It is not one that reflects particularly well on
London, because there has been a striking connection between the people
whom he has seen. He has sought to use the prestige of his office and
the money of London taxpayers to support and burnish the reputation of
some of the least attractive leaders in the world. Cuba is a country
that, for understandable reasons, occupies an honoured place in the
minds of some people on the radical left. It is entirely understandable
that the romance of the Cuban revolution, which led to the replacement
of the Batista regime, can still entrance and enchant some. The reality
of the revolution is now the betrayal of many dreams: the incarceration
of gay men and women, the suppression of dissent and the limiting of
political freedom where it matters
most.
11
am
Mr.
Slaughter:
I fear that the hon. Gentleman might be falling
into the trap that he accuses the Mayor of falling into. I am not sure
why the history of the Cuban revolution is relevant to the Bill. I hold
no brief for Hugo Chavez, but I can see why the Mayor might sympathise
with a left-wing politician who has been the subject of vilification
and abuse by extreme right-wing forces for a long time. I am not aware
that there are any plans by the Conservative party to kidnap the Mayor
of London in a coup, as happened to Senor Chavez, but if it does
happen, I hope that my constituents will march peaceably on central
office until he is released.
Michael
Gove:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his
intervention. His view seems to be at variance with the official
position of his party. He shows a degree of sympathy for Fidel Castro
but the truth is that, in answer to my question on 12 January, the
Minister for Europe wrote:
“The UK remains
committed to the 1996 EU Common Position, which aims to encourage a
process of...transition to pluralist democracy and respect for
human rights in Cuba.”—[Official Report, 16
January 2007; Vol. 455, c.
989W.]
The hon. Gentleman may
well romantically associate Fidel in his mind with Ken and see them
both as left-wing martyrs who are subject to vilification, but if they
are subject to vilification, it is coming from his right hon. Friend
the Minister for Europe as much as from Washington DC or Conservative
central office.
Mr.
Slaughter:
On a pure point of correction, I do not think
that I mentioned Fidel Castro at all in my intervention. I was
concentrating on purely Bolivarist movements in South America. I would
like to go on at greater length about them, but I fear that I may be
falling into the same trap of a discourse too
far.
Michael
Gove:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what I think
was an attempt at clarification but I suspect that he was being a
trifle disingenuous. His comparison of left-wing leaders who are
subject to right-wing vilification was intended to allow us to see Ken
and Fidel in the same light. If it was not, all I can say is that he
should have made it clearer who he was talking about. I hope that he
and other hon. Members will join me in making clear our unhappiness
about what has been happening for the past 20 years in Cuba under Fidel
and his associates. I mentioned the incarceration of homosexuals.
Recently—
The
Chairman:
Order. What happened in Cuba is not relevant to
the new clause, the phrases of which are somewhat wider. I should be
grateful if Mr. Gove would return to the subject in
hand.
Michael
Gove:
I certainly will, Lady Winterton. I am grateful to
you for that gentle reminder. However, Cuba is material to the exercise
of the Mayor’s powers because, as we know, he recently travelled
to Cuba and, when he did so, he made a conspicuous and deliberate
choice about whom he saw when he was there. He deliberately chose to
see a group of individuals who were family relations to those known as
the Miami five. The individuals whom he saw were the relatives of those
who had been arrested by America on suspicion of terrorist
activity.
It could be
argued that it was fair enough for the Mayor to have spent some time
visiting those people but it is striking that when he was in Cuba, he
did not choose to see the women in white—the recipients of the
Sakharov prize given by the European Parliament to those who have
genuinely been struggling for human rights. The women in white are the
relatives of 75 distinguished liberal academics and
journalists incarcerated by Fidel Castro for speaking up for human
rights. The question that we have to ask is what message does it send
when the Mayor makes such a decision? If he is going to spend public
money travelling to Cuba, we have a right to ask why he is using our
council tax to fund that jaunt. When the Mayor goes to Cuba and the
people whom he chooses to visit are those who support repression and
the people whom he chooses to shun are those who champion democracy, we
have to say that London’s reputation suffers as a
result.
It is not
just Cuba: the Mayor’s thwarted intention to travel to
Venezuela, alluded to by both the hon. Members for Carshalton and
Wallington and for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd’s Bush, also
raises troubling questions. The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez,
with whom he was attempting to negotiate a particular oil deal, is an
individual who recently embraced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of
Iran, and made common cause with him. As I am sure the Committee knows,
Ahmadinejad is a holocaust denier who said that Israel should be wiped
off the face of the map. Is it appropriate for the Mayor of London to
champion someone like Chavez, who is happy not only to share a platform
with a holocaust denier, but to embrace
him?
Ms
Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington, North) (Lab): If
we are going to play this game, does the hon. Gentleman condemn the
previous Conservative premiers’ embrace of General
Pinochet?
Michael
Gove:
I believe that what happened under the Pinochet
regime in Chile was a gross abuse of human rights. There is now a
welcome greater recognition across the parties that human rights are
integral to any modern foreign policy. If are talking about the sins of
the fathers, I point out that it was a Labour Government who enabled
President Ceausescu to come here to meet the Queen and to receive an
honour. In that respect there are skeletons in both parties’
closets. My point, which goes to the heart of the new clause, is that
whatever past Conservative or Labour Governments might have done, they
were the duly elected Governments of their country with the
responsibility to discharge foreign policy, and both were subsequently
defeated at the ballot box. The difference with the Mayor is that he is
attempting to frame his own foreign policy when it is entirely outside
the scope of the office that was originally
envisaged.
Mr.
Hands:
Does my hon. Friend agree with me that the key
difference is that the various people he has described may or may not
have had views on foreign policy, but what offends so many Londoners is
council tax payers’ money being spent on promoting those views,
and holding lavish conferences and receptions for the people whose
views are often very offensive to
Londoners?
Michael
Gove:
My hon. Friend makes an absolutely valid point. The
embrace of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by Hugo Chavez will have offended the
majority of moderate Muslims in London and given other communities in
London, notably the Hindu, Sikh and Jewish communities, pause for
thought. They might have been inclined to notice that embrace more than
others because of a previous hug that the Mayor himself indulged in. He
physically embraced Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi the head of
the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organisation that has extensive
international links. Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi is on the record
as supporting suicide bombing, the physical chastisement of homosexuals
and of husbands hitting women in the home with an open hand—he
said explicitly that a slap is an acceptable way of enforcing
discipline at home. Most of us would find those views at best mediaeval
and at worst barbaric, yet the Mayor chose deliberately to embrace that
individual as part of what he construed as his own distinctive
contribution to foreign policy.
As my hon. Friend the Member
for Hammersmith and Fulham says, the expense of bringing Sheikh Yusuf
Al-Qaradawi over here is one thing, but the message that that embrace
sent out about London and what the Mayor of London considered to be an
effective model of multiculturalism is one that many of London’s
minorities found deeply worrying.
Martin
Linton:
Would these views not be better expressed in a
press release issued at the hon. Gentleman’s expense? Has he any
idea how much it costs to run a Committee like this, which has been
discussing Chile, Cuba, Iran and various countries around the world?
Surely he could do that in his own
time?
Michael
Gove:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for being so
scrupulous about the Committee’s time. If at any stage the
Minister wishes to acknowledge that he will accept the new clause I
will be more than happy to sit down to save myself the bother of
developing the case and the hon. Gentleman the expense in time of
listening to it. However, it is important to rehearse the case because,
as my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham pointed out,
these issues go to the heart of the character of the current incumbent
and to the heart of one of the weaknesses in the legislation that
governs what he can
do.
Mr.
Slaughter:
I hesitate to spring, or to rise gradually, to
the hon. Gentleman’s defence. He has sat through the porridge of
the Bill so far and this is his jelly and ice cream; this is what he
enjoys doing. It is a little bit of froth on the top. He dismissed the
comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington,
North rather too lightly. He cannot completely exculpate himself from
his party’s link to, say, the regime of General Pinochet, who
died recently. A great apologist for him, Lord Lamont, said that in
South American terms the 300 or 3,000 people or whatever it was that
Pinochet bumped off was a relatively trivial matter. Is that the
official view of the Conservative party? There is a direct link of
hagiography from Lord Lamont to the right hon. Member for Witney
(Mr. Cameron) to the hon. Gentleman. I think that he ought
to be a little more precise.
Michael
Gove:
I suspect that I would tax the Committee’s
patience too much if I were to embark on a lengthy explanation of the
precise nature of all the crimes of the Pinochet regime. Suffice it to
say, as I tried to point out to the hon. Member for Regent's Park and
Kensington, North, past Conservative Governments have made specific
foreign policy mistakes, some of which I have had the opportunity to
point out elsewhere in Committee. For example, they could be taxed with
their attitudes towards the Balkans, particularly Slobodan Milosevic,
but now is not the
time—
The
Chairman:
Order. I again point out to those contributing
to the debate that the clause is about the authority incurring
expenditure and so on. Discussion of the character of the present Mayor
and the foreign policy of previous Governments is not in order. I shall
be grateful if members of the Committee, having made their points, move
on.
Michael
Gove:
I am grateful, Lady Winterton. I mentioned the
particular case in response to my hon. Friend the Member for
Hammersmith and Fulham and the concerns of London council tax payers.
One such concern will be the projected cost—£2
million—of a festival that the Mayor proposes to hold in 2009 to
celebrate 50 years of the Cuban revolution. With your permission, Lady
Winterton, I thought it appropriate to outline the Mayor’s views
because I, and many Londoners, consider the nature of many of the
regimes that he has feted to be unacceptable. The money is being spent
on a cause and for a purpose that is entirely out of sympathy with the
views, I believe, of a majority of
Londoners.
At the
beginning of my remarks I pointed out that in the 1980s there were
lively debates about whether it was appropriate for local government to
spend taxpayers’ money on pursuing foreign policies, or whether
such expenditure was ultra vires. Central to that question was the
importance of drawing a distinction. Local government can legitimately
undertake activities to bolster civic pride and establish commercial
and personal links between particular local government areas and
comparable areas abroad. Twinning and fact-finding missions are
entirely legitimate. What we contend is not appropriate is use of the
mayoral office and council tax payers’ money on the prosecution
of a foreign policy that runs counter not only to the stated foreign
policy of the Government in power, but to the values that people in
Britain and in London increasingly consider to be integral to civilised
life.
The
Mayor of London held a conference on Saturday, entitled “A World
Civilisation or a Clash of Civilisations?” The Mayor used that
conference as a platform to outline some views that I and, I suspect,
the majority of Londoners do not share. I recognise as entirely
legitimate that the Mayor may hold conferences in London on how London,
as a multiracial, multicultural and multi-ethnic city, can be better
governed and more harmoniously led. To do that is entirely within the
ambit and scope of what is appropriate for the Mayor. However, the
present or any future Mayor using public money to travel abroad and
laud regimes that most Londoners and Britons find offensive is not
appropriate, nor is then putting London council tax payers’
money into festivals intended to celebrate the achievements of regimes
that the majority of our fellow citizens consider not worthy of
celebration, but, rather, worthy of working to
change.
11.15
am
Tom
Brake:
I echo the comments of pleasure about your
chairmanship this morning, Lady Winterton. You have clearly set a
standard and will not allow the Committee to stray far from its
brief.
The hon.
Member for Surrey Heath is normally very persuasive. However, in the
course of his argument in favour of new clause 15, my position changed
from support to opposition. I might characterise the new clause as the
Evening Standard new clause because it is intended to create a
headline about not wanting a Mayor who spends more time in Havana than
Havering, or more time in Caracas than Kew—a place that the
Mayor has never visited.
I understand what the hon.
Gentleman is trying to achieve. He will probably agree with me that in
practice, the present Mayor or a future one will pay for any foreign
escapades at the ballot box. That is the appropriate place to pay for
any excesses. If we examine the proposed new clause, we find that it
would introduce a degree of uncertainty. For instance, it would be
difficult to confirm whether the Mayor has overstepped the mark by
encroaching on something that is primarily the responsibility of the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, or whether the expenditure that he
incurs in co-operating with other major world cities is legitimate. The
hon. Gentleman will realise that if the proposed new clause were
accepted, the Mayor could proceed exactly as now. He would be able to
say that he was having a series of meetings with key people in a major
city, as opposed to encroaching on work that would be better done by
the FCO and the Department for International Development.
I understand the point that the
hon. Gentleman is seeking to make with the proposed new clause, but its
weaknesses render it unusable. Should the hon. Gentleman press it to a
Division, I will not support him.
Robert
Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con): I shall be brief in
voicing my support for new clause 15 because the basic principles have
been well rehearsed. I am disappointed by what the hon. Member for
Carshalton and Wallington says about it because the Liberal Democrats
in the assembly have condemned some of the Mayor’s more
outlandish escapades just as vigorously as the Conservatives have.
Members of the Labour group on the assembly have looked embarrassed, as
I hope some Government MPs are.
The Mayor’s behaviour is
representative of a cast of behaviour that damages the institution of
the mayoralty. When any Mayor does something that Londoners regard as
wholly off the wall, it causes them to think that everyone at city hall
is a waste of space and to ask what they pay their council tax for.
That is a shame and a matter of regret for those of us who supported
the creation of strategic city-wide governance for London at a time
when it was not fashionable within my party.
My concern is that the Mayor
damages the argument for having an effective, strategic authority for
London by going off on his digressions. One cannot help but feel that
way. In the eight years the Mayor has been in office, he has visited
Bromley three times and Bexley twice. People in those parts of London
will compare them to the other places the Mayor has visited and
question his priorities. That argument is not a game or a bit of
knocking copy. The Mayor not only damages himself at the ballot
box—though I hope he does—but damages the institution,
which is the more serious point. The fact that he does so by visiting
some particularly authoritarian types makes it all the worse.
I was
particularly concerned about the Mayor’s recent jaunt, which I
raise here because we have not yet had a satisfactory response. I shall
not go into the details of his trip to Cuba, but considering some of
the comments made by Labour Members, it is ironic that when the Mayor
was asked about it in the London assembly meeting, he spent the bulk of
his reply rubbishing the Foreign Office’s considered assessment
of the human rights situation in Cuba. He specifically rubbished
quotations from the Foreign Secretary that I read to him. I simply
throw that into the ether for the consideration of Labour Members so
that they know what their friend is
doing.
Michael
Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con): Will my hon. Friend give
way?
Mr.
Slaughter:
Will the hon. Gentleman give
way?
Robert
Neill:
I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for
Lichfield, who caught my eye
first.
Michael
Fabricant:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I have spent
some time touring Cuba. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is only too
easy for someone such as the Mayor to go there from London and get the
impression that Cuba is a free society because people are quite open,
but be totally unaware of the number of writers and artists who are
held in prison in that undemocratic land? Is it not a waste of the
Mayor’s time and resources for him to spend his time doing that
rather than caring for the people of
London?
Robert
Neill:
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Sometimes the
Mayor’s extraordinary naivety in that regard—I am trying
to be charitable—reminds me of people such as George Bernard
Shaw in the 1930s who told us what a wonderful place the Stalinist
Soviet Union was, perhaps hoodwinked by the same type of extremely
controlled visit. The message is exactly the
same.
Mr.
Slaughter:
On a point of clarification, I have never had
the pleasure of attending a session of the GLA. Is the one that the
hon. Gentleman describes typical, with members reading quotes from the
Foreign Secretary about Fidel Castro and getting a response from the
Mayor? Before he criticises expenditure, perhaps he would like to put
his own house in order and remove the plank from his own
eye.
Robert
Neill:
That was an ingenious attempt to make a tackle, but
it went wholly into the mud. The whole point of the question that I
asked was to get the Mayor to give an account of the expenditure that
had been incurred and the priorities that caused him to incur it. I
imagine that it is not unknown for quotes to be read out in Hammersmith
and Fulham council meetings, which seems to be the fount of most of the
hon. Gentleman’s experience. I shall take no lessons from him on
that.
The
interesting thing about the Mayor’s attempt to enter into
contractual relationships with the Government of Venezuela was that he
was not dealing with another municipality or city. It was not the sort
of deal that might be done between the Greater London authority and the
authority of Shanghai, New York city, Bombay or another major city. It
was an attempted deal between a local authority in the UK and a
national Government, or at any rate the national corporation that
controls the oil. That is bizarre, and I have not had a satisfactory
answer from the Mayor on whether he sought advice from the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office, the Department of Trade and Industry or—I
shall come to my reason for including this last
Department—the Home Office.
It was not
only the contract that was of concern. The hon. Member for Carshalton
and Wallington might recall that in the assembly debate the leader of
the Green party group made the fair comment that the Mayor did not seem
to understand that oil was not necessarily compatible with a
climate-friendly approach. The Mayor seemed to think that there were
two types of oil—nasty capitalist oil, which was bad, and good
socialist oil, which was to be welcomed. I hope that on reflection the
hon. Gentleman will support us on the new
clause.
Tom
Brake:
May I bring the hon. Gentleman back to the
effectiveness of the new clause? He has referred to the DTI.
Negotiating oil deals might be that Department’s responsibility,
but the new clause refers only to the FCO and DFID and so does not
appear to cover the scenario to which he is
referring.
Robert
Neill:
If the hon. Gentleman wishes to reconsider his
vote, we will be happy to table a more comprehensive new clause on
Report to include all the appropriate
Departments.
Robert
Neill:
I shall give way in just a moment once I have
finished my
point.
Having gone
down that route, the Mayor was condemned in the Assembly. It would not
be a bad idea to prevent future Mayors from getting themselves into
that
mess.
Martin
Linton:
I just wonder if the hon. Gentleman has any idea
of the cost to the public purse of running a Committee for half a day?
His speech is in danger of forcing us to meet this
afternoon.
Robert
Neill:
It is interesting how sensitive Government Members
are on this topic. The Committee has a timetable for a full
day’s business, but given the promptness with which the
Committee has dealt with the Bill, we should finish our proceedings
well within that timetable. I am sorry that Government Members are so
sensitive about the subject that we are
discussing.
I have one
final point that it is important to make while the Minister is here
because he might not be aware of it. Many of us were particularly
concerned when the Mayor indicated that he was prepared to
enter into an arrangement with the Government of Venezuela to make
available to them Metropolitan police expertise and data on
surveillance, fingerprinting and other technical matters. The
Government of Venezuela’s human rights record has been
criticised by Amnesty International—an organisation with which
the Mayor is not unfamiliar and which can hardly be characterised as
right wing. It is genuinely troubling if a Mayor of London seeks to
make such material available to a foreign Government with a question
mark—to put it mildly—over their human rights record, and
does so without consulting Her Majesty’s Government. That has
implications for Government policy and the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office. There ought to be mechanisms to restrain such behaviour. I have
never succeeded in getting a satisfactory explanation of what attempts,
if any, the Mayor ever made to consult with Her Majesty’s
Government on something that could, for obvious reasons, have damaged
significantly not only London’s reputation, but the United
Kingdom’s. That is why we have proposed the new clause and why I
hope that hon. Members will support it.
Norman
Baker (Lewes) (LD): First, I apologise to you, Lady
Winterton, and to the hon. Member for Surrey Heath for not being
present for the beginning of his contribution this morning. I am happy
to take part in the debate. Secondly, I wish to defend Conservative
Members. I do not do it very often, but let me do it quickly. The House
of Commons operates a democracy and we are entitled to use the time
available for what we think is appropriate. The Bill has been
timetabled for a particular length of time and if Conservative Members
want to occupy it with the debate that they have introduced this
morning, that is a matter for them. If I may say so, it is not for
others to bring in arguments about how much a particular debate might
cost. That is entirely
inappropriate.
Having
defended Conservative Members, I shall now disagree with the case
advanced this morning by the hon. Member for Surrey Heath. There is a
danger of confusing the occupant of an office with the office itself.
Comments this morning have been largely critical of the activities of
the Mayor. I am not going to defend his activities in all respects. I
do not think that some of his foreign affairs expeditions and
activities are appropriate. I would even go as far as to use the word
“escapades”, which I think was used by the hon. Member
for Bromley and
Chislehurst.
The
Committee might recall, however, that last week we had a debate on
climate change, during which I argued strongly, as too did Conservative
Members, that it was inappropriate for the Government to set terms of
reference for the Mayor’s climate change strategy and that he
should be free to pursue a policy on, say, energy or transport that
might differ from the Government’s if he thought it appropriate
for London. We argued that the Mayor has his own mandate through the
ballot box and is fit to discharge it, and the people who should judge
whether he discharges it appropriately or whether he is abusing his
position to undertake activities that are irrelevant to London are the
electors of London when they next vote for a Mayor. The same argument
applies
today.
11.30
am
I do not think
it is appropriate that the Mayor has undertaken some of the activities
he has but he should be free to behave badly, if that is how people
wish to interpret it. He should be free to undertake escapades, to use
the expression of the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst. He
should be free to liaise with unpleasant, dictatorial, authoritarian
regimes if he thinks that he should. I happen to think that he is
entirely wrong on that. I think he is entirely out of step with the
people of London in following that course, but he has his mandate to do
so and he will pay the price for that accordingly—and indeed
does pay the price by way of the negative coverage that appears in the
newspapers and the damage to his personal reputation.
I also think it is
dangerous to try to talk about the regime. We should stick to
principles here. Members have criticised the Mayor for meeting
particular regimes that are authoritarian by nature, as indeed they
are, and which have rather unpleasant aspects to them, but would the
same criticism apply if he met people from Italy or from Canada or from
New Zealand or other countries where the same criticism on the same
human rights basis would not be applicable? I did not hear criticisms
of that. I hope that we are not saying that the Mayor is free to meet
foreign leaders or undertake a foreign policy where Members would not
object to the people he is meeting but not free to meet those to whom
they would object. Surely the principle is whether or not he is free to
undertake meetings at all on a foreign policy basis. I happen to think
that he is because he has his own mandate; because London is a very
important city in the world; and because there is a great deal of
decentralisation in most countries of the world, beyond that which
there is in this country in terms of the power exercised by leaders of
major cities. Indeed, leaders of major cities across the world would
expect the Mayor of London to deal with matters beyond whether the
dustbins are emptied on time. It is a great pity that the Mayor of
London, and indeed our local elected representatives at all levels, do
not have the freedom in this country that they have in other countries,
and we should move towards that.
It would be entirely
respectable and understandable if leaders of other major cities in the
world wanted to discuss foreign policy and foreign matters with the
Mayor. As I say, he will pay a price or otherwise for that. I urge
Conservative Members not to play the ball but to play the game, as it
were, on this particular occasion because we had an unfortunate
incident 25 years ago when the then Conservative Government
took great dislike to the same individual, Ken Livingstone, when he was
running the Greater London council. They objected to how he was using
his powers in the Greater London council and the consequence of that
was that Mrs. Thatcher decided to abolish the Greater London
council. In my view, that was an entirely wrong decision to have taken.
She should have criticised the leadership, if she wanted to. She did do
so and I would have to agree with her on many occasions regarding Ken
Livingstone’s activities in that incarnation as leader of the
Greater London council. Just because the occupant at the time was
behaving in a way that many people would find unacceptable, however, is
not a reason to abolish the authority. Similarly, because the present
Mayor of London is not
to everyone’s taste and is not particularly to mine in many
respects either, that is not a reason to impose curtailing powers on
what a Mayor might do. I ask Members to look at the general principles
rather than the personalities; to consider the principle, apart from
anything else, of devolution and of his own particular accountability
and mandate. For those reasons I cannot support the new
clause.
Mr.
Hands:
I join other Members in welcoming you back to the
Chair, Lady Winterton. You will be delighted to hear that I am not
going to speak at length and nor am I going to discuss items of foreign
policy because I think that is slightly missing the point about this
amendment. This amendment is in a tradition of regulations governing
local authorities on things like ultra vires. It is about what local
authorities, in this case the GLA, or the Mayor of London can or cannot
spend. The key part, in my view, of this proposed new clause are the
two words “incur expenditure”. I do not think that
anybody is disputing the fact that the present Mayor or future Mayor
or, indeed, anybody here may or may not have views on the big foreign
policy issues of the day. The key question, in my view, is whether he
or she should be allowed to incur expenditure in promoting those views.
I agree with the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's
Bush’s criticism of those at the assembly who sought to initiate
a debate about human rights in Cuba, when real the point was whether
the Mayor should incur expenditure in promoting a particular view about
Cuba. This is really a debate about what local authorities should be
able to spend money
on.
We are talking
about considerable sums. The conference last Saturday, “A World
Civilisation or a Clash of Civilisations?” to which my hon.
Friend the Member for Surrey Heath referred, was held at lavish expense
at the QEII conference centre; the entire centre was booked out to
discuss foreign policy. An elite panel of speakers from around the
world came to the conference, which included sessions on democracy in
the middle east. I am a huge believer in promoting democracy in that
region, but I have never used council tax payers’ money to do
so, which is the key point behind the proposed new clause.
Many council tax payers in
London are feeling the effects of rising council tax, although my own
council, Hammersmith and Fulham, has just achieved a 3 per cent. cut.
Residents are appalled that, at the same time as their hard-working,
newly elected council has achieved that reduction, the Mayor has hiked
his take in the GLA precept by more than 5 per cent. Part of that rise
is undoubtedly due to huge extravagance on the part of the Mayor in
running events such as that at the QEII conference centre.
I am surprised that the Liberal
Democrats do not support the proposed new clause, as it would protect
council tax payers’ money. It is in the ultra vires tradition,
in which I assume they believe. It would give protection against local
authorities spending council tax payers’ money on things that
were well beyond their remit. I therefore support the proposed new
clause.
The
Minister for Housing and Planning (Yvette Cooper):
I
welcome you to the Chair, Lady Winterton. I will follow your guidance
in refraining from tours of
Cuba, Latin America, the Balkans and whatever other countries Opposition
Members may suggest.
The hon. Member for Surrey
Heath has said throughout the passage of the Bill that he does not want
to be capricious, to personalise the debate, or to single out
particular individuals. That is exactly what he has done, however. I
agree with the hon. Member for Lewes that a political debate about an
individual has been confused with a debate on the sensible legislative
proposals that the Committee must consider.
The hon. Member for
Hammersmith and Fulham attempted to make the proposed new clause an
issue of principle, which I assume is to distinguish between the
interests of the Foreign Office on one hand and good relations between
cities on the other. I am sure that hon. Members want to be consistent
and, as the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said, would apply
that principle to any mayor, be it the Mayor of London, a borough
mayor, the mayor of a local council or the lord mayor of London. In
order to depersonalise the issue, it is worth considering the impact of
that approach on the lord mayor of London and his foreign visits. In
his speech to the City banquet in September, the lord mayor
said:
“During
this year so far, some 72 heads of
government...or...ministers from 39 countries have called on
the Lord Mayor...I am in the final stages of an annual programme
of visiting 23.”
In an
earlier debriefing after a series of trips, he said:
“Welcome to this debrief
on the Mayoral visits to Kuwait in January; Libya, Tunisia and Malta in
February and Iran; Oman and Qatar in April and
May.”
Mr.
Hands:
Fundamentally, the Minister does not understand the
nature of the City of London corporation. The role of the lord mayor of
London is to promote London as a financial centre, which is what the
visits are all about. The visits are paid for by businesses located in
the square mile, which are more than happy to see London promoted as a
financial centre competing with the relative attractions of Frankfurt
and New York. Those visits are very important. It is events such as the
clash of civilisations conference in the QEII conference centre that
she appears to support and that the amendment is seeking to
stop.
Yvette
Cooper:
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about
the promotion of London, whether as a financial centre, a great
location to do business, the best possible location for the Olympics or
a great capital city. He is absolutely right—we do believe that
that is important. Many of the issues raised by the lord mayor of
London on his overseas trips are ones in which the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office has a strong interest. Many of them could well be
regarded as primarily the responsibility of the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office. The point is that the new clause’s approach
is simply not practical. It is not sensible and confuses personality
debates with the attempt to provide sensible legislation for the future
of the mayoral role.
Michael
Gove:
The Minister acknowledges that the lord mayor of
London has a valuable role in burnishing the reputation of the City as
a centre for investment. Does she believe that the current Mayor of
London—the only person to have exercised those powers so
far—has burnished the reputation of the City by, for example,
embracing the international head of the Muslim Brotherhood or visiting
the families of people detained under terrorist
offences?
Yvette
Cooper:
Once again the hon. Gentleman wants to engage us
in a discussion about the particular individual who is the current
Mayor rather than the clause before us. That is what he has attempted
to do throughout the debate. I presume that that is his motivation,
other than simply to show us that he is a frustrated shadow Foreign
Secretary and would like any opportunity to tour the world with his
further
examples.
Martin
Linton:
I thank my hon. Friend for that. Is it not also
true that the lord mayor of the City of London often gives the
impression on foreign trips that he or she is speaking for the entire
population of London? Often they speak not only in the interests of the
City but against, for instance, Canary Wharf in the constituency of my
hon. Friend the Minister for London, which is a competitor to it. The
lord mayor of London often actually damages the interests of the rest
of London, and it is only right in those circumstances that the true
Mayor of London should have the flexibility, when he judges it to be
right, to promote the interests of all Londoners and not just those of
a section.
Yvette
Cooper:
I shall resist the temptation to comment on
the individual decisions and outings of any mayor, whether it be the
lord mayor of London or the Mayor of Greater London. It is not the
purpose of the Committee to allow me to comment on any of those visits
or approaches. I will say simply that the issues raised may well be
issues of strong interest to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and
would therefore be covered by the
clause.
Mr.
Hands:
It is unfair and wrong of the Minister to seek an
equivalence between the role of the lord mayor of London and the
elected Mayor of London. The lord mayor is doing a brilliant job in
promoting London as a financial centre, the envy of the world; New York
City has just launched its own large-scale inquiry into why it is
falling behind London as a financial centre. To equate his work in any
way with the activities of the elected Mayor of London and his foreign
policy activities is fundamentally wrong and undermines the role of the
City of London Corporation in promoting Britain as a financial
centre.
11.45
am
Yvette
Cooper:
I will take the hon. Gentleman’s remarks as
an indirect compliment to the hard work of the Government’s City
Minister, who has indeed been working hard alongside the lord mayor,
whether in New York or in other countries, to raise issues about the
City. I do not think that the debate is about the individual trips that
any mayor, lord mayor, mayor of a
borough or mayor of a council across the country should take. It is
about the appropriate framework for the legislation. We do not think
that it would be appropriate, as Conservative Members seem to be
suggesting, to introduce restrictions on mayors who are directly
elected that we would not introduce on those who are not. On that
basis, the Government oppose the
amendment.
Michael
Gove:
I am disappointed that the Minister declines to
speak warmly of the amendment, let alone to support it. I am surprised
that she seeks to shelter behind the lord mayor’s carriage to
avoid expressing any view on issues of political moment to Londoners.
In a way, I am not surprised that she has done so. It seems to be a
rather tragic example of political cowardice at a time when the country
is crying out for political leadership that she should decline to offer
any opinion about one of this country’s most famous Labour
politicians and his embrace of authoritarian regimes and mediaeval
theocratic ideologues, but I think that Londoners can draw an
appropriate inference from her silence on such matters. Her Pontius
Pilate approach does not reflect well on her or the
Government.
It is
quite clear from the Government’s approach that they are
perfectly happy to play a double game. They are happy to allow Ken
Livingstone to run a foreign policy in London in order to gather votes
from one particular constituency and at the same time, with the voice
of the Foreign Office, to run a foreign policy more closely in tune
with the country’s interests. Londoners will draw an appropriate
conclusion about the cynicism of the Government from the way that the
Mayor is operating at a deniable distance for electoral reasons. For
that reason, I believe that this debate has served its purpose. I beg
to ask leave to withdraw the
motion.
Motion and
clause, by leave,
withdrawn.
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