Memorandum by the Association of London
Government (ALG) (RG 93)
The Association of London Government (ALG) represents
all 32 London boroughs and the City of London, the Metropolitan
Police Authority and the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority.
SUMMARY
(a) London is the only English region with
any form of elected strategic government. As such, its experiences
since the creation of the Greater London Authority in 2000 can
contribute to the Select Committee's work on regional government,
particularly in view of the current interest in city regions.
(b) The Commission on London Governance,
a review undertaken jointly by the ALG and the London Assembly,
has concluded that regional government is now firmly established
in the capital and is accepted.
(c) It is regrettable that the Government's
current review of the Mayor of London's powers is not examining
London governance more widely. This may lead to a failure to appreciate
that changes to one tier of government have implications for other
tiers.
(d) It is crucial to recognise that appropriate
strategic powers for a regional authority need to be balanced
by adequate influence for local elected representatives. Services
are experienced by the public at the local level. Accountability
must exist at this level, and mechanisms are needed to feed local
experience and priorities into regional strategy-setting. Examples
are quoted from London in relation to housing, learning and skills,
health and policing.
(e) There is need for London's borough councils
to be appropriately represented on the boards of the Greater London
Authority's function bodies for transport, policing, fire and
economic development. A "constitutional settlement"
defining how regional and local government should work together
is advocated.
(f) The Government Office for London has
not been scaled down in response to the creation of a regional
tier of government. This contrasts with the position following
Scottish and Welsh devolution, where the Scotland and Wales Offices
have been reduced in size and scope.
(g) Confusion and complexity arises from
the many quangos operating outside the ambit of regional or local
democratic accountability. Devolving powers to the Mayor of London
from central government and national quangos would improve the
quality, efficiency and accountability of public services.
(h) Much progress has been made in London
on co-ordination at borough, sub-regional and pan-London levels.
Examples are given of partnerships that contribute to the overall
governance of London.
LESSONS FROM
LONDON
1. The creation of the Greater London Authority
in 2000 made London the first English region to gain a form of
elected strategic government. With the public's rejection of a
regional assembly in the Northern region in the 2004 referendum,
London remains the sole working model. Some purists might seek
to question the extent to which London is a region in anything
other than a technical, administrative sense. It is a continuous
urban area, with no equivalent of the mixture of separate cities,
smaller towns and rural communities found in varying degrees in
all eight other English regions. A number of London's most distinctive
characteristics such as its role as the United Kingdom capital,
its global city status, and the extent to which commuters from
outside the boundaries of London local government contribute to
the city's economy and use its services and facilities, are not
replicated elsewhere.
2. There are, however, many factors about
London which are valid in any examination of English regionalism.
These include the diversity and mobility of its population; the
significance of regional transport issues to the city's economy
and quality of life; different policy priorities and pressures
between inner and outer London; urgent demand for more housing
which can be met only by collaboration, and relationships between
central, regional and local government as processed through the
regional Government Office. London's experience offers lessons
to the rest of the country, particularly given the current interest
in the possibility of introducing city regions spanning the boundaries
of a number of local authorities.
3. The Commission on London Governance (CLG),
a review undertaken jointly by the ALG and the London Assembly,
concluded in its final report (A New Settlement for London, February,
2006) that: "Regional government is now firmly established
in the capital and accepted. London's local and regional government
is working well: there is cross-party working in both the Greater
London Authority and the Association of London Government."
This overall assessment is endorsed by the ALG. Not everything
is ideal, but the focus is now on refining and improving London's
regional government rather than questioning its existence. No
significant body of opinion is advocating a return to the fragmented,
pre-2000 London.
4. An opportunity to re-examine some aspects
of regional government in London has been provided by the Government's
review of the powers of the Mayor of London and GLA on which consultation
closed last month. The ALG responded to the review and this document
draws on policy positions adopted in our response. It is a matter
of regret that the Government has chosen to restrict its review's
terms of reference to the GLA's responsibilities. For any tier
of government to work effectively it must collaborate with other
tiers and bodies, and this is certainly the case with London's
regional tier. The London boroughs remain the core units of local
government in the capital. While we favour increasing the Mayor's
powers where appropriate, there is a danger that reviewing the
regional tier in isolation may lead to a failure to recognise
the consequences for other tiers that would result from change
at the strategic regional level. A more broadly-based review of
the way London is run would also be more able to address the extreme
complexity of the capital's overall governance arrangements, which
the Commission on London Governance has identified as a barrier
to service efficiency and public engagement.
5. The GLA was set up as a form of strategic
government for the London region. Experience has shown the importance
of emphasising and maintaining the distinction between the London-wide
strategic function and the role of the boroughs. Obviously, however,
this does not mean that the boroughs and London's local communities
lack an interest in London-wide strategic decision-making. Appropriate
strategic powers for any regional authority (in London's case
the Mayor) therefore need to be balanced by adequate influence
for local government. In London's case this is the boroughs. Members
of the London Assembly do sometimes raise relatively local issues
at Mayor's Question Time and elsewhere and the ALG is in favour
of strengthening the Assembly's powers, perhaps by enabling it
to block implementation of mayoral strategies by a two-thirds
majority. No part of the Assembly's function, however, is to act
as a substitute for elected London local government. It is essential
that the boroughs have adequate input at the regional level: a
few examples from the current consultation on extending the Mayor's
powers may illustrate this point in ways relevant to the Select
Committee's consideration of regional government elsewhere in
England.
6. Housing: The ALG favours transferring
the current responsibilities of the London Housing Board to the
Mayor. It also supports giving the Mayor decision-making powers
over investment in new housing supply. The wider the Mayor's housing
powers become, however, the more difficult it is likely to be
for the boroughs to decide local investment priorities and implement
their own statutory housing powers. So any increase in the Mayor's
responsibilities would need to be accompanied by consultation
requirements and mechanisms for the boroughs to influence the
Mayor's decisions.
7. Learning and skills: The ALG
favours replacing London's five Learning and Skills Councils by
a single regional body, with the Mayor gaining greater strategic
direction of learning and skills policies. A new London-wide organisation
might be a functional body of the GLA or take on some other organisational
structure. The Regional Skills Partnership recently set up in
London would provide an appropriate basis from which to develop
such a strategic body. There are major problems in the London
labour market, where more than 700,000 people have no formal qualifications,
and the present arrangements have proved inadequate at resolving
them. Yet the London-wide setting of priorities and targets is
only part of a set of issues that need to be tackled if Londoners
and the capital's economy are to be equipped with appropriate
skills. The boroughs are most closely linked to London's disparate
local economies and labour markets, and they too need to be able
to influence strategic direction of learning and skills provision.
We have a general concern about creating too many GLA functional
bodies; in some cases the devolution of quango responsibilities
directly to the boroughs, particularly of any commissioning and
operational responsibilities, may be appropriate. That would leave
the Mayor to act at the strategic level.
8. Health: As with the argument
for a single regional learning and skills body, the ALG favours
the establishment of one strategic health authority for London.
To be effective, however, this would have to work with and include
representation from the boroughs as well as the Mayor because
most of the activity that affects individual health outcomes,
ranging from the encouragement of exercise to action to combat
drug and alcohol abuse, takes place in local communities and local
government locations such as schools. There is, in addition, an
immense overlap between social and health care, demonstrated by
the many joint trusts and pooled budgets that exist between the
NHS and local government, and the Government's recent White Paper
"Our Health, Our Care, Our Say" signals an increased
role for local authorities in this area. For such reasons it is
essential for the London boroughs to be represented on any strategic
health board for the capital.
9. Policing: Some aspects of policing
make it an example of a natural regional service, and the Government
is currently moving towards reorganising forces in England and
Wales into larger regional or sub-regional units. As London's
experience shows, however, policing is in other respects also
one of the most local of services, with public priorities influenced
by the particular and differing nature of communities. The public,
through their elected local government representatives, therefore
need two things. Borough councils must have adequate contact with
police commanders at local levels, and also formal opportunities
for influence to ensure that local priorities carry sufficient
weight at the regional, Metropolitan Police Authority level. The
Government's Police and Justice Bill, giving local authorities
via ward councillors a statutory role in demanding police action
on local crime issues, will build on the successful work of Safer
Neighbourhood Teams: such initiatives demonstrate that the Government
sees local issues as of vital importance in crime reduction policy.
10. Two related points link these examples,
and others that could be given in fields such as planning and
waste management. One is that services are experienced by the
public at a local level, making it a democratic imperative that
adequate accountability exists at local level even when services
are of a regional nature. The other is that the local voice needs
to feed into regional strategy-setting. It is for the Select Committee
to reach a view on the appropriateness or otherwise of any case
for extending regional government in England, but London and other
regions are not one-size-fits-all locations. Public needs and
priorities vary within regions, which in London's case makes it
appropriate and necessary that stronger powers for the Mayor should
be accompanied by greater influence for the boroughs. It must
be emphasised that there is nothing contradictory about this position:
advocating stronger borough influence does not call into question
the case for having regional and local tiers in London. It is
simply that, as we argued in our submission to the Government's
review on the GLA, the Mayor's strategic role in areas such as
public health and policing sits alongside a very separate local
dimension. As we said then: "This means the boroughs have
to be built into London's institutional arrangements otherwise
the local dimension—the things that matter to people in
their neighbourhoods and communities—easily becomes overshadowed."
11. The ALG would favour formally addressing
the implications of the above issues through a "constitutional
settlement" for London which would codify how regional and
local government in the capital should work together, setting
out the rights and responsibilities of each tier. There is also
growing interest in London governance circles in setting up a
Senate for London which could link the tiers, possibly giving
the local government tier a role in developing and revising the
Mayor's strategies.
12. A distinctive feature of the GLA structure
is its functional bodies, which are Transport for London, the
Metropolitan Police Authority, the London Fire and Emergency Planning
Authority and the London Development Agency. Each has its own
board, but these are constituted in different ways. London Assembly
members and borough councillors are, for example, barred from
serving on the Transport for London board, while the London Fire
and Emergency Planning Authority board consists entirely of Assembly
members and borough councillors nominated through the ALG. The
Commission on London Governance has recommended that the GLA's
functional body boards should become more representative of London's
government as a whole. Assembly members and borough councillors,
says the Commission, should form a majority on the boards of all
existing and future functional bodies. Adopting such an arrangement,
which we support, would help strengthen the ability of local government
to ensure that the boards of these arms-length regional government
services took proper account of local factors and the views of
people across London.
13. Regional and local government are, of
course, not the only tiers of government in London. As the Analytical
Report (2003) of the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit's London Project
expressed it: "central government has by far the greatest
impact on strategic issues facing London." National government
will clearly always have a particular interest in the capital
and, in common with the rest of the country, the influence of
the centre in London is strongly reinforced by the current local
government finance system, extensive target-setting and other
centralising factors. Particular concerns are felt throughout
London governance that there has been no decline in the scope
or size of the Government Office for London since the introduction
of the GLA. This contrasts with the position following Scottish
and Welsh devolution, where the Scotland and Wales offices have
been scaled down to very small institutions with tightly-defined
duties. It may perhaps be the case that the other English regions
retain the need for Government Offices' current full range of
responsibilities, but in London the position should be revised
to reflect the existence of a regional tier of government. It
must be noted, however, that the size of the Mayor's staff has
also greatly exceeded the Government's original projections, as
have costs. The existing arrangement for financing the GLA through
a precept on the boroughs undermines the Mayor's accountability.
This could be remedied by giving the Mayor an independent and
visible funding stream such as a slice of business rates or a
tourist tax.
14. The above paragraphs will hopefully
have addressed many of the specific issues that the Select Committee
has indicated it will be considering as part of its examination
of regional government. Some of the specific points identified
by the Select Committee are more relevant than others in a London
context but, taking each one briefly:
15. The potential for increasing the
accountability of decision-making at the regional and sub-regional
level, and the need to simplify existing arrangements. As
the Commission on London Governance has identified, much confusion
and complexity arises from the activities of quangos operating
outside the ambit of regional or local democratic accountability.
The ALG supports the Commission's view that devolving powers to
the Mayor from central government and national quangos would improve
the quality, efficiency and accountability of public services.
The five London learning and skills councils, for example, have
a collective annual budget of about £1.2 billion but are
not democratically accountable locally: some do not have a single
councillor on their boards. As we have argued above, the potential
of the boroughs to undertake commissioning and operational co-ordination
at borough level needs to be recognised, rather than simply replacing
the existing LSC structure with a mayoral skills body which would
be equally distant from local issues.
16. The potential for devolution of
powers from regional to local level. As we have explained
there are instances, such as policing and public health, where
some aspects of activities are most logically regional responsibilities
while others are local ones. On occasion, there will inevitably
be differences of opinion over which tier is the more appropriate.
The ALG, for example, does not support the Mayor's view that a
single regional waste authority for London should be established
as a mayoral agency. We believe any change from existing arrangements
should be to one where the boroughs are individually and collectively
responsible, while giving the Mayor an appropriate role in ensuring
that national and regional targets are met.
17. The effectiveness of current arrangements
for managing services at the various levels, and their inter-relationships.
As we have indicated in the course of this submission, much
of our current concern is about activities which are outside the
sphere of democratic accountability at either regional or local
level. So far as functions that are the responsibility of local
and/or regional government are concerned, much progress has been
made in London in recent years at co-ordinating approaches at
borough, sub-regional and pan-London levels. A number of partnerships,
some hosted by the ALG, contribute to the overall governance of
London. These include the London Centre of (Procurement) Excellence,
the London Resilience Team and the Olympics Joint Planning Authorities
Team. Capital Ambition, a project involving both the boroughs
and GLA which will lead to London local government taking a collective
approach to securing service improvement, has just been launched.
18. The potential for new arrangements,
particularly the establishment of city regions. London is
a widely diverse collection of communities: it contains metropolitan
centres on the scale of large, free-standing towns in other parts
of England, and residential areas which display highly distinctive
characteristics. While the parallel with other parts of the country
is not exact, London's experience since 2000 of combining regional
and local government in an urban setting can provide evidence
to inform opinions about English governance more generally. Similarly,
the committee's reference to the impact which new regional
and sub-regional arrangements, such as the city regions, might
have upon peripheral towns and cities is understandably not
cast in a London context. London does, however, have examples
of very distinct local economies, areas of severe deprivation,
prosperous suburbs and an array of different types of town centre
and out-of-town retail facilities, all of which to some extent
mirror conditions elsewhere.
19. The desirability of closer inter-regional
co-operation (as in the Northern Way) to tackle economic disparities.
London's biggest example of a project requiring inter-regional
co-operation is clearly the Thames Gateway. One of the most powerful
lessons to date is the need for clearly-defined decision-making
structures in activities which can involve bewildering number
of different organisations.
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