Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200-215)
COUNCILLOR TONY
NEWMAN, COUNCILLOR
EDWARD LISTER
AND COUNCILLOR
STEVE HITCHINS
20 MARCH 2006
Q200 Alison Seabeck: Broadly, what
you are saying is the Act as established has generally worked
pretty well in terms of the boroughs' interests?
Councillor Newman: There is almost
a unique level of support in terms of that but there is a quite
legitimate tension. That is what the ALG represents in all the
boroughs. That is very much our role, to represent the boroughs
in precisely those issues that are being teased out. The waste
strategy is another one. There should be a strategic role in terms
of how London addresses the waste strategy for London but it is
precisely at the point that becomes an operational function and
strategic policy that the boroughs work very well together. The
areas' agreement is that the Mayor has been a success in terms
of the structures. The boroughs' role within that is something
we are constantly teasing out and the role of individual boroughs
is separate from the ALG and the relationship they have with the
Mayor as well. London government is working pretty well but that
is not to say there are not areas that we need to constantly review.
Alison Seabeck: Taking you out of London
is probably a little unfair but you all have very wide experience
in local government. You say in your submission that increasing
powers for regional government might make it more difficult for
local authorities to make independent decisions on spending and
to use their own powers. What formal mechanisms do you feel, given
the London experience, ought to be in place to safeguard the separation
between the regional and local government powers in England?
Q201 Chair: Can you use your experience
to comment on what you think it should be for the English regions?
Councillor Hitchins: One of the
experiences that we have had in London is perhaps the limited
accountability that the Mayor has to the Greater London Assembly.
The Greater London Assembly has one power which is to overturn
the Mayor's budget by a two thirds majority. It has no say in
the Mayor's strategies. It can comment upon them; it can scrutinise
them but it does not hold them to democratic accountability. What
we would like to see just does not work in London. There is not
any legislative requirement on the Mayor to consult with the boroughs.
We can chip in if we like but he never comes to us and says, "What
is your view on this strategy?" Strengthening those things
would be important. The other thing that works in London's favour
and which I think should extend and may be worth considering is
the coterminosity of the services and their delivery. The London
boroughs have fire, police and PCTs which makes the partnership
working very much easier and also makes the delivery enshrined
at that level. That transparency is something that would work
elsewhere very effectively.
Councillor Lister: This coterminosity
is very powerful in London. It is the area where we as boroughs
are constantly seeking to try and get more influence on the Mayor
or on central government, whichever. In the case of the police
we are looking for greater powers in appointments of borough commanders
and things like this. We are constantly pushing at the edges in
those sorts of areas because that is where we are working together
so well. That is where the success is. That alone has contributed
enormously to the success of the London scene.
Councillor Newman: I absolutely
support those comments. In terms of layers of governance and the
role of Assembly members in London, where do they sit in that
relationship between the boroughs and the Mayor? I know the Mayor
himself has suggested that the Assembly members could be replaced
by a senate of borough leaders, which caused a lively discussion.
Q202 Chair: Could I ask you to expand
your views on the Government Office for London? You have suggested
that it should be reduced in size and scope. Would you like to
briefly explain why?
Councillor Lister: When the GLA
and the Mayor were first set up, it was generally assumed that
the size and scope of the Government Office for London would reduce
commensurately. Instead, we have seen the opposite. We have seen
a Mayor's office which has grown and grown. We have seen a Government
Office for London that has grown and grown. I would suggest to
you that there is not a lot of benefit out of these two massive
bureaucracies growing at this rate. We should have seen a reduction.
We already recognise that the Government Office for London has
to be the vehicle of government and has to be their representative
and all the rest of it, but many of the powers of the Government
Office for London have in part moved over to the Mayor or to other
places and we should have been seeing a reduction of the powers
of the Government Office for London as the mayoral powers have
grown.
Q203 Chair: Can you be specific about
a specific area where you can get rid of people in the Government
Office for London?
Councillor Lister: One that really
gets up my nose in a big way is that the Government Office for
London sets the crime targets in my borough. I can understand
if that was being done by the Metropolitan Police or the Mayor.
I fail to understand why it has to be done by the Government Office
for London.
Q204 John Cummings: If it is working
it does not matter who sets the targets.
Councillor Lister: The Mayor has
been established as the man in charge of the Metropolitan Police
and therefore these targets should be set by him.
John Cummings: It does not matter who
sets the targets as long as the targets are being met, there is
a reduction in crime and people feel more confident and safer.
Q205 Chair: The point is that there
is more than one person setting the target and setting the target
does not deliver it. Is there another example?
Councillor Hitchins: The best
example came when Rhodri Morgan came to the London Governance
Commission and gave evidence on behalf of Wales and their experience.
We asked him about the Welsh Office and he said, "It had
just been reduced dramatically." It was to answer the requirements
of the House of Commons, Members of Parliament, and also to brief
ministers about what was going on in Wales. He also took the view,
which is what we would expect the Mayor to do when we are negotiating
for London's financial settlement, that the Government Office
for London is sitting on the other side of the table from London.
They are sitting with the minister instead of arguing our case
and we would welcome the Mayor's office doing that with the boroughs.
Q206 Mr Betts: You probably see the
Mayor in a quite high profile way, where he has from time to time
been the key driving force behind what happens in London. At the
same time, you are trying to indicate that the collaboration between
boroughs is very important as well. What weight do you place on
those two facts in terms of delivering good governance to London?
How far do you think the Mayor relies on boroughs working together,
providing a basis and framework within which he can act?
Councillor Newman: The Mayor or
any mayor can only benefit from the boroughs working closely together
and that is in the interests of good governance in London. Returning
to the earlier discussion about the operational delivery, it is
the boroughs that rightly have operational responsibility for
delivering the overwhelming amount of services in London. The
reputation of a local government, as we all know, starts with
the bins being emptied and goes through to the crime statistics
in their borough, whoever is setting them. Getting that balance
will never be right. There will be a constant tension, but we
have a greater understanding now. I would not want to put a figure
on where that balance is but I think the boroughs are absolutely
critical to government in London and the reputation of any mayor.
Q207 Mr Betts: One thing we have
heard in terms of evidence about other parts of the country is
that they are looking at the concept of city regions. Some are
saying to us, "You did not need a formal structure—i.e.,
a mayor or similar arrangements—to pull the thing together.
You can have the existing local authorities working together in
collaboration as a way of delivering governance for the city regions."
Councillor Hitchins: That is a
fair argument if you come from a place like Liverpool where there
is a city council at the centre of that region. The boroughs see
themselves as independent and equally as relevant to their area.
In London, we have to admit that the mayoral structure has worked
because there is someone who represents the whole of London. It
must be questionable whether we would have got the Olympics without
a mayoral structure in place. Where the boroughs are showing increasing
maturity in government is that we are now defining the boundaries
for delivery of service by what that service requires rather than
every borough having to have an individual service. We are combining
in some areas increasingly to deliver services without delegating
them up to the Mayor.
Councillor Lister: That is right.
The other great strength has been that the boroughs have become
used to working together for a long period of time. That is also
important. There is a bit of a legacy of working together, not
in conflict. That has helped us to try and identify those services
which we can do better together. We also recognise that the Mayor
does add a little bit extra to the whole thing. The Mayor does
act as a focal point for certain campaigns, such as the Olympics,
which was a good example, where you can bring together all those
London services, where one person represents them. We also have
the same true of other cross-London services. We are currently
arguing very strongly, for example, that the Mayor should have
a greater say in learning and skills because there is a big problem
in London with Learning and Skills Councils. We all feel quite
strongly that that is where the Mayor should be leading, albeit
the boroughs will be working with the Mayor.
Q208 Mr Betts: In London's case you
need an elected mayor to pull it together?
Councillor Lister: I think you
need something there, yes.
Q209 Chair: Can I ask you about the
public perception of the government structure within London with
the Mayor, the Assembly and the boroughs? Do you feel that the
complexity of that structure is understood by members of the public
and they know where to get their voice heard? Do you think it
undermines the effectiveness of London?
Councillor Hitchins: I sometimes
wonder if we understand it. It is extremely complex and some of
the diagrams of the governance of London are complete obfuscation
and very unclear. One of the things that we try to do in the Commission
is introduce some transparency and some clarification. That is
why we are looking for the GLA family of the London Development
Agency, Transport for London, the Metropolitan Police Authority.
That family needs to have a better, more consistent model of representation.
LFEPA has a good model with representatives from the boroughs
and from the GLA. That works as a model which we would like to
see extended across the other GLA families. If the Learning and
Skills Council comes in, as we hope, there will be greater public
understanding of the accountabilities and that is very important
because government has to be transparent.
Councillor Newman: There is a
good understanding by the public in terms of most boroughs representing
people at that borough level and the Olympics and other issues,
the role of the Mayor and the strategic role with transport and
the rest of it. There are still questions whether the public have
a great recognition of the role of other parts of the GLA. Part
of the way to bring the Mayor and the boroughs even closer together
is to make sure that, in terms of the Metropolitan Police, Transport
for London and others, the role boroughs play there in partnership
with the Mayor is greatly reinforced. That will cement it closer
together. It does get a little bit abstract when you have other
bodies with public representation from perhaps the Assembly or
elsewhere.
Q210 Chair: Do you think there is
a difference in people's view of the effectiveness of London governance,
whether you come from a borough that is central or peripheral?
I speak merely geographically.
Councillor Lister: We have talked
about the things that have been successful. Things that have failed,
for example, have been main roads, red routes across London. These
are Mayor's roads. To think that any member of the public can
understand that because a road happens to be called a red route
it is a Mayor's road and a few yards in on any side road it becomes
a borough road is the total confusion that exists out there. It
is that kind of thing that we need to get rid of because it is
unnecessary confusion. If the boroughs managed the roads as an
agent for the Mayor or some such arrangement you clear away that
confusion. Things like that have to be taken out of the frame.
With regard to inner and outer London, there is always a little
bit of a problem with London because those on the very edges of
London sometimes think they are in Kent, Surrey, Sussex or wherever
because that is where those boroughs may have come from in the
distant past. There is a little bit more of a disconnect as you
get to the very edges. That has to be part of the selling job
of the Mayor and it has to be part of the job of the boroughs
as well, to try and make sure people understand that London needs
to hold together. At the end of the day, most of those people
will have their jobs linked into the centre in one way or another.
Their route to work is to that centre so there is a bit of a selling
job there and indeed the Mayor has been arguing that there are
one or two boroughs on the edges of London which are not in London
but should be. There may indeed be a case for that.
Q211 Chair: Would any of you agree
with that?
Councillor Lister: I think there
is probably a case in the Thames Gateway for the boundary to move.
Q212 Chair: Is that a view shared
by the other two of you?
Councillor Newman: Yes.
Councillor Hitchins: I am less
convinced that drawing lines on maps improves the quality of government.
We have had far too much reorganisation and restructuring. It
is the quality of the government that counts.
Q213 John Cummings: If we wish to
ensure accountability in a meaningful way, what do you believe
could be done to tackle the lack of accountability for powers
currently held by quangos in London?
Councillor Newman: It is looking
at whether those powers at a strategic level can sit with the
Mayor. There is a direct democratic accountability there. We have
discussed the ongoing housing and how there should be greater
accountability perhaps at a strategic level, but also at the more
operational level in terms of ensuring there are borough representatives,
elected councillors sitting on some of the bodies like the Metropolitan
Police Authority, so there is a direct democratic accountability
the public can see that is transparent.
Q214 John Cummings: You do not seem
very enthused about what can be done to strip these unelected
bodies of authority.
Councillor Hitchins: We think
there is a very strong case.
Q215 John Cummings: That was not
coming forward.
Councillor Hitchins: We have argued
that the Housing Corporation's pot for London should go to the
Mayor. We have argued that the Learning and Skills Council should
go to the Mayor and we have even considered the Arts Councils
funding in London and how that could come through the Mayor's
office. We are quite enthusiastic about that. We already have
the London Development Agency which is the only RDA that comes
under the Mayor directly and so therefore has different ways of
doing things. What we are also concerned about is that those have
the right degree of democratic accountability when they come across,
so that there is a consistency and borough representation, because
all those services get delivered in the boroughs, as well as regional
representation so that the Mayor is held to account for his strategic
direction of those bodies. We are very enthusiastic about abolishing
quangos and making them democratically accountable.
Councillor Lister: The one we
have perhaps made the most comment about is the Strategic Health
Authority. There is a very strong view in London that that should
be a body where the Mayor should be on it and have some influence
on it. It would therefore follow that the PCTs, which are also
borough linked, should have some influence from boroughs as well.
I am not saying they should be taken over by the boroughs but
there should be borough councillors on them and representatives
of the Mayor on the Strategic Health Authority. It is a meshing
together of these bodies which can produce so much. Just using
that as an example, we need to get social services working closer
together with health. That could be achieved by those linkages.
We need much better cross-London working in areas of health and
again that is where the Mayor can come into it. We are very keen
on those quangos fading away and the existing structures taking
their place.
Chair: Thank you very much indeed.
| 
