Communities and Local Government Committee - Minutes of EvidenceHC 213

Back to Report

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Communities and Local Government Committee

on Monday 10 June 2013

Members present:

Mr Clive Betts (Chair)

Simon Danczuk

Mary Glindon

James Morris

Mark Pawsey

John Stevenson

Andy Sawford

Heather Wheeler

________________

Examination of Witness

Witness: Sir Edward Lister, Chief of Staff to the Mayor of London, and Deputy Mayor for Planning, gave evidence.

Q17 Chair: Good afternoon and welcome, everyone, to this session on the Greater London Authority Act 2007 and the operation of the London Assembly. Sir Edward, you are most welcome this afternoon. Just for our record, if you could introduce yourself and say who you are, that would be helpful.

Sir Edward Lister: Edward Lister. I am the Chief of Staff and I am also the Deputy Mayor responsible for Planning and Policy.

Q18 Chair: Thank you for coming. The Committee is trying to look at the respective powers of the Mayor and particularly the Assembly in relation to the Mayor and the operation of the Act. In 2010, the Mayor said that the Assembly should have the power to summon anyone from inside the GLA group or from other relevant bodies to meet with them as part of their scrutiny functions, but last year the Deputy Mayor for Policing advised the Metropolitan Police Commissioner not to attend a meeting of the Assembly’s Police and Crime Committee even though the Commissioner had been invited to go there. What is the position of the Mayor in terms of the powers of the Assembly in this matter? When the Deputy Mayor for Policing, given that he is not elected, acts in this way, is he acting on the authority of the Mayor?

Sir Edward Lister: I think there was some confusion, and I think this is where, in some ways, there is some confusion within the Act. The issue was not the attendance of the Deputy Mayor for Policing; it was more about the attendance at that same meeting of the Police Commissioner. The issue is that the GLA Act is about the Assembly being able to summon and scrutinise the Mayor-and the Mayor has deputised the Deputy Mayor for Policing as his representative on this-but it does not have the automatic power to summon the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. The role is to scrutinise the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, not to scrutinise the Metropolitan Police. That is a rather convoluted way of explaining it. In fact, I think everybody would agree that common sense prevailed and both attended, and it was resolved that way. The Act is about scrutinising the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. That was the confusion that was caused.

Q19 Chair: So the Assembly can summon anyone from outside the family, if you like-any outside organisation can be asked to send a representative-but when someone is acting within the framework of the mayoralty, in this case the Police Commissioner, they cannot be summoned unless the Mayor approves. Is that right?

Sir Edward Lister: Basically, yes. Really, the Mayor’s representative who should be there to answer the questions is the Deputy Mayor responsible for Policing and Crime. That is the correct route. As I say, at the end of the day, common sense prevailed and both attended, but that was the issue.

A better example of this conflict is perhaps the London Fire Brigade. There you have the Assembly, which is responsible for scrutinising, but a number of the Members of the Assembly are also members of the board of the Fire Brigade who are making the decision. You get this conflict between the two. You are getting members of the board who are making the financial decision, or whatever the executive decision may be-say, for example, the closure of a fire station-and then the Assembly, in theory, should be scrutinising themselves because they are members of the board. It is just messy.

Q20 Chair: Ultimately, we have a situation where an unelected Deputy Mayor comes to be held accountable and explain how he is holding the Metropolitan Police Commissioner accountable. It is a bit of a long process, isn’t it, before you can get at the person who is doing the job?

Sir Edward Lister: The point of it is that the Mayor has appointed him as his adviser on this matter. This is the very structure. We have a very strong Mayor in London. That is the structure that was set down in the Act of Parliament: a very strong Mayor, with the Assembly scrutinising his decisions after the event. That is the model that is in place. The Mayor has power to appoint 10 executives plus two political appointments plus, in the Policing and Crime Act, the power to appoint a Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime. They are the people who should be responsible for answering those questions.

Q21 Chair: There seems to be some degree of inconsistency in the appointment process for various people the Mayor appoints, doesn’t there? I understand that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime was subject to a preappointment hearing but you were not; you were simply appointed by the Mayor, end of story.

Sir Edward Lister: No, I was.

Q22 Chair: Were you as well?

Sir Edward Lister: Yes. I had a hearing with the entire Assembly.

Q23 Chair: In terms of those powers, was it a requirement that you had to go to the scrutiny hearing, or was it at the Mayor’s discretion?

Sir Edward Lister: The only two people who do not have to have an appointment hearing are the two political appointments. They are exempt. The other 10, plus the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, are all subject to an appointment hearing by the Assembly, and they can make recommendations accordingly.

Q24 Chair: But the Mayor can ignore them.

Sir Edward Lister: The Mayor can ignore them, because they are his appointments at the end of the day.1

Q25 John Stevenson: I want to explore the balance of power between the Mayor and the Assembly. As I understand it, the Mayor of London is the only elected mayor who is not required to publish a forward plan and whose decisions are not subject to callin by the scrutiny body-the Assembly. There is an argument that, in many respects, the relationship is fundamentally flawed because the Assembly has few significant powers itself. Do you think the London Assembly serves its purpose at present?

Sir Edward Lister: Yes I do. I think it is the way in which the mayoralty was set up in the first place. It was modelled on a very strong mayoral model, more like an American mayoralty. You have a strong Mayor who has an electorate of 5.5 million people. The Mayor himself had over 1 million votes cast for him. You have got this very strong character who has all the power, and the Assembly is there to scrutinise after the event, not prior to the event. This very strong mayoral model is in place. There is power of veto on certain strategic plans, which were set out in the Act, but generally the strength of the mayoralty is that it gives consistency and certainty. I would argue that the model has worked extremely well for London. Over the years since 2000-since the Mayor has been in position-we have seen two very strong characters and we have seen London prosper as a result of having two very strong characters who have very much encouraged regeneration and development in London. They have done it in different ways, but they have done it very much from the front and led from the front. That strong mayoral model is the core of the Act, and the Assembly is there for a different purpose.

Q26 John Stevenson: I take your point. You seem to suggest, therefore, that in many respects the Assembly takes a back seat and that the Mayor is the driving force. The Assembly has the ability to reject certain policies of the Mayor on a twothirds majority. Has that power ever had any impact on any mayoral decisions?

Sir Edward Lister: No, not to my knowledge. It is undoubtedly the case that the Assembly has asked difficult questions and that has led to modifications or alterations to plans. It is undoubtedly the case that those plans, after they are published, are subject to constant scrutiny, so a lot of effort is made to make sure that those plans are acceptable to all parties. It is very difficult, because at what point do you damage the mayoral model? The model is a very strong Mayor. That is what has been put before the electorate. Are you going to then say an Assembly is going to prevent the wishes of that Mayor, having been elected by over 1 million people?

Q27 John Stevenson: But you accept the twothirds veto that the Assembly has. Do you think that should be extended to the Police and Crime Plan as well?

Sir Edward Lister: Yes, there is probably a case for consistency in all of this, because it makes life easier for everybody.

Q28 John Stevenson: To bring it into line, you would accept that the Police and Crime Plan should be brought under the twothirds veto.

Sir Edward Lister: It is probably right that all of the Mayor’s policies should have the same base point. At the moment, he has to have onethird of the Assembly supporting his proposals-or, to put it another way, if twothirds are voting against, they can turn it down.

Q29 John Stevenson: You seem to be very much in favour of the strong model. Are there any changes that you would like to see, other than the one we have just discussed?

Sir Edward Lister: There is the whole area-and I do not know whether you want, as a Committee, to go into this-of the funding models.

John Stevenson: I think that comes later.

Sir Edward Lister: That is an area, and there were some proposals we made during the 2011 Localism Act that were turned down and may be worth revisiting at some point in the future. For example, the funding of The Royal Parks was one of those that were turned down, although the appointment of the Board of The Royal Parks is a joint appointment between the Mayor and the Secretary of State for DCMS. There are things like that that I think would be worth a revisit.

The only other one I would mention is Health, where the Mayor has certain strategic powers but absolutely no resources. I think that was a big mistake. The original plans for that were that the Mayor would have about 3% of the public health budget to spend on panLondon campaigns. A decision was taken that this was increased bureaucracy, so it was rejected. The Mayor has a strategic health board with no money and no power to run strategic Londonwide health campaigns, which to us is a missed opportunity.

Q30 James Morris: Is there not an argument that the Assembly does not really serve any purpose at all and it should be abolished?

Sir Edward Lister: Having created this strong mayoral model, there has to be some counterbalance. There has to be somebody to do some scrutiny.

Q31 James Morris: Why cannot the 33 boroughs of London provide that democratic level of accountability to the Mayor? As a former leader of one of the boroughs, why do we have to have multiple layers?

Sir Edward Lister: I can understand that argument, and I think I may have made that argument in the past, but the position has moved. The trouble is that, at the end of the day, the borough leaders are always going to be concerned about their boroughs and about negotiations for their boroughs, and they are not going to provide proper scrutiny of the Mayor. They will only be interested in those things that affect them. That is the reality of the situation. I therefore feel that somebody has got to do the scrutiny. Somebody has got to call the Mayor to account. The Assembly do a good job of that, but it is important to recognise that you do have this very, very strong Mayor, and I think London has, as I have said already, benefitted from it. I think it works fairly well. We are fairly content with the arrangement and it does succeed.

Q32 Heather Wheeler: Hello, Sir Edward. It is nice to see you again. Can I come back to this business about the twothirds threshold? Some people have said that a strong Mayor ought to be able to bring people with him and it maybe ought to be reduced to 60% or 50% so that he always has to have other parties voting with him. What is your view on that?

Sir Edward Lister: I come back to the point I was trying to make earlier-that you are then therefore telling the Mayor, who has been elected by Londoners in a firstpastthepost election, "You really have got to get agreement from at least two other political parties before you can make a decision." I do not think that is tenable. I do not think you would deliver what is necessary for London. It would just be a matter of horsetrading between the political parties, and I would suggest that would create a weak Mayor.

Q33 Heather Wheeler: So your view would be that, if there was any mischiefmaking going on, it would enhance that, not make it better.

Sir Edward Lister: Yes. I think that all you would do is have this endless round of negotiations trying to pander to one political party or another’s wishes, just so you could get your strategic policy through. I do not think that is what Londoners want. They want whoever they are going to elect for four years to deliver on their manifesto.

Q34 Heather Wheeler: The Mayor is a Conservative Mayor. Is he, in effect, the leader of the Conservative Group? Do they work hand in hand, or is it a case of him saying, "I am the Mayor and there are Conservatives on the Assembly"? How far does he stand apart from the Assembly Members?

Sir Edward Lister: He stands quite apart. It is hard to explain this. Of course the Conservative Group is going to have similar views to the Mayor, as indeed the Labour Group had similar views to the previous Mayor. That is inevitable. The fact remains there is always a tension between the Assembly and the Mayor. There is a divide. It certainly is by no means the case that the Conservative Group will always agree with the Mayor or the Mayor will agree with the Conservative Group. It just does not follow. There is that tension that is always in play.

Q35 Heather Wheeler: I am slightly like a dog with a bone on this. On this idea about changing the majority and going for a simple majority, one of the suggestions we have read from the Conservative Group is that the Assembly Members ought to be specifically constituency Members. If everybody was a constituency Member rather than a topup list Member, would you be able to create those allegiances so that you would be able to get things through on a firstpastthepost basis rather than a twothirds basis?

Sir Edward Lister: I am not quite sure how the voting numbers would necessarily work. What has been quite clear is that both Mayors’ votes have been substantially out of line with their parties’ votes in the Assembly. It does not follow that because a Mayor of one particular party does particularly well, the political party in the Assembly will do as well. There is a divide between the two. The mayoral election is much more presidential in style; the individual becomes much more a part of it. That was seen with both Ken Livingstone and with Boris Johnson. They both commanded quite large personal votes that have been out of line with their parties.

Secondly, I think it is quite difficult. I think you would find, if everybody was a constituency Member, that they would regularly just be arguing for their constituency rather than taking a Londonwide view about things. At the moment, because you have got a number of the Assembly who are Londonwide, they are more able to take that view. One of the great things about the mayoralty is that-I think it is also true of the Assembly-they can make those hard decisions that constituency Assembly people cannot necessarily support or agree with.

Q36 James Morris: The London Finance Commission, chaired by Professor Travers, made some quite radical suggestions in relation to further financial devolution, and the Mayor talked about wanting to have greater discretion over capital expenditure. Why has it taken so long to begin allocating the £41 million of the London Growth Fund?

Sir Edward Lister: I do not agree that it has been a long time. The bulk of that money, both the £41 million and the subsequent £79 million that was allocated to the LEP, has largely been allocated. It has not been spent. That is the difference. The money is allocated, but the thing is that these are capital schemes and they do take a long time to work their way through. I think I am right in saying just on transport alone there is £25 million.

Q37 James Morris: They require greater scrutiny. Who is doing the scrutinising?

Sir Edward Lister: The scrutinising will ultimately be done by the Assembly. They will need to look at these allocations. I am trying to say the money is committed, not necessarily spent. That is always going to be the case with capital schemes.

Q38 James Morris: The Assembly has called for powers to amend the Mayor’s capital expenditure budget, but the Mayor has said he does not agree with that because it would be bureaucratic. Do you think the Assembly should have that scrutiny power or not?

Sir Edward Lister: The Assembly has the power to either accept or refuse his budget. They do not have the power to make linebyline alterations to the budget.

Q39 James Morris: Do you think they should have greater power to scrutinise more of the discrete elements of the budget, rather than having to say either "yea" or "nay"? Would that not be a useful function for a scrutinising Assembly?

Sir Edward Lister: They do scrutinise it. All the political parties have always put forward their own proposals; it is just that the Mayor has declined to accept any of their proposals. They have put forward proposals. To give an example, going back to the earlier question, the Conservative Group put forward a number of proposals for reductions to the budget, which the Mayor refused as well. It is consistent.

Q40 James Morris: Do you think the Assembly should be given any other powers in relation to the financial arrangements, or are you arguing for the status quo?

Sir Edward Lister: I would argue for the status quo. I think it works quite well. If there is something there the Mayor has not covered all the bases on adequately, it will get exposed pretty quickly, and the power of the Assembly and the press will make sure it is corrected. That constant scrutiny role is there.

Q41 James Morris: Do you think the public in London perceive that the Assembly is doing anything in relation to the Mayor’s budget? Do the public have any idea at all?

Sir Edward Lister: I think the public does have difficulty in understanding the Assembly model, but then the public also has quite a bit of difficulty at times understanding councillors and other things. I think when they talk about the Mayor of London, they just see the Mayor being Boris Johnson, or Ken Livingstone before him; they do not see anybody else.

Q42 James Morris: Under the previous Mayor, particularly in relation to the way the London Development Agency was allocating funding, there were calls for a more independent budgetary analysis of what was going on with the Mayor. Tony Travers I know has been calling for an independent "Office of the London Budget" to make sure there is transparency and scrutiny because of some of the issues in relation to the London Development Agency.

Sir Edward Lister: You could argue that the London Development Agency did not manage its finances as well as it should have done and ultimately probably led to severe damage to the mayoral candidate at that time. You could argue that that was one of the issues that led to Boris Johnson becoming Mayor. I am just saying the public scrutiny of all this is enormous, because every decision over £5,000 is published; it is all there on the website and people see it pretty quickly. The power of freedom of information and the power of the press, let alone the power of the Assembly, soon expose anything that is not as it should be.

Q43 Mrs Glindon: Professor Travers from the LSE told us that "the Mayor’s formal relationships with the institutions that deliver services are inconsistent and hard for the public to understand". What do you think the Mayor’s relationship with the GLA’s functional bodies is? Are they independent and truly separate entities?

Sir Edward Lister: I can understand that comment. It is quite difficult to see these individual functions as all being the Mayor’s functions. Transport for London has its own image, as do the Metropolitan Police, the Fire Brigade and so on. There is a difficulty, but I think when people look into it in any kind of detail, they soon realise it is the Mayor’s responsibility. This is perhaps more of a marketing issue. We do need to do much more of branding them all "Mayor of London" so it is very clear who is responsible for them. I think that is a fair criticism, but it is more about us making sure we get the information out there. I would add that, if something goes wrong, they pretty quickly find the Mayor to blame.

Q44 Mrs Glindon: Would you consider the fact that the Mayor can overrule any decision of, for example, the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority proves they are not truly independent?

Sir Edward Lister: We come back to this strong mayoral model. We have got a Mayor who is elected to make decisions. In some cases they are unpopular decisions, but they are important decisions. That is what he has been elected to do. He also has to make sure he provides a balanced budget for all of his functional bodies. The fire one is quite a good example of where I think there is a problem with the Act, because what you have got there is eight Members of the Assembly, seven members from the boroughs and two people appointed by the Mayor. You have got this body there; they have to produce a balanced budget and they made a decision that they did not want to produce a balanced budget. You have that situation, so where do you go? They Mayor then has no alternative but to issue a direction-which is exactly what he did-to insist that they do provide that balanced budget, and they did it by a particular method.

Q45 Mrs Glindon: You touched at the beginning of the session on scrutiny. The majority of the London Assembly say "any board within the GLA group should include democratically elected representatives". The Assembly’s minority Conservative Group and MayorWatch suggest the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority board, again for example, should more closely resemble the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, with a separate Assembly committee to scrutinise it. What relationship should elected Assembly Members have with such boards? Do you think they should sit on them or on separate Assembly committees in order to scrutinise them?

Sir Edward Lister: The principle is for the Assembly to be a scrutinising body, and it should be that. The only one where we have this particular confusion is the Fire Brigade board, which has Assembly people on it. I agree with the view that it would be better if it were the same as the police, where you have an appointed mayoral adviser responsible for it and then the Assembly scrutinises. I do not think that the board works. It is always going to be in conflict with the Mayor of the day, because the politics of it probably means it is going to contain a majority of other parties.

Q46 Mrs Glindon: The Mayor described the attitude of the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green board members in opposition to his safety plan as "irresponsible". Do you think that was a fair comment?

Sir Edward Lister: The reason he made that comment, just to explain it, is that if the Fire board does not make a decision by July, so they can implement things by circa September/October, you move into the area where you will have to make compulsory redundancies. That is the reason for trying to make a decision early: to avoid any compulsory redundancies. If you left it until later, there would be, in the Mayor’s view, compulsory redundancies. That is why he made that comment.

Q47 Chair: One of the things that seems to be a theme from this is that there is a role for Assembly Members in holding the Mayor to account, but there are some potential conflicts, like the fact that you have got Assembly Members on the Fire board. I can see that is the statutory position you are faced with. In a few minutes’ time, Richard Tracey is going to be giving evidence to us. He has been appointed by the Mayor to the London Waste and Recycling Board, as I understand it. Isn’t that the Mayor adding further confusion to the role of an Assembly Member? Richard Tracey is both an Assembly Member and the Mayor’s representative on that Board. You have highlighted a problem of the Act causing this confusion, but hasn’t the Mayor added to it?

Sir Edward Lister: I think I would answer it in this way: yes, you do have an Assembly person who is chairing that committee, but I do not think there are any other Assembly people on the committee; they are all outsiders from City Hall. I do not think it particularly matters. Mr Tracey is in the same political party as the Mayor and he has chosen to appoint him on that basis.

Q48 Chair: I was trying to get at the fact that you were saying before that there was a clear division between the Assembly and the Mayor, and perhaps that ought to be made clear in terms of fire, but in another area it is actually the Mayor that is causing the confusion.

Sir Edward Lister: I was trying to highlight with the Fire Brigade that the Fire Brigade board was in fact making decisions that were contrary to the decisions of the Mayor of the day. The Mayor of the day wanted a balanced budget, he wanted it achieved within a certain timescale, he wanted to avoid compulsory redundancies, etc., and the board was acting in such a way as to circumvent that. That, I would suggest, is a difficulty if you have got a strong mayoral model, and it might be better not to be in that position in the first place.

Q49 Simon Danczuk: Good afternoon, Sir Edward. Planning magazine reported on 25 March that the London Authority "has so far failed to deliver even the 32,000 new homes a year required by its own 2011 London Plan. Last year, the capital’s housing stock expanded by only 25,000 homes." What is going wrong, Sir Edward?

Sir Edward Lister: It is called the economy. The London Plan makes it clear that London needs to deliver 32,000 housing units per year to meet what were the census needs at that particular point in time. In a good year, the London housing market has delivered about 27,000 housing units a year. This is all categories. This is not just social housing or anything else; this is the total. There is a shortfall that is running through, and has consistently run through for many years.

Q50 Simon Danczuk: What is wrong with the economy?

Sir Edward Lister: The construction industry switched off for a long period of time and is running at too low a level for London’s needs. We need substantially more housing built in London to meet the growing population.

Q51 Simon Danczuk: Are you saying that construction firms do not have enough people to build properties? Do they not have the capacity?

Sir Edward Lister: No, I am saying that the finances and the capacity within the construction industry are not sufficient to meet demand in London, and it needs to be boosted significantly to meet the growing London population. That is a matter both of finance and of capacity within the industry.

Q52 Simon Danczuk: Why did affordable housing completions halve in 2012-13, to almost 40% below the London Plan target?

Sir Edward Lister: Housing completions overall in the first term of the Mayor came to 52,000, and in this term of the Mayor, by the time the four years are out, will be about 50,000.

Q53 Simon Danczuk: Just to be clear, the London Plan said that you would build 13,200 properties in 2012-13, but you actually completed 8,114 properties. I am asking you, Sir Edward, why there was a 40% reduction on what you were aiming to produce in terms of affordable properties, which you will know as well as I do are very important to poorer Londoners.

Sir Edward Lister: Absolutely. What I am trying to say is that it is a lumpy system that is at play here with the funding that comes through. As City Hall, if you look over the fouryear period of the mayoralty programme, we have hit the numbers we have set out. On a yearbyyear basis it is very, very lumpy and it goes up and down. That is partly the way the funding has come through-it comes through in fairly small packets-and, secondly, it is a timing issue of getting those units through. What I am saying is the Mayor will deliver his target, but over a fouryear period, not on a yearbyyear basis.

Q54 Simon Danczuk: You have said, Sir Edward, that the Mayor should be building 50,000 units each year. When is he going to start building that many houses each year?

Sir Edward Lister: I never said the Mayor should be doing that. I am saying that London needs 50,000 units a year.

Q55 Simon Danczuk: When will that be achieved?

Sir Edward Lister: That is a question that is much wider than I can answer. That is about the capacity of the economy to inject quite significant sums of money into the housing programme and into the housing market. All I am saying is that London’s population currently is 8.4 million; it has gone up by 380,000 since the Mayor was elected in 2008 and it will go up to over 9 million by the early 2020s and over 10 million by the early part of the 2030s. That kind of growth trajectory says that you have got to be building significantly more homes than we are getting at the moment to meet that demand.

Q56 Simon Danczuk: To be clear, Sir Edward, the Mayor has been given additional enhanced powers around housing. If he is not going to use them to build more homes, when do you think that target of 50,000 will be reached?

Sir Edward Lister: I am sorry. He will meet that target by the end of his fouryear period. In 2016, 50,000 social housing units will have been built.

Q57 Mark Pawsey: Sir Edward, I wondered if I might ask you about the Mayor’s powers with regard to planning, which I know is an area of particular interest to you. I wonder if I can start with the Community Infrastructure Levy. I know you have made some remarks about the expectations of what can be achieved through the Community Infrastructure Levy. Could you just expand on that?

Sir Edward Lister: Yes. It comes back a little bit to the previous set of questions, if I may. On any site, there is only so much viability as to what you can build. If you have very large CILs in place, it does reduce the affordable housing that can be provided as part of any Section 106 arrangement on that site. You have firstly got a mayoral CIL to pay for Crossrail, which is out there and is working well. You have now got boroughs bringing in their own CILs. That is undoubtedly affecting the viability and ultimately can reduce the amount of affordable housing that is provided, if you are exiting quite a bit of money into other things.

Q58 Mark Pawsey: There seems to be a disagreement between the boroughs as to where the CIL should be used and the Mayor’s objectives of what the CIL should be used for, which I understand is going entirely to Crossrail. Is that the case?

Sir Edward Lister: The mayoral CIL is entirely for Crossrail. That is right across London. It is between £20 and £50 per square metre.

Q59 Mark Pawsey: To how many applications has the mayoral CIL been applied?

Sir Edward Lister: It is applied to all applications, automatically. There has been no planning application that has gone in that has not put its share of money into the CIL.

Q60 Mark Pawsey: At any size of property?

Sir Edward Lister: At any size.

Q61 Mark Pawsey: Why is there a disagreement between the boroughs and the Mayor as to where that CIL should be used?

Sir Edward Lister: There was a view taken by a number of boroughs-it is an understandable view-that if they were not on the Crossrail route, why were they contributing towards Crossrail? It is not of benefit to their borough, so why should they do it? The answer to that is that the decision was made to make Crossrail the funding priority for London. The deal with the Government in order to raise the necessary monies to build Crossrail was that there would be a businessrate levy, there would be a CIL, there would be Section 106 monies prior to the CIL coming in, and then the rest of the money was going to come from central Government. That is how the deal was done to get that scheme off the ground, which was supported by all of London.

Q62 Mark Pawsey: Is it inevitable, then, that there is a conflict between the boroughs and the Mayor as to where the money should be used?

Sir Edward Lister: Yes. If you are, for example, in south London, you do not see the benefits of Crossrail, but I would argue in due course, when Crossrail is completed and we hopefully move on to Crossrail 2, we will go a different route and some of those boroughs will see the benefit of that CIL, while others who benefitted from the first one will be paying into that one. I think that is the case in a Londonwide CIL.

Q63 Mark Pawsey: Do you see that as the scenario: that there will be a project coming along later on from which those who are not benefitting from the current CIL will benefit?

Sir Edward Lister: Over a longterm period, yes. The principle, though, is that the Mayor has a CIL for transport that is clearly targeted to what he sees as being the most pressing and most important transport infrastructure for all of London.

Q64 Mark Pawsey: There is a level of development where the Mayor can call in. Could you confirm how many times the Mayor has called in an application?

Sir Edward Lister: He has called in six schemes. I think it is six, from memory; I can look it up.

Q65 Mark Pawsey: In your view, is the threshold at which the Mayor would call in an application transparent and clear to everybody?

Sir Edward Lister: Yes, I think it is. In each case, there has been a very clear reason why he has called in those particular schemes. They were all schemes of some significance to London. One of them was a waste transfer facility. Others have been offices or residential properties. There has been a reason in each case. That has all been transmitted to the local authorities at a very early stage. There was a full hearing that took place, and all the parties were represented, so the whole thing was done with enormous transparency-far more transparency, I would suggest, than the normal planning committee in any local authority.

Q66 Mark Pawsey: So, you would not agree with the London Assembly, which has said that "the Mayor has rarely made these criteria explicit". You think they are explicit.

Sir Edward Lister: I think it has been very clearly set out in the stage 1 reports that have been prepared by the Mayor. Just to explain the timelines, when a planning application that is referable to the Mayor comes in-as soon as the Mayor’s office is notified-we have six weeks in which to make comment, which we do. Those comments go in; they are digested by the local authority and then that local authority makes their decision. We have two weeks then to react to that. The Mayor can agree that the local authority should make the decision, take a view that the planning application should be turned down, or take it over himself, which he has the power to do.

Q67 Mark Pawsey: You are happy that the criteria are set at the right level and sufficiently transparent.

Sir Edward Lister: I think the fact that it has only been used six times speaks for itself.

Q68 Mark Pawsey: May I just ask you about the mayoral development corporations? Isn’t there a danger that the Mayor is being compromised by the potential to be both the planning authority and a developer?

Sir Edward Lister: I think this is probably no different from any local authority in many ways. He takes responsibility as chairman of the mayoral development corporation. He has a duty to make sure that that delivers against its clearly set out objectives. He has a planning committee there-which he is not on and plays no part in-which meets and considers any planning applications that come in. In due course, they act exactly the same way as a borough: they refer it to the Mayor’s office, and the Mayor then reviews it as part of his normal planning powers.

Q69 Chair: You talked about the unique nature of the mayoralty in London, in particular the very strong powers that the Mayor has. Do you think there is any way in which the model that exists in London could be effectively rolled out into other parts of the country, or is it there specifically because London is a very different place?

Sir Edward Lister: I find this a very interesting question; somebody made the point I was a borough leader at one stage, and I do not think I was particularly enamoured with the idea of elected mayors. I have to say my views have changed significantly since I have been so closely involved with an elected mayor. I think it does work. It provides a clarity of leadership that is not achieved by the normal methods that we have out there. Certainly for big urban areas, it does work and it works extremely well. It will be interesting to see what happens with Liverpool and Bristol as this moves forward. The strong mayoral model does give a clarity and leadership to the city that you do not get by other means. I am very much in favour of it.

Q70 Chair: In those other models in the other cities you mentioned, the mayor will have a little bit more constraint on their actions because of the slightly stronger powers that the council has over and above those that the Assembly has in London.

Sir Edward Lister: That is right, and it is more likely that, in those circumstances, they will run some kind of cabinet structure with councillors, which is something we do not really have in London. My own view, and this is just a personal view, is that the London model does work. It is a model that could be transmitted, certainly to the big cities like Birmingham and Manchester. It would work well for those cities.

Q71 Chair: I am tempted to ask whether, if you had had the same model in Wandsworth those years ago, you would have done a better job as mayor, rather than council leader.

Sir Edward Lister: It is an interesting one. I do think it creates real clarity for the electorate. They can really see what is going on. I think it focuses attention in a way the other system does not. The fact that the turnout for London was a good turnout-there has been a good turnout for each election-does show that people do get interested in the London mayoralty elections. That is good for democracy.

Q72 John Stevenson: The elected mayor, you are suggesting, would work for big cities. Do you think it would work for places like county councils?

Sir Edward Lister: I have to say I do not really know enough about county councils to make any real observation. I am sorry.

Chair: Thank you very much indeed for coming in this afternoon and giving evidence to us. Thank you.

<?oasys [pg6,cwe1] ?>Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Martin Hoscik, Editor, MayorWatch, Mayor Jules Pipe, Chair, London Councils, and Richard Tracey JP AM, Chair, London Waste and Recycling Board, gave evidence.

Q73 Chair: Good afternoon. I welcome the three of you to the continuation of our evidence session. For the sake of our records, could you just say who you are and whom you are representing?

Martin Hoscik: I am Martin Hoscik. I am a freelance journalist and writer. I comment on City Hall. I run the MayorWatch.co.uk website.

Jules Pipe: My name is Jules Pipe. I have been the directly elected Mayor of Hackney for the past 10 years and, for the past three or so years, I have been the Chair of London Councils.

Richard Tracey: I am Richard Tracey. I have been the directly elected Assembly Member for Merton and Wandsworth since 2008, and I am also, incidentally, the Deputy Leader of the Conservative group in the Assembly, as well as Chairman of the London Waste and Recycling Board, the Mayor’s representative. I am the Conservative leader on transport in the Assembly, too.

Q74 Chair: London Councils has basically said that "London needs an effective mayor … but [that] is not sufficient"; to get sustainable solutions you need the Mayor working with "London’s boroughs … in partnership". That statement does not leave much room for the Assembly to do anything, does it?

Jules Pipe: I think they are two very different, distinct roles, aside from the slight blurring that you highlighted before about Richard’s position. That is perhaps more to do with the room for manoeuvre for the Mayor to a point and the people he can draw on to a point. That aside, they are two distinctly different things: the Assembly to scrutinise; the boroughs and borough leaders engage with the Mayor on delivery and joint delivery. There are two separate roles.

Q75 Chair: The Assembly does have a role then.

Jules Pipe: To scrutinise the executive Mayor of London, yes.

Q76 Chair: Then it starts to get quite confusing, doesn’t it? You have alluded to Richard Tracey’s responsibilities, and there is a whole range of different approaches on different bodies: you have the Fire and Emergency Planning Authority board, which has Assembly Members on it; then you have the police arrangements now, which is effectively a mayoral office. Does that confuse the boroughs as much as it must confuse the public about where the Assembly Members sit and who is responsible, who is accountable and how scrutiny is done?

Jules Pipe: I am not sure whether it confuses the public. No one has ever raised it with me until now. It clearly is not logical. Here in Parliament, you have a clear split between the executive and the select committee scrutiny side. In local authorities, you have a clear split between those and the cabinet; they cannot sit on the scrutiny committees that scrutinise the work of the executive on the council. Clearly such a line is very much blurred on the Greater London Authority.

Q77 Chair: Richard Tracey, you obviously have more than firsthand experience of this. You have been a member of the fire board. You were there as an Assembly Member, but on the Waste and Recycling Board, you are an Assembly Member but you are not actually there as an Assembly Mayor; you are there as the Mayor’s representative. Does that confuse you on occasions?

Richard Tracey: No, it does not confuse me. Having been here as well in the past and having been in politics for about 40 years, I do take quite an interest in these things, so I do understand it. Frankly, as to the overall situation, the legislation that set up the mayoralty and the Assembly in the first place, in 1999, was perhaps, if I may say so, slightly defective, because it is not totally understood by the public.

Going to your specific question, I was indeed on the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority as an Assembly Member and as, indeed, the Vice-Chairman. I have to say from my experience there for two years and since, with the matters that you have already discussed, I know, with Edward Lister, I do believe that probably the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority ought actually now to be changed to follow the same as the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. We ought to have a Deputy Mayor for fire and emergency planning. As you know, MOPAC, as it is called for short, has a Deputy Mayor who is not an Assembly Member but is appointed from outside. He has various assistants and deputies, but he is scrutinised by the Assembly’s Police and Crime Committee. That is my view on LFEPA.

The London Waste and Recycling Board is a completely different entity, as you know. We work very much in a partnership with the boroughs. I believe it is a very good partnership because there are only two people from the GLA, from City Hall, on it. I am there as the Mayor’s representative and then there is the Mayor’s environmental adviser, one of the people working around him on the eighth floor of City Hall. In addition to that, we have four very experienced councillors who were elected, initially, in London Councils and the appointed. They are very fine authorities on the matter of waste management, and then we have two independent people also from London Councils to help with the financing of the very complex projects that we deal with. I do not personally feel there is any problem of conflict there. We work very much as a team, and we are not caught up in votes and all that sort of thing.

Q78 Chair: Your general view would be then that, for all these sorts of bodies, the Assembly should not be appointing members to them; they ought to be mayoral appointments. If somebody who is a Member of the Assembly happens to be on there, it is because they are a mayoral appointee. Is that your view?

Richard Tracey: Yes, I personally take the view, and I think my colleagues in the Conservative Group do as well, that there should be some political input on the Transport for London board-Assembly Members. It is something that I have argued to the Mayor, and I think he is partly convinced by that view. It just seems to me that, with regard to the Transport for London board, the only real scrutiny of Transport for London happens in our Transport Committee. I think we do a good job of that, but we could do a much better job if Transport for London’s own board had some political input.

Q79 Chair: Isn’t that contradictory to what you have just said?

Richard Tracey: No, of course the political input could come from elsewhere. It is possible that it could come from the boroughs, but it just seems to me that the Transport for London board, as I see it, lacks political input. It is a collection of people from business right across the board, but it could do with some political input to make it, frankly, more sensitive to the needs of the London public.

Q80 Chair: Martin Hoscik, could we have your views on these matters?

Martin Hoscik: Yes. I think there is an understandable tendency for the Mayor to look to appoint Assembly Members particularly from his own party. If he appoints too many people from outside, it looks like cronyism; it looks like appointing people who have not had any kind of democratic scrutiny to key positions, and then he is saddled with a series of headlines that say he has appointed friends, people who are big business investors or investors in his campaign. There is a natural tendency for him to look towards his own group for people, but I would prefer to see fewer Assembly Members appointed and for all of us to be big enough to understand that the job is just too big for the Mayor to do all of it himself. A lot of the functions are being carried out in the Mayor’s name by people he trusts. Actually, Sir Edward Lister is a good example of somebody who has been brought in from outside City Hall and who brings a skill-set that the Mayor does not have.

Q81 Mark Pawsey: My questions are mostly directed at Mr Tracey, because I want to talk about the London Waste and Recycling Board and its future viability, if you like. The Mayor said recently that its ability to keep going depends on making the case to Government for funding in the next Spending Review. DEFRA has confirmed that there is no funding available for 2013-14. How are you going to keep going?

Richard Tracey: We accept the view that of course there is a need for continuing funding from somewhere. The London Waste and Recycling Board has of course been in place only for five years, so far, starting off with some initial funding from DEFRA, but we have invested a considerable amount of money in various projects to cut down on waste and particularly, of course, to cut down on landfill. We do not make grants in the normal way, particularly for projects that are being set up to deal with waste, whether it be anaerobic digestion or other means of handling waste. We make loans and, in fact, we have put in, I guess, about £18 million, I think. We can obviously write to you with further details, but we have had considerable return from that, and we believe that, over the lifetime of the projects on which we made these loans, when the loans are repaid to us, there will be the money back there to invest in more.

In actual fact, we would like to be selfperpetuating with our own funding. We are getting money from Europe as well and, we are hoping also now, with the Mayor’s creation of the LEP, the local enterprise body, to gain some funding from there. It is very important; waste is a very big problem, as I am sure you are very well aware, and it needs to be dealt with.

Q82 Mark Pawsey: You referred earlier to complex projects, so the Board is investing in these new infrastructure projects. When on the business model do you expect to be selffinancing?

Richard Tracey: We would hope, certainly, within the next few years. We have established now the first largescale anaerobic digestion plant, the construction of it, in the East End of London. We have four other similar projects in various areas of the handling of waste and, indeed, creating energy from waste, whether it is by gasification or indeed by producing it. Once they are up and running, they are repaying us the loan that we made. It is very difficult to get the private sector to fund these things in the initial stages. That is why we are there-as a catalyst to deal with that.

Q83 Mark Pawsey: What you are collecting is a resource, rather than something to be disposed of.

Richard Tracey: Yes.

Q84 Mark Pawsey: Are you developing markets for the recycled material?

Richard Tracey: Recycling, yes. I was dealing with the infrastructure projects to deal with waste by anaerobic digestion or, indeed, possibly by incineration and so on. We are concentrating very greatly on recycling and with some considerable success, because we are working with the boroughs right across the board and the various waste collection authorities, which are the boroughs; we are working with them. I think the recycling percentage of the 20 million tonnes of waste in London is about 55% to 57% now of recycled material. On top of that, we have set up something that is quite new, which is the London Reuse Network. I remember when I was a young man; I believed that you could reuse things. These days, or at least certainly in the last decade or so, things were thrown away and always had to be replaced with new, but now we are having some considerable success with the London Reuse Network. Indeed, we are creating jobs.

Q85 Mark Pawsey: On that point, I understand that the number of jobs created is one of your measures of performance. First of all, why should jobs created be a measure of performance? Clearly, this is about dealing with the capital’s waste. How successful have you been in creating jobs?

Richard Tracey: At the moment, we are on about 300 jobs, but it is work in progress. Frankly, I am sure we all agree that creating new jobs, wherever they are, is a very good thing. We see that as a great extra benefit from what we are doing. As well as handling London’s waste, we are creating some jobs for people within the capital.

Q86 John Stevenson: The London Finance Commission has proposed some new taxraising powers and also greater collaboration between the Mayor and the boroughs. If that were to happen, how would the scrutiny work with the new arrangements, particularly between the Mayor and the boroughs, and where does that leave the Assembly?

Martin Hoscik: To the degree this touches on the question about whether or not the boroughs could scrutinise the Mayor instead of the Assembly, the Mayor and the boroughs are going to be fighting over the same pool of money. They are going to be looking at CIL money. The boroughs are always going to have a vested interest that competes against the Mayor’s vested interest. Actually, the Assembly acts as a sort of honest broker that can look at the overall need and can amend the Mayor’s budget, particularly if the amending majority was reduced. Therefore, it could pick up the concerns of the boroughs and listen to the needs of the Mayor, from a strategic point of view, and look at what would be a fair allocation between the two.

Jules Pipe: I think it is important to note that, contrary to perhaps how some of the media have spun the output of the Finance Commission, it is very much a devolution that is being asked for to the Mayor and to the boroughs. It is devolution to London Government; it is not simply devolution to the Mayor but, unfortunately, in shorthand it often gets written up as that.

We are currently working on drawing up some potential governance arrangements that could be put in place for how any devolved powers or monies would work between the boroughs and the Mayor, and we have a list of principles that we drew up with Tony Travers to guide that. It would be about an approach to shared governance between the two tiers, and we already see that happening in other places-for the combined authority in Greater Manchester, for example. Clearly, where they were matters pertaining to the Mayor, the Assembly would continue in exactly the same way. There is no reason why we could not have a joint scrutiny from across the boroughs. It has happened before; there was a joint scrutiny of health arrangements in London a little while back. I am not trying to put the cart before the horse; we are trying to do the horse at the moment, with the shared governance arrangements between the two. What would flow from that is then having proper scrutiny arrangements. However, I do not think it at all obviates the need for the Assembly, as far as continual scrutiny of the Mayor’s executive functions.

Richard Tracey: I might just say something about this matter of scrutiny, which does intrigue me. If any of you read my record when I was a Member of Parliament, I certainly argued against a Mayor or an Assembly. I share Edward Lister’s view; I think I was probably mistaken, because the mayoralty has developed to be a very successful model for promoting this vast city of ours across the world. That has worked terribly well and, indeed, also, in running the affairs of London, I think the Mayor has a function.

Now, as to the Assembly, there is no doubt that a figure as big as the Mayor of London does need to be scrutinised, and the scrutiny is a specialist task. I do not believe that the 32 London borough leaders, with all the roles that they have-and Jules knows better than I how much work he has to put in leading his own borough-could possibly scrutinise the Mayor as well. And it is not just scrutinising the Mayor; it is scrutinising the police, scrutinising transport and so on.

When Tony Travers announced the London Finance Commission, there seemed to be general universal agreement that it might be a very good thing. If it does come into being, the Assembly frankly will need to be enhanced and strengthened in its powers of scrutiny. I know you are aware that the Conservative view in the Assembly is that all the seats should be directly elected, which of course would mean going up from 25 seats to 32 seats, because I think the direct election would be by borough, and there are 32 boroughs. I am not sure how we would deal with the City.

John Stevenson: I think we are drifting off the topic perhaps.

Richard Tracey: Yes, but the powers of scrutiny would of course then be enhanced, and we would then need to have something far closer to some of the scrutiny powers of other cities of the world.

Q87 John Stevenson: Before we even go down the road of additional taxraising powers, etc., additional financial responsibilities were given under the Localism Act to the Mayor.

Richard Tracey: Yes, yes.

John Stevenson: Do we have to wait to see how he demonstrates the use of those first before we move forward, or do you think we should move forward to these additional powers?

Richard Tracey: When the Government was considering the Localism Bill, we did put the argument that there should be even more enhanced powers. Some of these points about more members and so on were put to the Government at the time, but for one reason or another they did not make progress. I welcome your consideration. I know you are considering the working of the 2007 Act, but alongside it you should be looking at how the enhanced powers from the Localism Bill are also progressing.

John Stevenson: Martin?

Martin Hoscik: I think the London Finance Commission proposes a very different level of financing than has gone before, which is much more long-term and open-ended. As Professor Travers said last week, in year one it would be fiscally neutral; the Government would take back everything it gave to London. The difference is that the Mayor and the boroughs would have greater freedom to spend. There would not be the usual time limits that normally apply to grants; there is not the match funding. It would be London’s money to spend on things that London thought would push its economy and, by extension, the UK economy, and obviously the Mayor and the boroughs’ selfinterest would be to invest that wisely, because they need to see a return on that to increase their yield in future years.

Jules Pipe: Absolutely, and there were some very ambitious suggestions-and I was on the Commission as well, along with the Conservative leader for Inner London-about, for example, a suite of property taxes that could be devolved to the Mayor. As Martin said, it would be fiscally neutral in the first year, and then if London performed, it would generate more money and that would be good for London but also good for the economy of the whole country. However, there were also very, shall we say, smallscale, but very, very important for London, changes that could be made. The devolution of monies around training and skills development: it is absolutely mad that that is done centrally, and even the Mayor of London would not expect to just do it all from City Hall, thinking that it would be mad even to do it from City Hall. It should be done jointly between the Mayor and the LEP, possibly, as part of the process, but with the boroughs being at the heart of it, and organising it not 33 or 32 times but certainly in functional economic areas-groups of boroughs, whether it is tech in my area or whether it is construction in another part of London, around Heathrow or whatever the specialisms of the economy are around there. We could talk to the college, because the boroughs have a handle on what the colleges are and are not doing-if they are concentrating on too much hairdressing and nail-doing, which unfortunately too many colleges are-and they are also painfully aware of where the gaps are. Your previous witness, Eddie, and the Mayor and others at City Hall are absolutely in agreement that it should be a joint task between the Mayor and the boroughs in groups to allocate that money to really tackle the skill shortages that exist in London. I do not think that is really shooting for the moon. That is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Q88 Chair: I am sure there would be quite a lot of agreement, and we have looked at those issues about devolving skills powers around the country before. I suppose there would be a little bit of cynicism from people outside London, who look at all this agreement that has broken out across parties, with the boroughs and the Mayor all enthusiastic, and they say, "How might this be?" I suppose they come to the conclusion that, given London is the richest part of the country, it is not surprising if everyone in London agrees that London should keep more of the money that it generates and then probably agrees to disagree amongst themselves how it is going to be divided up afterwards.

Jules Pipe: I would say two things. At the risk of repeating myself, I think what would be good for London would be good for the rest of the country. It is certainly not based on "winner takes all" and everything the boroughs and the Mayor generating being kept in London. A split can be negotiated that benefits both London and the rest of the country, but even without a split, London functioning well is good for the country, and if London is starved of the infrastructure funds that it needs to make the Tube run properly or function as an economy, then the whole country will suffer.

Martin Hoscik: Success in London automatically leads to success and economic growth in other areas. If you look at the London Legacy Development Corporation, the Mayor through that has managed to attract BT Sport and their new studios to the International Broadcast Centre, but the call centres that support those channels have been opened up in the North, so there is a success in London that can automatically draw a success outside. Of course, a billion pounds’ worth of trains for Crossrail is unlikely to be built in the capital, so what is good for London can generate riches outside the capital.

Richard Tracey: Yes.

Chair: Agreement is breaking out again, isn’t it?

Richard Tracey: It is. I can understand, Chair, coming from Sheffield, as we all know well, that you would argue to some extent that London is getting too much, but frankly there is a very interesting map that exists in Transport for London that shows exactly where all their suppliers are for the upgrades of the Underground, for Crossrail and for the creation of buses and so on, and the map of the jobs created spreads over very large areas of the whole of the United Kingdom. The bus is built in Northern Ireland, but a whole lot of the works for Crossrail and for the Underground are actually taking place all over the rest of the country. Mrs Wheeler will be interested that a lot of the work for the Underground is indeed in Derbyshire, and so on. It is a map, but it is very dense with all those job opportunities, and it is part of the argument we are putting to the Treasury currently for indeed enhanced funding for Transport for London. So, do not run down what London can do.

Chair: We must move on.

Martin Hoscik: Just as a quick tagon to that, because London is already beginning to look at Crossrail 2, it is very difficult for UK politicians to say to those outside the country, "We are going to put more money into London. We just put the money in there for Crossrail; we put the money in there for trains for Crossrail; and yes, we are going to give the money for Crossrail 2." If the London Finance Commission proposals were pushed through, London would be able to invest more of that itself and take the pressure off UK politicians, who have to be seen to be spreading the money around equally, even if where they're spreading it is not going to deliver the best return.

Q89 Heather Wheeler: Mayor Pipe, I think you have really already said this, but because the London Mayor does not have a major scrutiny role-callins, things like that-presumably you would be quite straightforward and just say, "Yes, the rules need to be changed and there ought to be callins. There ought to be more scrutiny." How would you do that?

Jules Pipe: I am probably not tremendously well qualified to answer this, because I am not quite sure of the arrangements at City Hall. In my understanding, in my own borough, and in borough mayoral authorities, the callin is exercised after the decision is taken but before it is implemented, but I have not even had that much experience in my own borough. In 10 years there have only ever been two callins.

Q90 Heather Wheeler: Maybe the point is overplayed.

Jules Pipe: Possibly. Forgive me; is your point that there is not sufficient power with the Assembly to call in?

Heather Wheeler: Yes.

Jules Pipe: But I believe they can call in again after the Mayor has made his decision. Richard?

Richard Tracey: I am not sure.

Martin Hoscik: Not for planning.

Richard Tracey: Not for planning.

Q91 Heather Wheeler: You cannot do it for planning, but that is normal.

Jules Pipe: Planning in local is off the agenda on that, so I think it might actually be similar, so perhaps there is not a lesson to learn in the comparison, I would think. It would need a textual analysis of the particular standing orders in each-in City Hall and the mayoral boroughs-I am afraid.

Q92 Heather Wheeler: Richard, this idea that the Conservative Group have brought forward that it ought to be named constituency Assembly Members is really interesting, but if you do that, do you use first past the post? If you do use first past the post on that, how do you cope with the alternative voting system for the Mayor?

Richard Tracey: Yes, that is a very fair point. I am, I suppose, a sort of oldfashioned politician. I just believe that first past the post is much clearer for the public to understand, and, frankly, trying to explain to the public how the Assembly works in being elected-or the election of it-is a very, very long and difficult task, because to start with there are 14 directly elected members like me, and then 11 of these Londonwide list members. It is not just explaining that it is a Londonwide list; to try to explain how the votes are counted and how those places are allocated is almost impossible. It is something that really one never tries to do, and then the public still do not understand when you try. I think it would be first past the post. At no point in the four mayoral elections we have held has the frontrunner won with more than 50% of the vote first time, so you then move into the position of the second preferences. I think, probably, given the job of Mayor and given the idea of trying to achieve a greater degree of support for whoever holds that office, the second preference is a good thing, but for the Assembly I believe it should be first past the post.

Q93 Heather Wheeler: Mr Hoscik, I am really interested in your idea that there ought to be a lower threshold for majority voting or whatever, and you do not think that it would be a matter of mischief making. This is a problem that came up with the LFEPA board; it caused a stalemate. Why should your suggestion be listened to?

Martin Hoscik: In the first instance I should point out that what I am suggesting is simply lowering the threshold for the amending of the Mayor’s budget. The Mayor’s budget at the moment proceeds unless the Assembly can get twothirds against it. I am suggesting that should still be the case, just the threshold should be lowered. It is not a case of the Mayor bringing the budget to the Assembly to be positively passed, as happens in other chambers, but in fact for the Mayor’s budget to succeed unless the Assembly amends the Mayor’s budget simply by a smaller majority than is currently required to do so. On I think all Assembly configurations since 2000, that would have required two if not three parties to vote together. Actually, you are looking at asking politicians from several different parties with different fiscal disciplines to come together and agree a costed, amended budget to be passed, so it is not quite as simple as just asking for the Mayor’s budget to be passed by 51% of people; it is actually asking for the Mayor’s budget to be passed, if you like, by 49% of the Assembly rather than simply onethird, which is, I would have thought, closer to scrutiny and accountability than we currently have.

Q94 Heather Wheeler: If one were being cynical, one would suggest that the number that you pluck out of the air is 10, and of course the Conservatives only have nine seats, whereas before, in 2008, it was 11. Has this idea come up recently?

Martin Hoscik: I have had this view since the Act was passed in 1999. Whether the Mayor was Ken Livingstone, whether the Mayor is Boris Johnson, or whoever it may be in the future, I think the idea that you effectively stop counting once 10 Assembly members have said they are in favour of the Mayor’s budget is extraordinary to most Londoners. If you have sat, as I have, and watched 13 budgets be passed in the chamber, you see people come in and they do not understand. It is simply difficult for people to understand that once a minority of Assembly members have voted in favour of the Mayor’s budget, effectively that passes. In how many other areas would £16 billion be agreed to be spent and collected on a minority of support?

Q95 Heather Wheeler: How did that work in 2004 when Labour had a majority of seven? Presumably they had to get agreement?

Martin Hoscik: In that instance my recollection is that Ken Livingstone agreed money to promote, amongst other things, walking, for the Green group, which I think was the cause of some amusement to Richard’s colleagues on the Assembly-it was something like £30 million for the promotion of walking.

Q96 Heather Wheeler: So it was pork-barrel politics.

Martin Hoscik: It may be, to some degree, but you have a mayoral election, you have a number of Assembly members elected, and then the Mayor’s budget is going to pass for each and every year. You may as well almost not bring the budget to a consideration in that respect.

Jules Pipe: All mayoral authorities are the same. They only require a third to pass the budget. I am pleased, though, in the 10 years I have been Mayor in my borough I have never relied on only a third. They have always been more than 50%, but seeing as eight of them were to freeze the council tax, it was easy to get votes.

Q97 Mrs Glindon: In North Tyneside the twothirds rule did not operate with our mayoral system, which is always a sore point with us. Can I ask the panel, with regard to planning, how do you assess the way in which the Mayor has used the powers conferred on him by the 2007 Act?

Martin Hoscik: It seems to me he has shown a large amount of restraint on it. I think, as Sir Eddie said earlier, he only called it in half a dozen times. A slight concern I have-and this is actually protecting the office of the Mayor, especially going forward-is that the Localism Act has made the Mayor a much more significant landholder than he was in 2007 when the legislation you are scrutinising or reviewing was passed, and even on the decisions he has taken the Mayor has been accused of allowing one to go through because he was seeking greater contributions to Crossrail.

I think that given the Mayor’s substantial public landholdings, and going back to the London Finance Commission proposals, he will have a vested interest in every proposal that goes because he will take a share of the business rates. The Mayor should still be the one that calls in. He can still make an in-principle decision, but then before that decision can be enacted, it should simply go before the Assembly in a report-not as another whole hearing but as a written report for the Assembly to review the evidence that was presented to the Mayor-and whatever the majority is for amending the Mayor’s budget, and whatever the amendment is for amending the Mayor’s strategy, simply either agree on that or reject the Mayor’s decision, without going through a whole new set of processes. It is very small; it is not large amounts of bureaucracy, but it will simply protect the Mayor, because going forward he or she is going to face an awful lot of accusations that they have allowed developments to go through because it suits their coffers to do so. I think it would be helpful for everybody, including future Mayors, to be able to say, "Actually, there was a pause in between; it was checked and it was approved, and there is nothing untoward going on."

Jules Pipe: I can only agree with Edward and Martin. Six times-that has got to be quite a judicious use of the power. I think, though, it will always be helpful to keep it under review. How often it will be used is clearly a function of personalities and particular ambitions in particular areas, whether it is accusations-however justified or not-of getting money in through business rates or whether it is giving permissions for housing to achieve housing targets. There will be different drivers perhaps for a certain Mayor to make a certain decision. I do not think the fact that we have not seen it with this Mayor is a reason not to keep it under review, because of future Mayors and the principles that are behind the use of those powers.

Richard Tracey: Of course, in Boris Johnson’s case, he came in to the mayoralty with a very stated policy that he was not going to interfere with the boroughs wherever possible. We do accept very much on our side of politics that the London boroughs have a very valuable role to play, and, particularly in their own areas, they know better than the Mayor does. I think that probably has dictated to quite a large extent the fact that they have not intervened, or he has not intervened, on any more than six occasions. I hope that will continue. The planning power, surely, is for major strategic matters, and in my own constituency, in Merton and Wandsworth, there is the very large strategic matter of Nine Elms-the whole regeneration of Nine Elms, and Battersea Power Station and surrounds. The GLA and the Mayor are involved in that, but they did not try to call in the planning side of it. That has been handled mostly by Wandsworth but with a lot of input from Lambeth too, and I think that is right.

Jules Pipe: I think any future review would have to allow time for the 2011 Localism Act to bed in and see what came out of that, because I think that has probably got more of an influence over things than the 2007 GLA Act, not least MDCs. We have only got one, and we are all happy with the way that is working out, but also I suppose we have been softened up to it, because of course there was the ODA-in charge of a smaller area, admittedly, but still the core of that area for much of the previous decade. All the local boroughs, including my own, are quite softened up to that idea. If another Mayor came in wanting to set up MDCs all over the place, then perhaps, again, that would be ripe for review.

Richard Tracey: Of course the Assembly did need to approve the creation of the MDC. That is one of the powers you gave us, and we did pass that one through. I quite agree with Jules-I think it is working out very well at the moment.

Q98 Mrs Glindon: Mayor Pipe, you have said how important review is, and you have mentioned that several times. London Councils wants the review. What would you like to see come out of the review? What would be the ultimate result?

Jules Pipe: I am sorry; it is too early to say. I think it would be the broad effect of previous Acts and particularly the 2011 Act.

Q99 Mrs Glindon: With regard to Crossrail, once it has been funded, what should happen to the Mayor’s Community Infrastructure Levy?

Jules Pipe: There are two answers to that. There would be the aggregate view of the 33 boroughs, which would say that future CIL revenue should be returned to the boroughs rather than centralised. Obviously, wearing my borough hat, which I share probably with another half a dozen, I would say, "Well, give it to Crossrail 2." There is probably a slightly divided view between the minority of boroughs on the line, who would probably be happy to see it go to Crossrail 2, and probably the majority of boroughs-if I am being fair to my other position, which I am representing here-who would say, "Return it to the individual boroughs."

Mrs Glindon: That seems unanimous.

Richard Tracey: I most certainly think that any benefit, any surplus, should go to Crossrail 2 because, frankly, of the importance of us growing the transport infrastructure of London, whether it be the upgrade of the Underground or the building of Crossrail 1. Crossrail 1 is to relieve the Central Line across the centre of London. Crossrail 2 will make an enormous contribution as the route is laid out and suggested at the moment by the London First committee, led by Lord Adonis, who knows a great deal about transport, having been Secretary of State; it will make an enormous difference in travelling from north to south and south to north, and of course it will also relieve what promises to be serious congestion at Euston if and when HS2 is built. We are very worried about what will happen there, and so it has got to be part of that contribution, I think.

Martin Hoscik: I do not have anything to add to that; basically, we are all in agreement.

Chair: Thank you all very much indeed for coming along this afternoon and giving evidence to us.