Communities and Local Government Committee - Minutes of EvidenceHC 213

Back to Report

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Communities and Local Government Committee

on Monday 24 June 2013

Members present:

Mr Clive Betts (Chair)

Simon Danczuk

James Morris

Mark Pawsey

John Pugh

Andy Sawford

John Stevenson

________________

Examination of Witness

Witness: Brandon Lewis MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Local Government, Department for Communities and Local Government, gave evidence.

Q132 Chair: Minister, thank you for agreeing to stay on to answer a few questions on the Greater London Authority Act 2007 and the operation of the London Assembly. We should not keep you for too long on these matters. I think you have probably seen the evidence we have taken so far, and one of the things that we have been looking at is the London Finance Commission and its call for greater tax and spending powers for London. I just wonder what your initial response to that is, and how you might be considering taking that issue forward.

Brandon Lewis: I welcome the report. It opens up some very interesting questions, but my position is that we have got to look at that report and talk to colleagues across other Departments, because, like whole place community budgets, it obviously goes beyond just the DCLG at this stage. As I have said, it is a good report and it is useful to continue that conversation on where London goes next and what the next option is, but there are some potentially significant implications beyond London from that. As I have said, we will be liaising with colleagues in other Departments as well.

Q133 Chair: I wonder whether the possibility of extended powers for London governance, in the widest sense, and particularly for the Mayor, would lead you to consider-at the same time and in parallel-whether there should therefore be strengthened scrutiny powers for the Assembly. Certainly, one thing that the Assembly has been saying already is that with the enhanced capital controls that the Mayor has now, there is a £5.6 billion budget but the Assembly has virtually no effective say over that. Are those the sorts of issues you have been looking at as well?

Brandon Lewis: It is fair to say that we are always looking at everything. There are no plans at the moment to devolve further power. There was a big devolution with the original creation of the mayoral role, and again with the Localism Act 2011, when we devolved responsibility for housing in the capital, as well as economic development and the Olympic legacy. At that point there was also a move of about £3 billion in un-ring-fenced money over to the mayoralty, so there has already been a big decentralisation in that sense. There are no plans to go any further at the moment. At the moment, the model works.

One of the most powerful things in the Mayor’s position is the transparency about it, and the understanding of the general public that it is the Mayor who is responsible and who has that political mandate-one of the largest around, with over 1 million people voting for the Mayor. There is a clear view and people understand who is responsible. That transparency is very healthy thing. At the moment, we have a system that works. There is a strong mayoral position. The last Government put that in place. From what I have seen, that is a good thing for London.

Q134 Chair: Two things have been drawn to our attention. One is that even in the current situation, the Assembly has not got the same powers of effective scrutiny on capital budgets-and the capital budget has been significantly expanded for the Mayor in recent years-as it has over the Mayor’s revenue budget. There seems to be a difference there that is difficult to explain. Looking at their scrutiny, they do not have anything like the resources of the National Audit Office, or the resources we have as Select Committees, to support them on an independent basis. I wonder whether at some point you might like to think about those issues. We recognise that there is a strong executive, but the issue has been raised with us that the ability to hold that executive to account through scrutiny is not as strong as it might be.

Brandon Lewis: The fact is that those issues have been raised with the Committee and you have raised them with me, so I will have a look at them and come back to you, particularly on the first point-the issue between revenue and capital. I will go away and look at that, and if you will allow me, I will come back to you on that.

Chair: Okay.

Brandon Lewis: As to the wider remit, I actually like the fact that people know clearly that we have a strong Mayor with clear democratic accountability. The Assembly is there to scrutinise, and if the Assembly feels that it needs to look at how that is resourced, then that is an issue for the Assembly to look at.

In terms of the mayoral set-up, the Mayor has to come back to that committee on a regular basis, both for mayoral questions and because of their ability to challenge on issues, as they have done-on fire, they have challenged quite hard this year and made the Mayor look at that-and at the moment that system seems to work: it is clear and transparent, and the public understand it. That is one of the strengths of the position of Mayor in the first place.

Q135 Chair: You mentioned the issue of clarity and people understanding where responsibility lies. However, if you look at the different powers that exist and the different authorities and boards, there are very different relationships between the Mayor and the Assembly on those. You just mentioned the fire authority: members of the Assembly are actually members of the fire authority. Policing, however, is now the total responsibility of the Mayor in an executive role with the deputy Mayor appointed by the Mayor. You go to the transport authority: there is a possibility of having two Assembly members on Transport for London, but none has been appointed. You go on to the waste authority and there is no right to have Assembly members on it, but an Assembly member chairs it, who is appointed by the Mayor, but elected by the Assembly. Is that not a completely inconsistent set of arrangements? It is very difficult to know why all those different functions have different roles for Assembly members and different relations between the Mayor and the Assembly and how they operate.

Brandon Lewis: What we can’t get away from is that the Assembly has that overarching ability to challenge the Mayor, and not just through the Mayor’s question time sessions-I think there have to be 10 a year of those. I think the previous Government got it right in calling for the Mayor to have a very strong role. In the Localism Act 2011, we gave the Assembly the power to reject the Mayor’s strategy if they had the two-thirds vote, but there is also the explicit duty to have regard to responses to consultation by the Assembly when preparing or revising statutory strategies. We should never underestimate the fact that, in London, there is that clear accountability to one of the largest electorates in the world. It is under a huge amount of public scrutiny and quite rightly so. Whether the Mayor makes a speech, a plan or a decision, I do not think that anybody could question that it gets a large amount of public scrutiny, which is a good thing, but it still allows for a strong mayoral model. The Assembly does have that ability to question and scrutinise the Mayor. I am not sure that we could add anything to that at the moment that could widen or create further scrutiny beyond what we already have, which seems to be one of the most transparent and clearly accountable roles in the country at the moment.

Q136 Chair: What has been said to us is that, aside from the points I made about maybe extending or improving scrutiny, that role is confused by the fact that you have Assembly members on the fire authority, which is then scrutinised by the Assembly. You have the waste authority, which is scrutinised by the Assembly, but one of its own members chairs it, but he is actually appointed by the Mayor. Those relationships are very confusing indeed. The Mayor’s chief of staff said in evidence that the Assembly should just be a scrutinising body and that should be that, because then everybody would understand their role and it would not get confused by all these different relationships.

Brandon Lewis: I saw the comments about having the Assembly doing purely scrutiny, but the Assembly ultimately does do that. The other involvement that it has, whether through the fire authority or the waste authority, is on top of the core role of the Assembly itself. The Assembly does still have that ability to scrutinise the Mayor and to challenge him at mayoral questions and through general scrutiny and challenges to any strategies he may wish to bring forward in the first place.

Q137 Chair: But isn’t it a bit like Ministers taking executive decisions in this place and then sitting on a Select Committee and questioning their colleagues about what they are doing? Isn’t that a rather odd relationship?

Brandon Lewis: Sorry. Could you repeat that?

Chair: Well, it’s a bit like having Ministers being able to sit on a Select Committee and question other Ministers about what they are doing. You have Assembly members sitting on an authority and then being able to scrutinise the very bodies of which some of their colleagues may be members.

Brandon Lewis: Yes, but obviously the main Assembly is a much larger body, so there is a much wider group of people there to do the scrutiny. As you say, it is scrutinising decisions that the Mayor has made, because the Mayor has that democratic mandate to get on and deliver the job. The Assembly is there to scrutinise that effectively after the fact.

Q138 Chair: What have we got? A different composition of the various functions. The police are now a direct responsibility of the Mayor. That has been changed. There are Assembly members on the fire authority. You could have Assembly members on the transport authority, but you don’t. On waste, you have no right to have Assembly members, but you do. That is not your responsibility-you didn’t create it-but it isn’t quite the simple model of executive authority being scrutinised by another body that you might ideally like to see.

Brandon Lewis: I wouldn’t disagree. With anything such as this, the simpler and clearer it can be, the better. That is part of the beauty of transparency. Don’t get me wrong: I will certainly go away and have a look at some of the specific issues raised. I know that this year the fire service has had a lot of scrutiny, particularly in London, around some of the decisions that the Mayor has made to make sure that he is on top of his budgets. But, in that sense, that has been a really good example of the Assembly-and, indeed, the fire authority-being able to hold the Mayor to account for the decisions that he is making.

I could equally argue that that is a good example of how it works, but actually you are quite right. The simpler it is for everybody to understand, and the more transparent it is in that respect, the better it is for everybody.

Q139 Simon Danczuk: Minister, earlier you said that the system works. While you might not say that the system is broken, it is certainly stuttering along and in need of mending. If we look at some of the other inconsistencies that exist in terms of the Assembly’s powers, it can reject the appointment of a deputy mayor for policing and crime who is not an Assembly member, but not the appointment of any other unelected deputy mayor or any chair or deputy chair of a GLA board. At the same time, the Assembly can reject by a two-thirds majority all the Mayor’s statutory strategies, except the police and crime plan. So there are a number of inconsistencies, not least created by the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011. I presume that you accept the inconsistencies, so what are you going to do resolve the anomalies?

Brandon Lewis: I would not necessarily accept them as inconsistencies. There are different situations for different parts of the Mayor’s role. With the Localism Act, we bought in the ability for the Assembly to challenge if it has a two-thirds majority. That is an extra bit of power and scrutiny that the coalition Government brought in, and it is a useful thing to have as an extra check and balance. However, I would come back to the fact that, when the Mayor has been elected, they have the democratic mandate to be a very clear leader, and the ability for the Mayor to appoint their deputies is important.

Policing is slightly different, because the Mayor themselves sits effectively as what other places would refer to as the Police and Crime Commissioner, which they do not on the other bodies such as fire, where the Mayor has obviously appointed people, as he has done with Assembly Member Cleverly.

Q140 Simon Danczuk: Even the Mayor’s own chief of staff said that there is a case for consistency across the whole issue. Are you saying to the Committee that you have no intention to correct the anomalies that clearly exist?

Brandon Lewis: As I said, I would not necessarily accept that there are anomalies-there are different things for different parts of the role that have been created. I will say that I know that the Mayor’s office made that statement, and obviously we will be looking at the issue. However, there are two sides. For example, I suspect that some people would argue that with fire, there should be no Assembly Members and the Mayor should be allowed to appoint-effectively to have a direct appointment that controls fire, and therefore go the other way and have not necessarily less scrutiny, but less direct involvement from the Assembly, other than through its wider remit-rather than having Assembly Members directly involved.

It is about balancing up whether we go further or take the view that, actually, for one reason or another, this is working for different areas at the moment. The transparency is clear: the Assembly has that ultimate ability to scrutinise the Mayor directly. That does work and people understand it.

Q141 John Stevenson: Your earlier comments quite clearly demonstrated that you support the mayoral model in London; you are supportive of it and you believe that it has worked. You also know that Lord Heseltine has come out and said that the role of the Mayor of London should be rolled out to other parts of the country. The Government’s response would appear to be that they agree with him. Will you give us some indication as to when the Government intends to introduce other conurbation mayors? How many would there be and what would be the time scale for their introduction?

Brandon Lewis: Yes, you are absolutely right: I think that the way the mayoralty in London has been able to grasp public imagination, as much as anything, has got people looking at what goes on in a way that perhaps they did not before. We have had two strong individuals with strong personalities as Mayor-that has been a real asset to the role. In other areas, there is the simplicity of the transparency. People understand that there is not this tier, that tier, and this leader, that councillor, or whatever. There is somebody who is ultimately responsible, and that is a healthy thing.

In terms of conurbations, rather then the Government going out and saying, "This is what we will proclaim from on high," we will be looking for those areas to come to us. I suspect that we will start to see that over the next couple of years and, as we do, we will work with them.

Q142 John Stevenson: From a practical point of view, how are the areas around, say, Manchester going to come together and say, "Hang on, we want a conurbation mayor. We will have x council and y council, and that is the area that should be covered."? Is that really practical? Is that not something that the Government have to do and say, "Right, we are going to have four conurbation mayors outwith London."? Do you see legislation on that basis?

Brandon Lewis: There is a temptation for that, but the problem is that that moves away from locally derived power and localism and back towards our centrally deciding-"This is the geographic area where we think this will work." That is certainly not the way that we are looking to go. We will be looking for representations from the local areas on what they think will work for them. I genuinely think that over the next couple of years we may well start to see it, and as a combined authority Greater Manchester may be one of those areas that starts to look that way. From what I have seen over the past couple of years, these things work best when the local area comes together and says, "This is what works for us." One of the potential strengths in the long run of the local enterprise partnerships is that they were locally determined. It was not someone in Whitehall with a black marker and a map saying, "This is what we want."

Q143 John Stevenson: Accepting your argument that it has to come from the local area upwards to Government, if Greater Manchester came forward and said, "We would like a conurbation here," would you introduce legislation to bring that about, or would you want a referendum first?

Brandon Lewis: Well, at the moment, as I have said, although I can see that happening, we have not had any direct demand from areas. However, if we were asked, we would look at what legislative change is needed and how we can best deliver it.

Q144 John Stevenson: Would you like to see a referendum first in the local area, or would you just say, "We have had representations and we think it is a good idea, so let’s do it"?

Brandon Lewis: At the moment, if any particular area wants to go for a mayoralty, they have to have a referendum, as you know. We are looking at the system for that and the percentages that they need to do that. If a conurbation came forward, we would have to look at the particular request from that area and how that would best work for people.

Q145 John Stevenson: Just a final question. Do you think that the London Mayor model could be introduced for county councils?

Brandon Lewis: If you are looking at county councils, there is nothing to stop a county council area looking at a mayoral model and having a referendum on it now.

Q146 John Stevenson: It is a slightly different model, which you will appreciate.

Brandon Lewis: Yes, it is, but the ability to have a directly elected mayor in a county is the same as it is for any district or unitary area. They could go ahead with that now, but we have not had anybody coming forward wanting to do that just that.

Chair: Thank you very much indeed, Minister.