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Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, all offenders who are sentenced to prison and qualify for transfer to a secure mental institution are transferred. However, I agree with the underlying implication of what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, says: there are people in prison who may well not qualify under any statute for transfer to a secure mental institution but plainly require psychiatric help. That is something that we need to look at, and which the policy reviews
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Greater London Authority Bill
3.46 pm
Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 1:
Clause 2, page 2, line 23, leave out “or any of the functional bodies” and insert “, any of the functional bodies or such body representative of the London borough councils”
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, we now return again to the role of the London boroughs and London councils which represent those boroughs. The amendment would safeguard the voice of London boroughs by elevating them to the proper place as primary bodies with which the Mayor must consult when devising his strategies. It will ensure that, in his deliberations on London-wide strategy, the Mayor would have to take into account the views of democratically elected local authorities in London. The amendment would place these authorities on the same footing as the London Assembly as regards consultation and would inject a much needed democratic ingredient into the Mayor’s consultation process.
The case for the amendment is clear, and we discussed it in Committee. Councils in London are not only the democratic representatives of Londoners, but the very bodies charged with carrying out the Mayor’s strategies. Their inclusion in the consultation process would ensure that mayoral policies were set out with all stakeholders in view. The inclusion of the councils would ensure that all Londoners were represented. In other words, it would fill the gaps on the London Assembly where some boroughs are not represented so adequately. It can only be the right thing that elected representatives have an explicit stake at the same level as the GLA in London-wide strategies before they are published and, effectively, are faits accomplis.
I am surprised that the Government have not accepted the amendment and seen the virtue of it. London councils, as representative bodies, would provide one extra level of scrutiny which would strengthen the Mayor’s eventual strategic mandate. I was quite surprised by the Minister’s response in Committee, where she said that the Mayor should take account of views from within “the family”. Perhaps it is naive of me to assume that the Mayor, the London Assembly and locally elected representatives should not be all one and the same family, delivering together effectively across London. I hope that the Minister will be able to accept this amendment. I beg to move.
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Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, the noble Baroness referred to the London family. Over the years, comments have been made about dysfunctional families, but I hope to be more than just friendly towards the London boroughs. That friendship and respect for their views relates to all the London boroughs and to the body that represents them. However, we all understand that a body representing 33 very different views cannot hope to represent them all. When the Mayor is considering his strategies, it is immensely important that he consults all the London boroughs, not just London Councils, the current representative body. I have made that point on a number of occasions and in a number of contexts.
However, new Section 42A in the 1999 Act is about more than consultation. It places on the Mayor a new statutory duty to respond to the consultation carried out under it. Without wishing to suggest that the views of London boroughs are not valid, important and at the head of the Mayor’s considerations, this clause provides a statutory requirement to respond to the Assembly that recognises its particular statutory role, which is different from that of the boroughs. One might say that the role of the boroughs is more important than that of the Assembly. However, it is a different role, and the Assembly has the positive duty to hold the Mayor to account. My point is about how we should be thinking of scrutiny if the boroughs are to be in exactly the same position over the strategies as the Assembly. It is a wider point than it appears. I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, regards that as a helpful rather than a hostile comment.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, we are entering an area where people have a vested interest. I say that in a benign way. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, made her point as a Member of the Assembly, and she is entitled to do so. She is concerned that, if the powers of consultation on strategy or other matters that are presently enjoyed are diffused, that may diminish the stature of her consultative powers. In the past, I was connected with the local council and at present the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and I are joint presidents of London Councils. I well understand the concern of local councils and their need to be consulted at every level because, at the level and in the field that we are talking about, there is a need to take the views of local councils fully into account. They know their local areas and their people best, and they know the solutions best. This is an area in the Bill that is worth raising, and I shall be interested to hear what the Minister and her advisers have to say about it. The case was made in Committee, but not pursued too strongly because it is a fine point. I should be interested to hear what the Minister has to say as guidance.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Andrews): My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate. I am bound to disappoint the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham. Obviously, we believe strongly in the importance of all public bodies engaging in
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The GLA Act requires the Mayor to consult the Assembly, the functional bodies and the London boroughs on, among other things, drafts of or revisions to his strategies. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, we are strengthening these requirements under Clause 2, requiring the Mayor explicitly to have regard and respond to views within the GLA group—from the Assembly and functional bodies—at an early stage in preparing his strategies, before he moves to stage 2.
Those two stages of consultation are very important. They are set out in the Act, which requires the Mayor first to consult the Assembly and functional bodies on drafts of or revisions to his strategies before consulting more widely in the second stage. There is a reason for that, as my noble friend said. That is to ensure that the views of the Assembly are formative. It is at the second stage that the interests of the boroughs are safeguarded, to use the term of the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham. He is specifically required to consult the London boroughs during that second stage. We believe that that has worked well. The voice of the boroughs is clearly heard, so I find myself unable to accept the amendment for two reasons.
First, it is unnecessary. There seems to be an implication that the Mayor does not listen to the voice of the boroughs. The evidence is that he has a good record of modifying his proposals in response to consultation, having listened to the boroughs. For example, when he gave the go-ahead to the western congestion-charging zone extension following public consultation, the exact nature of the zone and treatment of residents’ discounts was significantly modified in light of the consultation responses. Also, in revising his transport and air quality strategies, the Mayor made changes to the boundary of the proposed low emission zone in direct response to feedback.
Secondly, we would be in dangerous territory if we accepted the amendment. An explicit duty on the Mayor to have regard to boroughs’ views would set a precedent that other organisations might perfectly reasonably expect to apply to them. We might therefore find ourselves being harassed by other organisations that want the same powers. The Bill strikes the right balance in placing a duty on the Mayor to have regard to consultation responses from within the GLA group rather than from any external bodies, and only in the first stage of the two-stage consultation process.
I know that that is a disappointing response, but I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to accept it.
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Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I thank the Minister for the first of many responses today. I hope that we will do better as we go along than we have on this one.
The question of how and when the Mayor consults on strategies is quite important. The amendment would make either the London boroughs or their representative, which is London Councils, a primary consultee rather than being a bit further down the line. The question of consultation on the congestion charge pops up from time to time. It is a bit of a red rag to a bull. Perhaps I should declare an interest here as a council member of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, as it was the prime consultee. It would be reasonably fair to say that it was quite a struggle to get the Mayor to accept that there were problems with the congestion charge on the boundary line. This was eventually changed, but not without a great deal of pressure. The Mayor will now implement many strategies—there are three in the Bill today—and it is a pity that the Government will not accept that the representatives of the local councils should be involved at this primary stage.
I hear that the Minister is not to be budged on this one, as they say, so I thank her for her reply, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
4 pm
Lord Hanningfield moved Amendment No. 2:
The Mayor shall produce and publish a consultation strategy containing information about the procedures in respect of all matters upon which he is required to consult under this Act including—
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the amendment would place a duty on the Mayor to publish a consultation strategy that would have a clear and unequivocal indication of his consultation processes. It would ensure that the Mayor was entirely transparent in his execution of the consultation procedure, the bodies that he consulted, the communications that he undertook during the consultation, the timetables that he set for it, and the arrangements that he put in place for responding to it. It would, in effect, provide evidence that the consultation that the Mayor carried out was accountable and subject to scrutiny.
In Grand Committee, we rather strayed from the main point of our very useful discussion. However, the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who is not in the Chamber today, summed up rather well the point that we were trying to achieve when he said:
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“The whole purpose of electing people to hold office in public life is for them to exercise their judgment and subsequently to be held accountable for that judgment”.—[Official Report, 30/4/07; col. GC 9.]
I suspect that the noble Lord did not realise how close his position was to ours on this amendment.
Obviously the amendment is not intended to insist that the Mayor reacts to and accepts everything in the consultation. Far from it; he has to exercise his judgment. Rather, the amendment will ensure that the Mayor is accountable for the way in which he carries out the consultation. This is very important; the Mayor should not be able to claim that significant consultation has been carried out without being able to show how and by what means he has carried it out. The frame of reference should be clearly set out so that it is not possible to conduct a hurried, unpublicised consultation and later claim that there has been some. Government departments regularly carry out consultations and make available on websites and so forth their means of carrying them out. They need not be costly or bureaucratic. The amendment simply calls for the Mayor to have a proper process for consultation. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, I shall pick up points that were made in Grand Committee on the same amendment. Would the noble Lord consider it appropriate to view the strategy, as it is described in the amendment, as a statement of good practice? Might not different strategies or different consultation processes be appropriate for different situations? We spent some time in Grand Committee considering what was meant by consultation, and all noble Lords who spoke were concerned to distinguish between a consultation that was for information, a consultation that might be a referendum—although this country does not go in for referendums much—and a consultation that is genuinely asking, “I have some ideas. You tell me how you respond, and I will go away and think about them”. No doubt there are grades in between. When the noble Baroness replies, I will be interested to know whether she thinks that it should be a single strategy or a menu of good practice.
I make that point because we already may be in danger of doing what some of us have told ourselves out loud that we must not do during this Bill; that is, to personalise the office of Mayor to the current office-holder. Whatever our individual views about the decisions and actions of the current office-holder, we need to stand back. As one who has criticised the Mayor on his consultation, I will be the first to offer that point.
Perhaps I may also respond to what I think was possibly a nudge from the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, when he spoke to the previous amendment. He may have felt that I was simply representing the Assembly. I have declared my interest as chair of the Assembly and as a joint president of London Councils. One might say that my heart is still very much in a local base, having spent a long time as a local councillor. I shall do my best to make it clear to your Lordships when I am speaking on behalf of the Assembly. At this stage, noble Lords may assume that unless I say otherwise I am certainly speaking on behalf of these Benches. We are at a political point in the proceedings.
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Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, I quite understand the desire to ensure that there is proper consultation and to have something spelt out in the Bill. With the greatest respect, I just question whether it is necessary to insert a chunk of verbiage. We already have a paragraph spelling out the way in which consultation should be undertaken. As the noble Baroness has said, it really should be a matter of good practice rather than something spelt out in the Bill. I would be interested to know whether the Minister feels the same way.
Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I confess that I do. In Committee, we had a very interesting debate about consultation and the different forms it could take. I particularly remember the noble Lord, Lord Tope, making a distinction between consultation which was a form and consultation which produced a result. I suspect that I shall miss my noble friend Lord Harris today when we enter some of the choppier waters. The issues raised were not about semantics, because there are real distinctions about consulting properly, and they are not resolved by the amendment. I agree with my noble friend Lady Turner that the amendment would put in the Bill something which is unnecessary. It is worth stating at this stage that we would all want to make a distinction between the office of Mayor and the person holding the office. There is a suspicion in our debates on consultation that somehow the Mayor is less likely to take account of consultation processes.
As I explained on the previous amendment, the Government are very serious that when public bodies consult widely in the development and implementation of policy, they do so fully and properly. That certainly applies to the GLA, which is not an exception. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, that a statutory consultation process would bring any significant benefits. In terms of transparency, the Mayor gives clear advance notice of consultations that he intends to carry out on the GLA website, for example. As far as I am aware, he has never had any difficulty in encouraging Londoners to participate.
The point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is important; namely, there are different types of consultation for different situations. Some consultations can be quick, deep, intensive, forensic and investigatory. Others can be more reflective, longer term and take a different form. To prescribe a single form for a process would not serve the investigative process at all. There are real disadvantages in requiring the Mayor to publish a consultation strategy. I would not want to suggest that it would be tokenism, but it certainly would not be a substitute. It just adds another layer of explanation and burden. It would be bureaucratic, it would not generate additional information, it could not guarantee that the consultation would produce a result and it would be costly to prepare. My main argument is that it risks setting in stone some procedures which, by definition, need to remain flexible and responsive.
Finally, it should not be up to the Government to impose this—
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Lord Hanningfield: My Lords, would not the GLA’s ability to scrutinise properly be hampered without it? In a moment I shall explain what I have to do as the leader of Essex County Council. The Assembly should have something which enables it to scrutinise the Mayor’s consultation; we are suggesting that the strategy should be published and available. I do not see why it needs to be bureaucratic. Does not the noble Baroness consider that it would assist the GLA’s work if the Mayor did this?
Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I believe that the Mayor has a strategy for consulting the GLA, which is probably well known to it, but we are talking about broader consultations. I do not agree and remain unmoved by the eloquence of the noble Lord opposite. On that basis, I ask him to consider withdrawing his amendment.
Lord Hanningfield: My Lords, I thank the Minister for her answer. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I say that there is a menu of different consultations, as did the Minister. As the leader of a large authority—not the Mayor of London—you have to publish a forward plan under the present local government legislation. I am sure we will discuss this tomorrow, because we are talking about governance arrangements. If one wants to change the forward plan—this happened only yesterday in Essex, when I wanted to go out to consultation—one has to publish a leader’s decision, which then can be called in by the opposition. It is less than satisfactory because, at the moment, various legal officers interpret the law in local government outside London in different ways. This may need to be clarified in our discussions tomorrow.
We are seeking clarity. The Mayor should publish his strategy, the GLA should have it and everyone should be aware of it. Obviously it might have to be amended at times when something crops up but it would give clarity and enable the Assembly to function better. I am very disappointed that the Minister cannot see any logic or sense in it. It need not be bureaucratic; it could be relatively simple. I note what the Minister has said but this is probably not the right time to divide the House. I hope the Government will reflect on the matter and we may come back to it at another stage. However, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 3:
In section 21(1) of the GLA Act 1999 (disqualification from being the Mayor or an Assembly member) before paragraph (a) insert—
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