Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]
Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Baroness Janke
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I rise to speak in support of the amendment as one of the very few people in this House—I exclude the noble Lord, Lord Tope—who has had up close experience of the two London mayors we have had over the past 15 years. I can assure noble Lords that the system works sometimes, but not always, so to make it a compulsory element is absolutely nonsensical. Some of the language used here is a bit misleading. Talking about an elected Mayor of London as local government is a complete nonsense because it is not local government, it is regional government. The whole point of the Mayor of London is that he or she is not a local politician; they are a regional politician with responsibility for the strategic oversight of the area to which they are elected. Sometimes it works and sometimes it fails. It has failed spectacularly in London on our housing stock. The fact that we are so short of affordable and social housing is, I think, a failure of the mayor. As I say, this is not about local government, but strategic regional government.
I can assure noble Lords that making an elected mayor compulsory is nonsensical. It all depends on the talents and abilities of the person, and I would argue that while it has worked for some issues, for people here to say, “It is the answer because it is modern, innovative and fresh thinking”, is complete nonsense. Please do not be fooled; rather, accept that a mayor should be an optional extra, not compulsory.
Baroness Janke (LD)
My Lords, I too rise to support Amendments 3 and 4, and to echo some of the comments that have already been made. This is actually about choice. The Minister has rightly said that the Bill is not prescriptive, and yet it is highly prescriptive when it talks about mayors. We can see different forms of leadership working well in other parts of the country. We talk about international cities and Europe, but mayors in France are not directly elected; they are the top person on the list. People in other cities elect their leaders in different ways. Some call them mayors and some do not, and as I say, some of them are not directly elected.
We heard last week from colleagues who said that in their area of the country, a mayor would be entirely inappropriate. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, has explained how it would be unacceptable and inappropriate in her own area. I would say that if we are in favour of no prescription, we should allow innovative forms of leadership to emerge in different parts of the country. We should not try to impose a certain form and say that people will not have powers if they do not adopt a mayor.
Perhaps I may talk briefly about the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and his rewriting of the history of the city of Bristol. I should point out at the start that the successes of Bristol have been well known for a long time. For the past 10 to 15 years it has been the most successful city outside London. It has the highest GDP per head of population of any English city except London and it is the European Green Capital, something that emerged through my own administration and has been carried on by the mayor. Certainly, there was instability of government when the Labour Party lost its majority on the city council, but that is no different from what has happened in many other places. Indeed, the city ran a successful three-party coalition for 18 months. I led that coalition, so it is no good the noble Lord shaking his head; that is indeed what happened—