London's New Government

Written by Sally Hamwee on Thu 1st Aug 2002

When you're at law school, it doesn't occur to you that one day you might have a (small) hand in drafting legislation – and it certainly doesn't cross your mind that you might have to live with the consequences of your scrutiny.

When it was going through the Lords I lived the Greater London Authority Act 1999 (that's the one that's longer than any act since the legislation giving India its independence, and is also the one, incidentally, which gives the Secretary of State more mentions than the Mayor of London), and since May 2000 have been living it in reality.

I tell myself that it's not my fault if there are flaws in it – I didn't draft the damn thing – and as it happens Graham Tope and I, our minds perhaps concentrated by our hopes of election to the new authority, did propose some significant amendments. I'm really glad, for instance, that we spotted that twelve Mayor's Question Times a year, with a minimum of 28 days between them, would have made an August holiday very difficult.

Not only is London's government new, or at any rate resumed after a 14-year hiatus, but so is its form. The Mayor, who alone holds executive powers, is held to account by the 25-member Assembly, which is required to scrutinise his actions and is able to investigate (but not do more) matters "of importance to Greater London".

The Greater London Authority family extends to the four "functional bodies" (the Metropolitan Police Authority, the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, the London Development Agency which is the equivalent of regional development agencies elsewhere, and Transport for London). On some but not all of these Assembly members sit, as Mayoral appointees – TfL is the exception – and the Mayor has a different relationship with each. Add to the mix, just to take a couple of points, that TfL comprises what were 14 different transport bodies (that's before the Tube is handed over), and that the Home Secretary had previously had direct authority for the Met Police and left it with a legacy of nineteenth century financial systems (though "systems" is far too precise a term).

Then top it up with the Mayor being an Independent (with plenty of political baggage) and the Assembly members consisting of 9 Labour, 9 Conservative, 4 Liberal Democrats and 3 Greens.

Inevitably we are all still finding our way and finding too where the problems – and opportunities – are in the legislation. One thing that's fairly clear is that the legal profession is not doing too badly out of this; with a litigation-minded Mayor, the Assembly has found that when we need advice an awful lot of members of the Bar are already instructed by Mr Livingstone.

Mayor's Question Time is the event that attracts most attention, though sadly the media have turned up in far greater numbers when the Mayor's private life is the subject than when we're debating congestion charging or the £5 billion budget. The Mayor is required to give oral answers to members' questions, and written answers within three days where that is not practicable. The Mayor acceded to a request to deal with questions by written answer between meetings, in order to smooth out the peaks and troughs, and to reduce the number of issues on which he has to brief himself for oral answers. But there is no legislative time limit on questions asked between meetings, and the delay in getting replies has in some cases been hugely long (some have been outstanding after 100 or more days), so members tend to bunch all their questions for MQT. And so the Mayor has to spend a lot of time swatting up on questions that will in the end just get a written answer.

It has taken a lot of effort to find a procedure with which all the political groups and the Mayor are happy. The suspicion that certain members, and particularly certain groups, get more than their share of time, meant that quite early on we had to have an officer recording the number of questions, including supplementaries, asked by each group, and the time taken, and keep cumulative totals – I reckon, chairing meetings, that if Labour and the Tories are about equally cross with me, I'm doing about right – though that doesn't deal with the conviction of my own group that I'm disproportionately hard on them. Questions are ordered on a rota basis, having regard to proportionality between the groups. This may sound like paradise for a standing orders anorak, and of little interest to others, but when you're in the chair it's very important indeed. The Chair is not a speaker or presiding officer as in the Commons and Scottish and Welsh models; relative numbers mean that the Chair has to have the ability to vote, otherwise too often we would tie 12 all, so it is accepted that political identity is not surrendered, but I confess (a terrible confession for a politician) that I have often failed, in the chair, not to be neutral.

MQT lasts two and a half hours, so it's quite a test for the Mayor, though in Mr Livingstone we have a politician who is happy to answer questions on any subject you can think of (and many you can't); the test for the Chair is to prevent a discourse when two words would do – to be fair whenever I've said "Ken, stop!" he's done so, but that's not something that seems appropriate other than on an occasional basis. Perhaps the only step I have taken which has had general approval is to institute a regular comfort break, for the Chair's benefit as well as the Mayor's (and I also confess to having doctored the transcript of an MQT to excise a reference, by the Mayor, to the state of his bladder).

We have transcripts of evidence (a term that I have had to train myself not to put in quotation marks in this context), annexed to minutes and in the public domain, for obvious reasons of transparency – something else whose detail none of us really anticipated. We have been very lucky in the standard of reporting achieved by our regular who attends full Assembly meetings - he is ex-Hansard - but it has surprised me how much effort is needed to check the transcripts. Modern technology and comparative cost means that evidence sessions from committees are transcribed overseas, from tapes – the brain-teaser that took me longest to puzzle out was the reference to Betty Clark; after some thought I realised this was the (male) committee clerk.

Evidence (or "evidence") is taken from the Mayor, both as Mayor and as Chair of Transport for London, and both at meetings of the full Assembly and by committees. In both forums we also see people such as the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the Commissioner for Transport (some nice questions of etiquette there when they come to the same meeting), the chairs of the functional bodies, particularly to discuss their budgets, and many, many people who help us to scrutinise the Mayor's draft strategies (transport, waste, energy, spatial development, to give a flavour) and to investigate the issues we select. Again just two examples: we have looked at how the Mayor consults Londoners, exercising both statutory responsibilities and his general powers; and at the effectiveness, or otherwise, of money spent on regeneration projects. Both involved talking (formally) to representatives of interest groups, the London boroughs, the business community and academics.

Witnesses (or "witnesses"!) have been remarkably generous with their time. I have said, so often as to be tedious, that London's government will fail unless it reaches out and fully involves Londoners, and it is heartening to see how so many people have been keen to contribute – so valuable, and so easily lost unless we (both Mayor and Assembly) make good use of it.

The Mayor has to give a response, in his regular written reports to the Assembly, to any "proposal" made by the Assembly under s60 of the Act, and the words "section 60 proposal" now trip off the tongues of all Assembly members. That is a power we use quite frequently, more to ensure the form and formality of response than because we think we won't get one. The powers that we have not used – so far – are to require the attendance at Assembly meetings of past and present staff and chairs and members of functional bodies, and their production of documents.

Every individual invited to answer questions before the Assembly has done so. Our interest has mainly been in the work of the Mayor's immediate staff, both in content and process. A session with the Mayor's Chief of Staff revealed how the Mayor had delegated to him, controversially not to the Deputy Mayor, certain decision-making powers exercisable in his absence abroad. This in turn has led to an offer from the Mayor to notify the Assembly of such delegations, and we will be looking at the issue of Mayoral approvals processes further in September.

Though individuals have agreed to answer questions from the Assembly in public, access to meetings has been harder to achieve. In the early days a member sat in protest outside a meeting of the Development Agency which she was not allowed to attend (they have since reviewed their arrangements, though in discussing this in public with the Assembly it became very clear that they and we had quite a different approach to accessibility and transparency). Recently members sitting in the public gallery have noisily left a meeting of TfL which was going into closed session. This is not childish protest at not being invited to the party – ensuring that the spotlight shines on the work of the whole organisation or at any rate that actions and decisions can be inspected with adequate illumination, is central to our watchdog role. It is too easy to argue commercial confidentiality.

The GLA's new City Hall was designed to reflect its transparency and accessibility; chairing one of the first meetings in the new chamber, I reminded members that if they wanted to refer to staff individually (it was a staffing item) we would have to go into closed session, and found myself, as I looked up the eight storeys of ramp around the chamber with entrances from every floor, saying: which will be quite a challenge. Many of us are determined that we do not forget this ideal and will as necessary make nuisances of ourselves.

I wanted to stand for the Assembly because I wanted to contribute to the culture of the GLA. I did not realise quite how much would have to be designed from scratch, nor how challenging it would be to create the design when the principle task is to hold the Mayor to account with a watchdog so finely balanced between the political groups and with each group naturally ambitious to promote itself.

The electors get their chance to show what they think of the Mayor – and of the Assembly – every four years. Part of our job is to ensure continuous accountability over the whole electoral term. The legislation, prescriptive as it is, did not, thank goodness, dictate how we address one another (in which lies a whole other article!). It is not easy to refer to cheeky chappy, cuddly Ken in a formal manner, nor to address him by his formal title in public when first names are the norm. The formality of the executive /scrutiny split is important and I have tried hard to retain the mindset that Ken Livingstone is "the Mayor". That is how, except when it would be wholly false to do so, I will continue to refer to him.