Talk is cheap

Written by Graham Tope and published in North West London Newspaper group on Tue 4th May 2004

Talk is cheap - so why are Londoners paying the cost of the Mayor of London's failure to persuade the Government to give the Greater London Authority real political and economic powers?

For many years there was no London regional government at all. As a result, key public services were starved of investment by successive governments and there was no strategic approach to the capital's development.

The GLA was set up to address such issues and to give power back to the region. But to tackle the years of neglect you need real political and economic devolution - and the capital has neither.

Ken Livingstone has had four years in office to make the case for London. But despite rejoining the Labour party - and despite telling us of his cosy chats with Ministers -he has made no progress at all in persuading his Labour colleagues in Government that London should be granted real powers for its democratically elected government.

The Government's unwillingness to hand-over power means the GLA is unable to take a coherent approach to addressing issues such as London's housing shortage, which instead remains the responsibility of the Housing Corporation and the Government Office for London (an unelected quango with its hands on £2.5bn of Londoners' money).

Another example is the GLA's lack of power to set up a single waste authority. Instead London's waste is looked after by a disjointed structure of four waste authorities and 12 boroughs, which will make meeting ambitious recycling targets set by the Mayor difficult for London.

And the capital misses out financially. This year the Metropolitan Police Authority lost out on £56m of vital police funding because of restrictions imposed by the Government. We don't even get the final say in appointing our top police officer - the commissioner remains a Government appointee.

Yet in contrast the Government plans to set up other English regions with the very powers denied to the GLA, giving them responsibility for housing, culture, tourism, sport and rail.

The GLA may not be perfect, but it has not been a failure either. A single voice for Londoners has been established, which represents them alone. In areas such as scrutiny, the London Assembly has attracted critical acclaim.

But is genuine devolution too much to ask for? The GLA needs to be fully equipped with the powers to start tackling deep-seated problems: the serious lack of affordable housing, chronic transport difficulties and the fear of crime on our streets. It should be given the opportunity to deliver a real difference to the people of London. And it is time we got a Mayor able and willing to make that case to Government.