§ (" .—(1) Any power conferred on a Minister of the Crown by this Act to make regulations or an order or to give a direction shall cease to have effect on 1st April 2006 unless previously exercised.
§ (2) If a power has ceased to have effect pursuant to subsection (1) it may at any time be revived by order made by statutory instrument laid in draft before each House of Parliament.").
§ The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I appreciate that we are near the end of the Bill, but it may be worth spending three or four minutes on this amendment. As we have indicated throughout, we believe that the Bill is far too much characterised by the controlling hand of central government. I have heard it described in the following way. We have the London boroughs and by and large they will continue to do what they do; we have central government and by and large they will continue to do what they have been doing; and then we will have the Greater London Authority, which needs a Bill several inches thick to explain what it cannot do.
§ That may be putting it a little harshly, but only a little. The Bill is riddled with the opportunity for the Secretary of State to make directions. We welcome the prospect of London having its strategic government, but we would welcome it more if the hand of central government were less evident.
§ The new clause provides that where the Bill confers on the Minister the power to make regulations or an order, or to give a direction, it shall cease to have effect on 1st April 2006 unless it has previously been exercised. It is not as draconian an amendment as it might appear because we have added a second limb. This provides that any such power can be revived by order made by statutory instrument laid before both Houses of Parliament.
§ We proposed a similar amendment to the recent Local Government Bill in connection with the capping of local authority expenditure. One of the arguments made against us was that capping, as the regime now applies, needs the affirmative resolution of the House of Commons. The powers to which this amendment refers have no such safeguard. We appreciate that such a clause as this would be to a large extent symbolic because of the power of revival which we have included. Nevertheless, it would be a welcome symbolic move for the Government to recognise that the reserve powers which they have provided throughout the Bill to deal with—and we have used this terminology a good deal—what is "just conceivable" might be put onto a slow flame on the backburner and, we might hope, be killed off entirely—to mix my references. I beg to move.
§ Lord Dixon-SmithMy Lords, the principle of this amendment is one with which we agreed on the Local Government Bill, when it was a Bill. It is now an Act and does not contain this clause, which is rather sad. The Bill is rather less for having a lacuna in it in that regard. I believe that this provision would be worth while in this Bill and in all probability in almost every other Bill that goes through the House. The Minister 147 might think that a little extreme. That said, I believe that the amendment is worth supporting. It has my support in principle, and my heart is with the noble Baroness, even if, I suspect, the Minister is going to answer in his usual, thoroughly positive way, that he cannot put up with it.
§ Lord WhittyMy Lords, at this hour of the night I have absolutely no idea why noble Lords opposite feel that they have to go on about this for so long.
We have been here before. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, came preciously close to advocating that at some time in the not-too-distant future we should have another GLA Bill. I believe that there will not be many takers for that among those who have been involved with this process over the past few months.
To be serious, the powers within this Bill are necessary, but they are in the background. The fact that they are not used does not mean that they do not have an influence on the situation. They are there in order to protect in extreme circumstances the interests of other public bodies, the London boroughs, and ultimately the London taxpayer and maybe other taxpayers from the actions of the authority and the mayor. They are not intended for the Secretary of State to interfere and to get his fingers into every aspect of the mayor's policy and the assembly's proceedings. It is a responsible and complicated balance, and one to which we have given a good deal of thought and which is different in different parts of the Bill.
I do not feel that if we were to adopt this procedure, certainly on this Bill—I shall not address the other Bills to which the noble Lord was thinking of applying it—we should rapidly be in a situation where that balance was lost. We believe that the Secretary of State still has a residual role to ensure that the interests of London more widely are protected. We hope that none of those powers will ever have to be used in the way that the noble Baroness fears, but we need them there to ensure that the whole balance operates. I hope that the noble Baroness will not pursue this last amendment on Third Reading.
§ Baroness HamweeMy Lords, I am not at all surprised by that response. We are at a point where I suspect the Government and we shall not see eye to eye. I do not intend to pursue the amendment now. I am not sure what I shall do on Third Reading. My noble friend Lord Tope asked me earlier today how long I thought it would be before we were faced with a GLA (Amendment) Bill, because, given the complexity of this Bill —as the Government know better than we do from the number of amendments which they are still considering—it is only too likely that there will be something wrong here that needs amendment. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ The Chairman of CommitteesMy Lords, so as not to take noble Lords by surprise or be too much in a 148 rush, or in case any noble Lord wishes to raise a point, I should indicate that the amendments that I am about to call are before Schedule 27, in Schedule 27 and in Clause 361.
§
Lord Whitty moved Amendment No. 575ZA:
Before Schedule 27, insert the following new schedule—