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Greater London Authority Bill

With respect to the hon. Lady, I was talking about the London borough of Wandsworth, not about people on the Alton estate, who no doubt get the level of care for which Wandsworth council is notorious. However, I am glad that she intervened, because she allows me to correct the mistake that I made when I credited Wandsworth with building 21 per cent. affordable housing over the past three years—in fact, the figure is 12 per cent. That is a truly shocking record on the part of her Conservative authority, and I am surprised that she wishes to draw attention to it. As far as I am aware, nobody has disputed that the overwhelming majority—about 99 per cent.—of planning decisions will remain with the boroughs. The Bill is about strategic importance—not only in housing, although that is a key area at the moment because of the neglect by certain boroughs. That is what is being lost in this debate. There is a clever attempt by the Opposition parties to portray this as a power grab by the Mayor, in relation to a Bill that should be relatively uncontroversial, given that purportedly all main parties support the success of the GLA and the Mayor since they were introduced by a Labour Government. This is an attempt to smear part of the Bill with the idea that this is a power grab from the boroughs by the Mayor. On transparent decision making, some Members have conceded that the Mayor has now set out a clear chain of decision making that will be transparent and open to scrutiny. I remind Opposition Members that several boroughs, which are all Conservative—Hammersmith, Kensington, Westminster—do not allow representations to be made. Only an hour ago, I was talking to a social housing developer who last week was refused permission to put forward representations at a Hammersmith planning committee. It is an act of pure hypocrisy for the Opposition parties to accuse the Mayor of a lack of transparency when the practices that are being followed in some of the leading Conservative boroughs in London are far less democratic and open.