---

Greater London Authority Bill

The note that I wrote to introduce Amendment No. 3 said, ““What is a consultation?””. I entirely agree with the Minister that one needs to identify what are formal consultations and what are just taking soundings and floating ideas and so on. I absolutely accept that. I did not mean informal or smaller consultations; I am sorry that I was not clear. When I said that there has not been a problem so far, that was in terms of the Assembly having good notice of what was coming down the track. That relates to subsection (2) of the amendment. Subsection (3) of the amendment is almost a coda to Amendment No. 2, which we debated, and is not intended to add to the bureaucratic burden, because the last thing that one would want is for a Mayor not to be throwing out ideas and listening to people. Any Mayor has to be clear about what is a formal consultation and not get people alarmed that he might take steps that he is not going to consult on properly. We had the debate mostly on the previous amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.