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Greater London Authority Bill

Perhaps I may deal with that point immediately. The noble Lord, I think, said that he was in favour of having mechanisms whereby the activities of the government office could be challenged. The problem is that currently there is no mechanism whereby the activities of the government office can be challenged. In theory, they can be challenged in Parliament, but in reality it is fair to say that they have not been challenged, certainly not in this House, nor scrutinised in any regular way in another place. My main experience of working with the government office has not been in London but in Yorkshire. I know of a significant number of cases in which decisions have been made by the government office which have been opposed by, in one case, the RDA and by major stakeholders in the region. They have had no opportunity to question the decisions of the government office, which they felt were arbitrary. In terms of the Government Office for London—my colleagues in London have more dealings with it than I—there are two things: first, there is a sense that the government office does not have to answer for itself; and, secondly, with the provisions in the Bill, there is increasingly a muddle between the roles of the government office and the authority.