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Greater London Authority Bill

Before we hear from the Government, I apologise to the Committee and to the noble Lord that the amendment is, as the noble Lord described it, weak and watery. Given the muscle that the noble Lord has shown in Amendment No. 120A, I would be happy to work with him on a more muscular amendment. The amendment was accepted by the authorities in this House for debate. It has a little history, so it has been difficult to find a way to raise the issue. The noble Lord puts the matter extremely well, but when he said that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, the likelihood is that it is a duck, I thought that that was being a little unkind. Perhaps we could find a more elegant creature with which to compare it because, in this case, a duck may not be right.