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Greater London Authority Bill

My Lords, this is another set of amendments from the parties opposite that seem designed to write into the Bill powers that the Assembly does not have at present but which were available when the GLC was in operation. As I have said previously, the Assembly is not the GLC. We now have a new set of legislative provisions before us that provide for a powerful Mayor—which everyone has accepted, apparently—which means that he is obliged to perform certain functions. I really cannot see any point in writing into the Bill that a copy of the candidate’s application must be attached, when it is already written in the schedule that the Mayor must include, "““the reasons why the candidate is the person that the Mayor proposes to appoint to the office””." I would have thought that that was the most important point. The amendment would add an enormous amount to what is written into the Bill and is not required at all. The Government have provided clarifications in their own amendments and I would have thought that they were sufficient. The amendments of the two parties opposite are quite unnecessary.