What does the mayor actually do? Londoners give it some thought. Link to this video The job of London mayor is sometimes mocked as being big on profile but low on power. The office has acquired greater clout over the years, but that characterisation is still not too far wrong. It brings its holder attention, glamour, political symbolism and a fine view of Tower Bridge, but limited levers for running the city or moulding how it evolves. Yet that attention is a platform from which to exert influence, and the use of those levers can have large effects. Who the mayor is matters, and how he or she goes about their business matters too.
Tony Travers, the distinguished London School of Economics local government expert, wrote a book about politics in the capital, subtitled Governing An Ungovernable City. "There have been conflicts between the needs of neighbourhoods and the requirements of the city as whole ever since the capital sprawled beyond the boundaries of the City of London," Travers writes.
Under the mayoral system a similar tension exists between London's 32 borough councils and City Hall. Their powers differ yet they abut and overlap: the mayor is boss of London's big roads, the boroughs of its little ones; the boroughs collect council tax but mayors can ? and do ? top up their bills; the boroughs determine planning applications, but the mayor can block their decisions or appropriate them.
Ken Livingstone's critics said he centralised too much, especially over house building. Boris Johnson's complain that his "working with" the boroughs means Tory ones indulging their nimbyism. The Liberal Democrat London Assembly member Mike Tuffrey, like Livingstone a veteran of the Greater London Council, has espoused devolving more to neighbourhood level ("to rediscover London as a collection of villages") combined with a much more ambitious, strategic Greater London Authority, led by a mayor armed (thanks to the coalition) with more direct control over housing, planning and economic development.
What balance of powers should our model mayor foster? What new ones, if any, should she or he seek? What about health and education? And what about money? The bulk of the GLA group's budgets come from central government, and have to be argued for. London can seem spoiled compared with the rest of England, yet though the capital receives about the same money as Wales, it contains a lot more people.
Does London get enough, or should its mayor start thinking less about endless growth and more about taking better care of what ? and who ? it's got and where the limits of its expansion might lie? The model mayor needs to have a broad vision of the capital's future. Both real mayors so far have been bullish Londonists, but should an argument be made that London would be better improved if Manchester, Glasgow and Cardiff shared more of the burdens as well as the rewards of being engines of the UK economy?
Those are some of the big themes, but there are crucial smaller ones too. In a time of financial squeeze, Johnson has pioneered commercial sponsorship deals to support transport projects, but how much corporate branding do we want intruding into public spaces and do Londoners get the best of such deals? The City of London is a place of fabulous wealth. Should the mayor demand that it shares it with London, the greater city, a little more? Accountability and transparency matter too, with Livingstone accused of being too controlling and dependent on a close coterie and Johnson of being slapdash and evasive.
And then there's the public character of the mayor. Both Johnson and Livingstone have reputations for being outspoken, including on subjects that aren't directly, if at all, their responsibility. Do London mayors have to be big personalities, or would we sooner have someone quieter for a while? I'll shut up now. Over to you.
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MartinHoscik suggests:
In recent years the Mayor has gained new powers and responsibility which require us to re-examine the structure of City Hall and how decisions are made.
Using the new Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime as a template, organisations such as transport for London and LFEPA should be brought into City Hall and headed by Deputy Mayors with meaningful powers, moving us away from the current honorific titles whose holders have differing, and in some cases, no powers beyond advising the Mayor.
Appointment of these Deputies should be subject to a binding majority vote by the London Assembly - if a majority of Assembly Members say nominee X shouldn't get the job, they don't get the job.
DaveHill responds:
Good morning Martin from the distinguished MayorWatch site and thanks for your contribution. How would you respond to any complaint that you'd be re-centralising powers along the lines of the old Greater London Council?
SuperClive suggests:
Frankly, if London was offered UDI, I'd go for it tomorrow. Let's secede.
More seriously - we've got to start thinking of the UK as five nations - Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, England and London. Full devolution for London would mean better decision-making for the capital and also stop the resentment felt, particularly in other parts of England, towards the capital. It might also be a prompt for the rest of England to stop bellyaching and get its act together.
If we can't have full devolution, let's have the NHS. Let's develop a distinctive city health service, apart from the privatised vision espoused by the Tories and Labour in England.
And inside the city, let's break up the boroughs. Fewer than a third of people bother to vote for them, and they're often rancid little empires which make the City of London look democratic. Let's have five super-boroughs, each with a bit of the centre of town and stretching out to the suburbs, with their own mayor, and devolve street scene and other initiatives down to neighbourhood councils. (That's an idea espoused by one K Livingstone, btw).
DaveHill responds:
Hello SC. Thanks for those ideas. Some questions. If your super boroughs stretched from the centre to the suburbs, would they truly represent natural areas of London? If not, would that matter? How much control over streets would neighbourhood councils have? I have a vague recollection of K. Livingstone talking about devolving some powers to a very local level but nothing more. Got any links?
alwaysbacktobusiness suggests:
Could the mayor pay for London Underground staff to be equipped with cattle prods to move on the gormless who stop at the bottom of the escalators for no apparent reason?
Also could we enact a bylaw to punish queue jumpers with an hour or two in the stocks, or some such punishment?
DaveHill responds:
Excellent idea. But which bank would sponsor the cattle prods?
MartinHoscik suggests:
A lot of people have fond memories of the GLC and its elections were seen to matter to the lives of ordinary Londoners in a way that's not really the case with the Greater London Authority.
So I don't think recreating the GLC is a bad thing!
Like SuperClive, I think the NHS in London should be under City Hall's control so that Londoners can shape their own healthcare system. I'd ask like to see the Mayor take over OFSTED in London so that he could drive up education standards.
It's pointless having a Mayor responsible for finding people jobs if he/she can't shape their suitability for employment at their earliest possible stage of their development.
DevoMax for London is very attractive!
DaveHill responds:
The one and only time I attended a meeting of the board of the London Development Agency I left asking myself why on Earth it was at arms length from City Hall. What was the point? I didn't mention this to other people at the time in case they laughed. Times have changed, and it looks like a good thing too. When I talked to Mike Tuffrey about these issues I liked his idea of a combination of a strong, strategic centre and very local decision-making bodies with proper powers. Incidentally, I'm sure I have an album by DevoMax somewhere in my vinyl basement.
elliebesley suggests:
It would be great if you could look at the role which the Mayor plays in public health, You'll no doubt be aware that with or without the legislative changes being put through via the health bill, public health will be delivered by local authorities. In my view this is absolutely the right place for public health to be and offers a great deal of opportunity for cross-policy collaboration,
In London, 3% of the LA public health budget is being top-sliced post April 2013 for London-wide approaches to issues such as childhood obesity that can benefit from a collaborative approach.
It would be great if your manifesto can support this approach whomever the next Mayor is - the London Health Improvement Board which is already delivering the shadow version of this approach is a great organisation and one which could have a fantastic benefit on London.
Londonwide collaboration across transport and health has hugely beneficial implications.
DaveHill responds:
Hi. It's quite a mystery why the mayor has an adviser on health and families paid ?127,000 a year despite his having no powers over general health policy. Thanks for your idea, which I'll do a bit of homework on. There does seem to be quite a widespread view that Londonwide government should be in charge of Londonwide health.
deirdremcg suggests:
A strong argument can be made that the Mayor doesn't actually have tremendous power (and that the overlap between the boroughs, the Mayor and central government can be confusing), but the danger here is that we let the office holder 'off the hook,' as it were. The truth is that Mayoral strategies and areas of policy responsibility are not always given the effort and attention they deserve.
Housing is an excellent example of this, particularly under Boris, though Ken is not guilt-free either. The Mayor has new powers over housebuilding in the capital, but there is little reason to think that this will make a huge difference to the outcome - even before, fewer houses have been built than could have been. Similarly, the proportional requirement for 'affordable housing' is lower than it should be, and seems to be open to change at the whim of the office holder (and few people are naive about the fact that so much 'affordable' housing is actually unaffordable). Increasing the proportion would be a fantastic way to ensure the development and maintenance of the 'mixed communities' which every politician says they support. Everyone knows that London is in the midst of a housing crisis, and the Mayor can do something about it.
Following elliebesley's point, the Mayor's Health Inequalities Strategy is widely thought to be a pretty good document... now if only it would serve as the basis for policy! The research we've done suggests that, far from being the starting point for everything the GLA does, it is often simply put at the bottom of the priority in all the offices of the GLA. Imagine how influential the Health Inequalities Strategy could be if the vastTransport for London took it seriously - and that is but one of the functional bodies.
What we ought to be calling for is a Mayor who actually enacts their policies, and who takes their responsibility seriously. This is perhaps one danger of the kind of personality politics which is so common in London. On the other hand, the force of will of a big personality might be exactly the kind of thing needed to make sure that the GLA group responds to the demands of voters.
Deidre McGrath,
London Civic Forum
DaveHill responds:
Hello Deidre. Delighted to have a contribution from the London Civic Forum. I'm very struck by your point about the mayor's health inequalities strategy and its near-invisibility (I confess I haven't read it). We'll be looking at housing separately next week, but for now you and others might be interested by the proposals in Shelter's campaign.
amancalledmikey suggests:
Something needs to be done with the councils. There's a complete lack of joined up thinking within the councils themselves, let alone between neighbouring borough. An example of this would be Crystal Palace, which sits on the border of five boroughs and, as such, is seemingly pulled in five different directions. Whether we're abolishing them, merging them, I don't know. However, they've got to go.
As Superclive said, they've built little empires. I live in Beckenham, which is covered by Bromley council, and they hear what they want. The Conservatives have 53 seats out of 60, they do what they want. If they were so NIMBYist, the head of the development committee would live up to his pledge to defend our Metropolitan Open Land, rather than recommending and voting for the development of a private cricket stadium, that will hardly ever be used, and 48 new houses on a site that is currently used heavily by local kids who have grown up in a town that has been carved up by developers for their own gain? If that's NIMBYism, I need a new lexicon of terms.
In short, the Mayor needs the power to keep community assets in the community.
DaveHill responds:
Hello and thanks. For a (north) east Londoner I know Crystal Palace and bits of Bromley fairly well. The mayor has powers to intervene in borough planning determinations, though these have to be of "strategic importance." The issue you're concerned with probably wouldn't fall into that definition. Perhaps the mayor's powers to intervene should be broadened?
AndyLucia suggests:
Properly co-ordinated strategies on social housing? That would certainly be a priority in my book, as somebody who used to work in the field a decade back (albeit outside London); as somebody mentioned, the Mayor has new powers in this area but I don't see much action coming from that quarter, whatever the outcome at the elections. The current situation just has too many layers to it, too many committees; give the super boroughs the freedom to do what is necessary, light the blue touch paper & step back.
What powers would they not have? Sadly it rather looks like policing may be taken out of everybody's control, but that is possibly a separate discussion.
DaveHill responds:
If you mean cross-border co-operation on social housing (and homelessness) that sounds good, though there's already so much tension between boroughs over importing/exporting homeless and needy people. Don't want to devour your day, but can you be more specific about what you have in mind?
P0kerFace suggests:
A lot of posters seem to be more concerned with devolution of national powers to the mayoral office, rather than the balance of powers between local councils and the mayoral office. I think this is a reflection that cities are fundamentally different places from the countryside to manage. Perhaps then, at the highest level of government, we should be looking to split matters between those managing cities, and those managing surrounding areas and countryside?
This would of course require a fundamental rethink of how we structure our politics at all levels. Perhaps though, it would better reflect the "natural areas" you have spoken of. Cities have grown massively over the last 50 years, and we haven't restructured our politics so fundamentally to match that change yet.
DaveHill responds:
Thanks. Would one way of getting to where you want be providing still more cities and even large towns with the chance to adopt mayoral systems?
Thryduulf suggests:
Do we need boroughs at all?
Just have the equivalent of parish councils for individual communities and then give all the rest of the powers and responsibilties to the directly elected London Assembly. There'd be no conflicts between the boroughs and TfL, no buck passing between councils, no petty fiefdoms, no passing on hidden costs such as witha the expansion of the cycle hire scheme. There would surely be savings from removing all the duplication of effort in terms of branding and propaganda if nothing else.
I live in Newham. As someone who doesn't vote Labour I don't have a voice at borough level.
DaveHill responds:
Newham is indeed a big red wall politically. But those urban parish councils might get completely steamrolled unless they had quite a lot of power. And if they were small, how much should they have?
I'll sign off for now with a link to MayorWatch's proposals set out at greater length. Thanks for this interesting discussion. I'll try to drop in again later and promise to read all comments at the end of the day.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/09/london-mayor-policy-powers-responsibilities
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