Today the new Assembly met for the first time after the election with, mainly, the same old faces and the same old attitudes. While the Mayor had to look around for new post holders to replace his fallen soldiers the opposition parties reaffirmed their previous cooperation with a formal agreement (reprinted below).
As Mike Tuffrey, outgoing Liberal Democrat AM, told Big Smoke it’s best not to read too much into the Lib Dems grouping with Labour and the Greens. When Livingstone was in the Mayor’s seat the Lib Dems had tended to side with the Tories. Essentially the Lib Dems take an oppositional role hoping to hold Mayor to account rather than politically favouring one block over another.
Labour’s Jeanette Arnold continues to chair the Assembly and the Greens’ Darren Johnson is deputy chair of the Assembly. In fact when it came to posts handed out by the Assembly there was a decided skew towards the opposition parties.
Tory c0mplaints
Conservative AM Andrew Boff claimed that the agreement between opposition parties disenfranchised the 700,000 Tory voters by cutting their AMs out of the loop. Another Tory AM, James Cleverly, tweeted “Another London Assembly AGM and yet another dirty back room Labour/Green/Lib Dems stitch up. I wonder why we bother having the meeting?”
This leaves the Assembly in a position where the Mayor gives out positions to Conservative sympathisers and the opposition parties will rule the roost on those positions the Assembly controls. Conservative complaints on this might be slightly more plausible were there any indication that they would behave differently were positions reversed.
Londonist points out Johnson has been dishing out the appointments this week with some very grand sounding titles (and no less than six deputy Mayors) although we will have to see if they have the powers to go with the prestige. The Evening Standard was also less than impressed with the Mayor’s selections. You will not be surprised to hear that the Mayor has not been dishing out roles even-handedly to opponents and friends alike.
The complaints are probably stem from the way that the Conservatives have not spent much time trying to win friends and cross party support over the last few years which might be why they feel isolated now their numbers are reduced after the election. If they were to send out some late Valentine’s cards it may be a better way of repairing some of those political relationships than grizzling on twitter.
Is this good for London?
Quite possibly not. If Assembly Members were cooperating more closely to hold the Mayor to account (and some Conservative AMs are more than capable of asking Mr Johnson awkward questions) it would be a step forwards from the entrenched positions.
It would probably be much healthier if all the parties were able to negotiate a fairer settlement, including some compromises from the Mayor. The Tories don’t seem capable of winning opposition parties to a more cooperative attitude that they have no intention of adopting themselves, and certainly whining isn’t going to change any hearts.
However, in the longer term the opposition parties are probably incentivising greater centralisation. Without more cooperation there’s little reason for the Conservatives not to undermine the powers of Assembly Members and that really would be bad for London.
Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat Agreement
Following discussions, this is the agreement proposed between Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green Groups to share power in the operation of the Assembly. It includes a number of positions for the Conservative Group.
Approach
The Assembly as a whole needs to do an effective job which means including all party groups in operational arrangements while also ensuring the Mayor is fully held to account with the non-mayoral parties taking the lead. It is important the performance of the Mayor and all the GLA’s Functional Bodies, as well as other organisations that run public services inLondon, are scrutinised in depth and held to account. We are open to more constructive working between the Assembly and the Mayor over the four year term.
This agreement sets out in writing organisational matters and it will be published in full. The agreement lasts for four years but will be subject to review after two years. That review will include a look at the number of committee places and the Chair and Deputy Chair positions of each committee and the Assembly. Any changes to create or abolish a committee or vary the positions of Chair and Deputy Chair of the Assembly or its Committees will only be made with full agreement of all the signatories.
The Leaders of the Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat groups will meet monthly to review the progress of this agreement and any issues around it.
Assembly
Labour will Chair the Assembly in the first, third and fourth years. There will be a Green Chair in the second year. There will be a Green Deputy Chair in the first year and a Labour Deputy Chair in the second year. We hope that the Conservative Group will nominate a Deputy Chair for the final two years.
All chairing will be carried out effectively and in a non-partisan manner.
Committees
Following discussions between the Leaders of all four parties represented on the London Assembly (as at May 8th 2012) it was agreed that the following committees would be created at the Annual General Meeting to be held on May 11th 2012:
- GLA Oversight Committee
- Budget & Performance Committee
- Transport Committee
- Police & Crime Committee
- Economy Committee
- Housing & Regeneration Committee
- Planning Committee
- Health & Environment Committee
- Audit Committee
- Standards Committee (up until the existing standards regime is abolished in June 2012 as per the Localism Act 2011)
The GLA Oversight Committee will amend any Terms of Reference to help facilitate the smooth operation of the committee structure. This structure will be reviewed after two years.
Chairs and Deputy Chairs will be confirmed at each AGM and shared as follows:
GLA oversight Committee
Chair – Labour for 4 years
Deputy Chair – Chair of the Assembly
Budget & Performance Committee
Chair – Labour for 4 years
Deputy Chair – Liberal Democrat for 4 years
Transport Committee
Chair – Liberal Democrat years 1 and 3, Labour years 2 and 4
Deputy Chair – Labour years 1 and 3, Liberal Democrat years 2 and 4
Police & Crime Committee
Chair – Labour for 4 years
2 Deputy Chairs – Liberal Democrat and Green for 4 years
Economy Committee
Chair – Labour years 1 and 4, Liberal Democrat year 2, Green year 3
Deputy Chair – Liberal Democrat year 1, Labour years 2 and 3, Green year 4
Housing & Regeneration Committee
Chair – Labour years 1 and 4, Green years 2 and 3
Deputy Chair – Green years 1 and 4, Labour years 2 and 3
Planning Committee
Chair – Labour for 4 years
Deputy Chair – Conservatives for 4 years
Health & Environment Committee
Chair – Labour years 1 and 2, Liberal Democrat year 3, Green year 4
Deputy Chair – Green year 1, Liberal Democrat year 2, Labour years 3 and 4
Audit Committee
Chair – Labour for 4 years
Deputy Chair – Conservatives for 4 years
Standards Committee
Chair – Independent member to be agreed at first meeting
Deputy Chair – Conservatives
Confirmation Hearing Committee
Chair to be decided at each meeting of the committee
Resources
The Labour group recognises the need to adequately support small groups on the London Assembly. Therefore the Labour group will support resources being allocated to the smaller groups that provide adequate and appropriate resources to support Group management and overheads.
Len Duvall, Labour Group
Jenny Jones, Green Group
Caroline Pidgeon, Liberal Democrat Group
0 Comments
You can be the first one to leave a comment.