It’s 20 years since Londoners first elected a Mayor and 21 since the legislation enabling it was handed by parliament. The Better London Authority, comprising the Mayor and the London Meeting, was created by a Labour authorities, though the previous Conservative one had additionally turning into persuaded of the necessity for a brand new type of London regional authorities to switch the Better London Council, abolished by their occasion in 1986.
Now, on this anniversary 12 months, one other Tory nationwide authorities seems intent on eroding the already restricted powers of the Mayor, maybe to such a level that by the point subsequent 12 months’s delayed mayoral election is held, the significance of the workplace can be so diminished as to be hardly price holding.
Individuals who don’t like Sadiq Khan – and so they embody quite a lot of influential individuals in and round 10 Downing Road – would possibly assume this a superb factor. They need to watch out what they want for. Even shrewd observers who thought Boris Johnson was, at greatest, a four-out-of-ten Mayor believed Metropolis Corridor ought to have had extra powers devolved to it, not fewer, together with the unconventional proposition Johnson himself endorsed that London authorities ought to management the use to which its share of property taxes raised within the metropolis are put.
In brief, the dismantling of the 1999 devolution settlement in probably the most hopelessly centralised international locations within the western world can be a really unhealthy factor for London, its individuals and the remainder of the nation, whose prosperity, prefer it or not, has lengthy depended closely on London’s financial productiveness. A want to reduce that dependence is cheap. Denying its existence is a modern self-delusion amongst politicians and media alike.
So what are Prime Minister Johnson and his numerous colleagues taking part in at? There isn’t a suggestion of a cunningly co-ordinated plot – in any case, latest proof suggests such a feat of organisation can be past the previous Mayor’s nationwide administration. However there does look like, on the very least, a cocksure indifference in numerous corridors of nationwide energy to the spirit of the 1999 Act (and its subsequent additions and modifications) and the precept of mayoral autonomy.
A private principle, is that, though they dare not say so due to all of the “levelling up” rhetoric, Johnson and firm know solely too nicely that London is significant to the UK’s restoration from the pandemic, know too that no Tory is prone to win the mayoralty within the foreseeable future and are so satisfied they might make a greater job of it than Khan that they only can’t cease themselves muscling in on his territory.
There are 4 principal coverage areas during which London Mayors have significant clout.
Transport
We’ve already seen the federal government use Transport for London’s Covid-created monetary disaster to restrict TfL’s independence and its brokers impose their very own coverage agenda. Circumstances connected to the Could bailout included a Division for Transport-led evaluate of TfL’s funds, together with a bigger and wider fares improve than the Mayor had dedicated to previous to the postponement of the 2020 mayoral election, the suspension of free journey for under-18s, an insistence that the extent and working hours of the congestion cost improve, and the supply of extra devoted highway house for bicycles. The latter two measures are strongly favoured by the Prime Minister’s long-time media supporter turned transport adviser Andrew Gilligan, a biking fanatic who has been made one in every of two “particular representatives” of the federal government on the TfL board and two of its essential committees.
TfL are hoping {that a} sensible long-term funding settlement will finally consequence, leaving it much less depending on fares income in future. However insiders will not be ruling out the intense final result of an efficient nationalisation of TfL, eradicating London’s transport networks from the mayoral portfolio. As London First’s Daniel Mahoney has observed “historical past suggests this may not result in good outcomes”.
Planning and housing
Secretary of State Robert Jenrick was throwing central authorities’s weight about even earlier than the pandemic took maintain, with an overtly political attack on not simply Khan’s proposed new London Plan – which, months later, he has but to approve – but additionally his file on the associated space of housing. There’s a elementary distinction of angle to those areas between Khan’s administration and people of varied Johnson allies.
Khan’s predecessor’s deputy for planning Sir Edward Lister, now a Downing Road adviser, took a much more advert hoc, laissez faire strategy to regulating improvement. One other of Johnson’s staff, former Hammersmith & Fulham Council chief Stephen Greenhalgh, now a housing minister in the Lords, was a kindred spirit and follower of Lister and a main mover behind the unique, disastrous Earls Courtroom regeneration scheme, which Johnson as Mayor enthusiastically endorsed.
Now, planning consultants, boroughs and the influential influential Westminster Property Affiliation amongst others have checked out Jenrick’s proposals for reforming the planning system and questioned the place within the new system the capital’s Mayor is meant to suit.
There’s a point out of the “metro mayors” of different English cities, however no particular one of many Mayor of the UK’s capital metropolis. One seasoned observer of London authorities dropped Jenrick’s division a line after the White Paper’s publication, mentioning this omission and questioning what it would signify. A reply thanked him for his curiosity and requested him if he had any concepts. Reassuring, isn’t it?
Khan and the 2 Mayors earlier than him have more and more been capable of intervene within the planning system to affect the amount, affordability and design of recent housing. Is that skill to be by-passed or pegged again? London has additionally acquired funding from the federal government to contribute to the supply of “inexpensive” houses of varied varieties, with growing quantities of management over how it’s spent devolved to the Mayor. Khan and his staff have been happy with the allocation they acquired in 2016 from the federal government of Theresa Could. Is the federal government of Johnson and Jenrick prone to be as obliging? Is the federal government’s collective goal in each planning and housing successfully to by-pass or constrain London’s Mayor as a lot as doable?
Policing
The constitutional place is that the position of elected police and crime commissioner (PCC) for London comes with the job of London Mayor, who then units the priorities of the Metropolitan Police by a statutory four-year police and crime plan. These obligations are primarily discharged by his deputy mayor for policing and crime by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC).
The Mayor and MOPAC additionally set the Met’s finances, although many of the cash for the Met, which additionally has nationwide obligations, comes from nationwide authorities. The Mayor can high it up by growing his share of the Council Tax or allocating a bigger proportion of the enterprise charges he retains, both of which Khan has done with a view to restrict the affect of latest authorities spending cuts.
In different UK areas, PCCs are elected individually. The London scenario is unique. There’s hypothesis – I do know nothing greater than that – in Metropolis Corridor circles that the federal government would possibly search to detach the London PCC position from the mayoralty. Final month, a government review of the PCC mannequin, with a view to strengthening it, was launched by minister of state for crime, policing and the fireplace service, Equipment Malthouse, who chaired the outdated Metropolitan Police Authority for Mayor Johnson earlier than it was changed by MOPAC and was his deputy for policing from 2008 till 2012 (his successor was Stephen Greenhalgh).
Malthouse typically gives the look of believing his boss’s self-publicity about driving down crime after they have been occupants of Metropolis Corridor. Criticising Khan, he just lately advised a credulous Occasions: “As deputy mayor for policing in London I efficiently fought the final spike in knife crime, which grew underneath a Labour authorities, so makes an attempt to politicise a posh and tough drawback appear low cost and unsightly”. His experience on that final level seems borne out. Johnson himself has pronounced by the Telegraph, his day by day fanzine, that Khan is responsible of an “abject failure” to grip the issue.
Criminologist present very completely different accounts of why the recorded ranges of some sorts of crime in London, together with violent crime amongst younger individuals, rise and fall – accounts during which the results of pronouncements and insurance policies by London Mayors of any stripe are of marginal relevance at most. That’s a narrative for one more day. However don’t rule out an try by the federal government to dilute and even take away the London Mayor’s position within the capital’s policing earlier than too lengthy.
It may be argued that Khan has been his personal worst enemy in his angle to Johnson’s authorities, by regularly choosing fights with it in public. Whereas this would possibly discover favour with voters, they’re fights he’s unlikely to win. Would he not be higher off utilizing his hefty retailer of political capital to woo Johnson as a substitute, maybe with some huge, UK recovery-linked concepts? Alternatively, you possibly can see why he would possibly assume making overtures to a regime during which individuals satisfied they made an awesome job of working the capital between 2008 and 2016 are so strongly represented can be a waste of time. However one level appears unarguable – if issues preserve going the best way they’re at current they don’t seem to be going to finish nicely.
Picture from Mayor of London Facebook page.
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