What is scrutiny about?

The London Assembly exists to hold the Mayor of London to account and to scrutinize his doings. Well, so they say. It is, on the whole, rather difficult to scrutinize what Hizonner is up to as GLA has no mechanism whereby that can be done.

Once a month the Mayor comes to the Assembly, gives a report and answers a few questions. The time allocated to each group’s questions is strictly proportional and includes the replies. Should Hizonner wish to extend his reply to, say, question 1 by UKIP to the point where they have no time to ask question 2, well, he can do so.

Questions that are not asked because of lack of time get a written response, which is fine and dandy, except that you cannot put follow-up questions, particularly as the transcripts of the monthly MQT (Mayor’s Question Time) sessions are not written up for weeks afterwards, apparently, after a lot of toing and froing between the Assembly and the Mayor’s office. Parliament can produce Hansard transcripts of each day’s events, including that of committees, the following morning both for the website and as a hard copy. What is the problem with the London Assembly?

There are no other accepted mechanisms for questioning and finding out. UKIP at the London Assembly has been trying to find out details of the Mayor’s propaganda sheet The Londoner and have failed. Repeated requests for information about cost, distribution, expenses and so on, that ought to be in the public domain have been ignored. Nor have we been any luckier with the European Social Forum, an expensive and pointless extravaganza for various British and European NGOs and right-on political groupings that seems to have been paid for …. yes, you’ve guessed it, the long-suffering London taxpayer.

There are, of course, the committees. True to its stature as a virtual democratic body, rather like the European Parliament, the London Assembly transacts what business it does have in committees not in the chamber.

Ah yes, the committees. Well, there is the Budget Committee, which will meet on December 16 to have a preliminary discussion of a budget of almost £3 billion. This is not chicken feed and it is all the taxpayer’s money. Unfortunately, the long and complicated document that will be discussed does not get to the members till December 14, allowing 48 hours for the reading and inward digesting.

After the committee has had a preliminary discussion, it will go away, to have the various Christmas and New Year festivities and reassemble in January for another meeting on the budget, which will subsequently go to one of the monthly, two and a half hour long plenary sessions.

There is a snag in all this. (No, really?) The Assembly cannot, either at the committee stage or in the plenary, make any changes to the budget. The Budget Committee can cut back the money, if it thinks the whole shebang is becoming too expensive but cannot decide where the cuts should happen. Thus, UKIP can protest all it likes about the couple of million that goes into the financing of The Londoner or the £600,000 plus that goes to Hizonner’s outpost in Brussels, London House, but it cannot even put down a motion to reform these practices. It can suggest cut-backs of, let us say, £2 million in the budget but cannot go beyond that and specify where the cut-backs should happen. Neither can any of the other parties, or the Budget Committee or the London Assembly in plenary session.

That’s scrutiny for you.