But much as it pains some of them to hear this, Boris is absolutely right not to submit to questioning from MPs.
Parliament has already made provision for scrutiny of the Mayor – every four years Londoners elect 25 full-time London Assembly members whose primary purpose is to question the Mayor and hold him to account for his policies and their consequences.
Unlike MPs, the Assembly have regular access to the Mayor and his team, they can hold them for hours and even transform the monthly Mayor’s Question Time session into a single topic examination of the Mayor’s work should they so please.
The level of scrutiny this provides is far in excess of the shallow questioning MPs would fit into the 25 minutes or so that the Mayor would agree to grant them.
The popular complaint from those unhappy at his snubbing of the committee is that Boris is under-scrutinised – but with a dedicated 25-strong scrutiny body watching his every move this has always been slightly wide of the mark.
What London’s Mayoralty lacks isn’t scrutiny, but sanction.
I wrote in 2011 that City Hall should be made responsible for paying any EU fines arising from the capital’s breaching of air quality targets.
In February it was still unclear whether the Government would devolve these fines to local and regional Government, but as I said three years ago:
Passing on responsibility for fines will significantly increase the accountability of future Mayors. If their policies breach regulations and incur fines they’ll be required to find the money either from existing budgets – which will impact on services – or by increasing their precept on the council tax.”
But this sort of substantive change seems less appealing to many of those who oppose the Mayor on party-political grounds who instead seem content with the eventual publication of an ignorable, and most likely instantly forgettable, report which they can wave around as a totem of his failure.
AMs from all City Hall parties regularly bemoan their lack of media coverage and absence of invites to appear on Question Time or the Sunday Politics.
One of the reasons this happens is because they allow their own MPs to overshadow them – all four Assembly parties are represented on the environmental audit committee and all four should be telling their colleagues to sod off and respect London’s devolution settlement.
As for the committee, if it really wants to make a positive contribution to the debate it should organise some briefings for the army of MPs who fail to understand the significance of poor air quality on public health.
It’s a bit less headline grabbing and whole lot less self-serving than getting yourself seen on TV quizzing someone else’s Mayor but unlike wasting public time and money on a vanity session, it might actually do some good.
Damian Hockney says
When I was an Assembly Member, I was constantly told I was barred from having access to the information we needed to ask the relevant questions. The same applied on the police authority (MPA). I was also told that in almost all cases, I would be allowed this material if I were I an MP.
To be able to hold to account, it is surely logical that first and foremost you have to be allowed access to the meaningful information to do your job. Endless FoIs issued by Assembly Members being the only way to try and get info in some cases (and usually they were knocked back in a way that meant the moment has gone even if you did get some limited info). If you are not allowed the same access, then MPs (if they are so minded) are in a much better position to hold the Mayor to account.