Member

First, I shall speak about Amendment 71 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. As explained by my noble friend Lady Scott, this would alter the basis on which the assembly can amend the mayor’s budget, so that a 50%+1 margin would be sufficient to amend the budget in place of the current two-thirds majority. As mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, this has never actually been achieved in 25 years. In the early days of Ken Livingstone’s mayoralty, he would sit in the gallery during budget deliberations, and every time it was announced that he had been defeated on a budget amendment—it had passed by 14 to 12, or whatever it was, but that meant that he had lost—he would say, “Aha! Another victory”. It was, of course, a victory: he may have lost on numbers, but it had no effect because it had not achieved the two-thirds. Cynically, then, he was able to sit there and claim all these victories; he was quite amused by the whole thing. This illustrates that even he saw the absurdity of having a two-thirds requirement to pass a budget.