Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their amendments on mayoral commissioners and for the wide-ranging debate that we have had on the subject. Before I respond to any individual amendments, I want to reiterate why the Government are introducing commissioners. I completely understand the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, on title and definition. I must say, I asked myself the same question on the potential confusion around commissioners who are sent to do a job when an authority is failing and these types of commissioners; we have to think carefully about that. As I have set out, the Bill will empower our mayors with wide-ranging new powers over transport planning and local growth, so they can drive growth across their region, and powers over health and public safety, so that they can deliver the public service reform that the public expect to see. These are critical functions, and it is not reasonable to expect a mayor to do all of them. That is why we have introduced commissioners—an optional appointment to whom mayors can delegate functions to support them in their work. Mayors will be able to appoint up to seven commissioners, aligned to the areas of competence and reflecting areas of responsibility. As the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, said, mayors can also appoint members of the combined county authority or combined authority as portfolio holders, of course; they will also have officials to support their work, such as finance officials, legal officials and so on. Let me be clear: this is not about inviting a proliferation of appointments. Rather, it is about mayors having capacity to deliver against the full range of their functions and giving them flexibility in how they deliver for their area. Local authority leaders who are on the combined authority will be able to support the mayor as portfolio holders; do not forget, though, that it is important to remember that they will have their own authorities to lead as well, so they will be working in their own authority at the same time. On Amendments 51A and 52A, I reiterate that commissioners are an optional appointment: they are designed to increase capacity and give mayors more flexibility in how they choose to deliver for their areas. These amendments, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, would remove that optionality, effectively introducing seven new statutory roles in the combined authority or combined county authority. We have set out the competency, for example on the environment and climate change, in the Bill itself, but mayors are best placed to determine whether they need additional support on this based on the needs of their local area. While we have set out in the competencies what we think mayors should be doing, it cannot be right that we make the choice for them about how they do that. Therefore, it is for mayors to decide. I know this can be difficult for us in the political process when a mayor may put an emphasis on an area that would be less important to us than something else, but I am afraid that is part of the democratic process that we live with all the time; it is not that different.