• Launched the Swimming Challenge Fund to support free swimming for over 60s and under 16s.
• Banned fox hunting.
• Led the campaign to win the 2012 Olympics for London.
• Free admission to our national museums and galleries.
• Devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, an elected Mayor and Assembly for London and directly-elected mayors for those cities that want them.

• Through the introduction of civil partnerships, Labour has for the first time given legal recognition to same-sex partners. Gay couples now have the same inheritance, pension and next-of-kin rights as married couples.
• More than doubled Britain’s overseas aid budget.  UK aid helps lift an estimated three million people out of poverty every year.
• Cancelled up to 100% of debt for the world’s poorest countries.
• Britain now has more offshore wind capacity than any other country in the world.  Wind last year provided enough electricity to power 2 million homes.
• Launched the £1.5 billion Housing Pledge to speed up the delivery of new affordable housing and embarked on the biggest programme of council house building for twenty years.

• The UK is now smoke-free, with no smoking in most enclosed public places
• The UK’s greenhouse gas emissions are now 21% below 1990 levels, beating our Kyoto target
• Over £20 billion invested in bringing social housing to decent standards
• Rough sleeping has dropped by two-thirds and homelessness is at its lowest level since the early 1980s
• Free off-peak travel on buses anywhere in England for over-60s and disabled people

The Metropolitan Police Authority is in session and the DCiC*, Deputy Mayor Kit “HoT”** Malthouse AM is in the Chair.

And the DCiC was showing his sensitive side.  He has clearly been hurt by the criticism that he is too busy to fulfil the role of MPA Chair and the nit-picking about his attendance record at MPA Committee meetings.  So the item on the agenda for his oral report consisted merely of him telling the Authority that he had had 46 meetings in the last month – and as he was away or one of the weeks concerned that works out as a productivity rate of around 3 per working day.

He promises to keep us informed of his work rate at future meetings, but that will not satisfy Jenny Jones AM.  She wants an indicator measuring the “quality” of the meetings.  No doubt those meeting HoT in future will be asked to fill in a form afterwards asking “how was it for them?”

However, HoT is clearly alive to this danger: he assured the Authority that he prefers what he calls “action” to meetings.

But the DCiC was also in magnanimous mood.  He recommended that his Conservative colleague, Tony Arbour AM, should be appointed to the MPA’s Strategic and Operational Policing Committee (despite two years of efforts by the Conservative Group on the London Assembly to keep Tony Arbour off the MPA itself and strenuous efforts at previous meetings to resist extra members being appointed to the Strategic and Operational Policing Committee).  It was mischievously suggested instead he should go on the under-subscribed Finance and Resources Committee.  However, this was squashed firmly when Tony Arbour told the Authority “You should never trust me with money” – a reassuring remark to the residents of Richmond-upon-Thames where he used to be Council Leader.

*    Dog-Catcher-in-Chief

**  Hand-on-Tiller

Rather belatedly, I have been looking at the new GLA web-site.

I am sure it is very wonderful and well worth its cost in terms of the improvement on the old web-site.

However, it does show us the limited ambition of Mayor Boris Johnson and his administration.

At the foot of the Home Page is the heading “WHO RUNS LONDON” followed by a helpful list of the key figures and agencies.

Not surprisingly, the London Assembly is bottom of the list.

But second from the bottom is the Mayor of London (below Londoners and the London Boroughs).

And what heads the list:  Central Government, of course.

So now we know – Mayor Boris Johnson has already run up the white flag and surrendered.  Is that why he is so keen to get back in the House of Commons?

Just remember you heard it here first.

There is allegedly shock at James Purnell’s decision to stand down from Parliament.  Actually, it is rather predictable.  If he had stayed on as a candidate, he would have been re-elected.  But what then?  A victoriously re-elected Gordon Brown is unlikely to have him back in the Cabinet.  And in the (unlikely) event of a Tory victory, he would not want to waste his conspicuous (to him, at least) talents in Opposition.

He knows that Mayor Boris Johnson has only a limited desire to run for a second term as Mayor and – in any event – Londoners are becoming increasingly dubious about what he is doing (or not doing) for their City.

James Purnell is nothing if not ambitious.  He can claim to be a Londoner.  He was an Islington councillor for nearly two years.  What more qualification would he need?

And my spies tell me that his intentions are clear – he wants to be Labour’s candidate for London Mayor in 2012.

So once more, remember you heard it here first.

Listening to Conservative spokespeople over the last few years, you would have been forgiven for thinking that the Tories believed in devolution of powers and responsibilities to local councils.

Conservative policy last February – and let’s be clear that is all of twelve months ago, so that’s time for the Tories to have at least 365 conflicting policies – was, according to their document “Control Shift”, quite clear:

“No action – except raising taxes, which requires specific parliamentary approval – will any longer be ‘beyond the powers’ of local government in England, unless [it] is prevented from taking that action by the common law, specific legislation or statutory guidance.”

Now – surprise surprise – Local Government Chronicle is reporting that the latest small-print says something rather different.  Caroline Spelman, the Shadow Communities Secretary, is now using the phrase about Councils being able to do what is “legal and reasonable” – more or less the same as the current arrangements where local government is bound by Wednesbury principles of reasonableness and cannot act “ultra vires”.  They quote a legal expert pointing out that:

“To achieve an unrestricted world for local government, it would be necessary to abolish the ultra vires doctrine, as has been done for companies.  But it would appear that’s a step too far for any political party.”

And at the same time, Local Government Chronicle is saying – exclusively – that Shadow Chief Secretary Phillip Hammond has slapped down Conservative Council Leaders who were trying to put some flesh on the bones of the Tory devolution proposals.

I’ve just been to the launch of London Councils’ “Manifesto for London”.  This document – developed on a cross-Party basis following consultation with a range of stake-holders – is an ambitious challenge to the Government (whatever its composition following the General Election) to devolve more responsibility for local services to the London Boroughs. 

(The launch itself was well-attended in the House of Commons Members Dining Room.  I couldn’t help noticing that all five speakers were white men – a platform that would never have happened from 1995-2000 when I chaired the organisation, then called the Association of London Government.)

The Manifesto is not a plea for money and resources, although London Councils continues to make the case that London should receive an appropriate fair share of the national tax take to reflect both the needs of London’s population but also its pivotal role as the engine of the UK economy.  Indeed it was being suggested that the devolution proposed and the resulting integration with existing Borough services could deliver more effective services at less cost than the present arrangements.  (This may well be true eventually, but there would undoubtedly be a not insubstantial cost of reorganisation associated with the proposals.)

Mayor Jules Pipe, Leader of the Labour Group on London Councils, made the interesting point that devolution was something that all the major political parties at national level would claim to support (indeed, the Manifesto takes the Government’s Total Place concept to the next stage).  He argued that the devolution proposed could lead to more active engagement with local politics with Labour Councils being able to put forward a distinctive Labour vision for their communities, Conservative Councils being able to put forward a distinctive Conservative vision, and Liberal Democrat Councils being able to put forward a Liberal Democrat vision (I have to confess that I am not sure what this third vision would look like …..).

Some of the proposals are potentially very far-reaching and extremely radical.

The Manifesto for example would:

• Make Primary Care Trusts’ non-acute care budgets accountable to the London borough in which they operate, to allow boroughs to direct those budgets to local need and integrate health and other care services with NHS spending;
• Co-ordinate the funding streams of national back-to-work schemes and make them accountable to London boroughs;
• Devolve London’s Skills Funding Agency resources to the London boroughs,  allowing boroughs to develop schemes tailored to the specific needs of their residents;
• Devolve neighbourhood policing budgets to enable boroughs to commission the services their communities need from the MPS; and
• Support boroughs’ work to integrate offender management, including financial incentives, and then make boroughs publicly accountable for their success in reducing re-offending.

The first of these examples would be a dramatic – but entirely sensible – reorientation of the way in which local health services and care are delivered.  As I have commented before, such a move would provide local democratic ownership of local health service decisions and it would encourage a much more seamless pattern of delivery with local care services.

The second and third of these recognise that the skills agenda and the need to re-equip people for work have never been effectively delivered by the existing bureaucratic quangoes in London and a local focus on what is seen to be effective and best meets the needs of local people is surely a step forward.

The fourth proposal – passing local policing budgets to Boroughs enabling them to purchase services from the Metropolitan Police – will no doubt provoke a serious attack of nerves in New Scotland Yard and I am not sure that Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM, the new Chair-designate of the Metropolitan Police Authority, will relish having so much of his new train-set taken away before he has had a chance to play with it.  However, the configuration of neighbourhood policing – a role which in any event relies on partnership at community level – would certainly be made more responsive with such an arrangement and would, if properly defined, insulate and protect those other parts of policing that are essential (but less immediately visible).

The final example – devolving responsibility for offender management – is no less radical, but would build on some excellent initiatives that have already been trialled in London with a view to reducing re-offending.

I suspect the proposals as a whole may be rather too much for post-Election Government Ministers to swallow.  However, the proposals deserve serious consideration and it will be interesting to hear whether any convincing  justifications are given for not taking them forward.

The Metropolitan Police Authority is in session and Mayor Boris Johnson is not in the Chair.  Yesterday, he announced that he was leaving the Police Authority and today he is in …..

Davos!

Actually, he missed the January 2009 meeting because of a trip to Davos a year ago, but that time he didn’t feel the need to resign from the Authority, as well.  I commented then on Mayor Boris Johnson’s Macavity-like characteristics.

So what is the new Macavity-lite MPA like?

Well, Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM (the UVCDMKMAM as was) is in the Chair and he’s loving it!

And Jenny Jones, Dee Doocey, Caroline Pidgeon and Joanne McCartney are all behaving as if someone shot their fox (I am resisting the temptation – just – to wander off into an extended metaphor about blonde-haired Mayors, ginger cats and red foxes called Basil Brush).  Much of their fun in the last fifteen months had been trying to lure the Mayor into some lovingly constructed elephant-trap.  Ensnaring Kit Malthouse would not provide the same gratification, so instead they are trying to goad him into losing his temper.  But he is in such a good mood at finally becoming MPA Chair (technically, he is not yet Chair because there is still to be a formal confirmation process through the London Assembly, but he has already had his name-plate changed) that none of it is working ….. so far.

The first signs of irritation from him are reserved for Councillor Chris Robbins, Leader of Waltham Forest Council, who has brought along a petition asking for an extra 120 police officers for his Borough, and suggestions from Jennette Arnold that the Resource Allocation Formula should be changed.  However, he recovers his composure and sweetness and light reign:  Waltham Forest go away thinking they may get something (probably not much) and no full-blown review of the Formula is conceded.

On Friday, I reported that the Conservative Party’s local government representatives on the European Union Committee of the Regions had refused to follow the official Cameron line and pull out of the European Peoples Party grouping.

Over the last few days, however, the position has changed and they are now going to try and form a European Conservatives and Reformist Group on the CoR.

When asked whether he was being bullied by the national Conservative Party, Councillor Gordon Keymer, Leader of the UK delegation, as well as the Tory group on the delegation, to the Committee of the Regions, refused to comment, saying “It’s an internal matter”.

Thumb-screws all round?  Or was it the threat of knee-capping?

And what did Roger Evans, Leader of the Conservatives on the London Assembly and one-time novellist, have to say about the matter?