Mayor Boris Johnson used the opportunity of speaking to the London Congress of Borough Leaders to outline his wish-list of new powers.

The City Hall press release quotes Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, as saying:

“I welcome this contribution from the Mayor of London. The new Government is committed to genuine decentralisation of power. In London, this means transferring power and responsibility down from Whitehall and its quangos progressively downwards to City Hall, to London boroughs and to local neighbourhoods.”

He also indicated that the Government would be publishing a Localism Bill in the autumn that would provide an opportunity to amend legislation.

So does the phrase “welcome this contribution” amount to an endorsement of the Mayoral package?

I am not sure that it does.

I raised the issue in today’s Lords Question Time (on a question about whether there would be a consultation about the role and number of elected mayors).  The exchange with the Lords’ Parliamentary Under Secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government was as follows:

“Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, I add to the congratulations to the noble Baroness on her appointment. I fondly remember working opposite her on many occasions when she was a stout defender of traditional London boroughs and structures of local government. The Mayor of London today has made a power grab to take over the London region of the Homes and Communities Agency, the Olympic Park Legacy Company, the Royal Parks Agency and the Port of London Authority. It has also sought greater powers over traffic control and awarding rail franchises on routes into London and the allocation of the adult skills budget in London, and to have a greater say in health provision in the capital. Are those proposals supported by Her Majesty’s Government and, if so, will they be the powers on offer to the other prospective city mayors?

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I appreciate that the Mayor of London is looking for greater powers and devolved policies. As the noble Lord will know, we welcome the contribution that the Mayor of London makes, and the new Government have already committed to genuine decentralisation of power. That may mean transferring further powers to the mayor, but that matter is still under consideration.”

Again, “the contribution” made by the Mayor was welcomed.

But then the put-down (I’ve added the emphasis): 

“That MAY mean transferring further powers to the Mayor, but that matter is still under consideration.”

 Sounds like a touch of the long grass there …..

Ken Livingstone has announced that one of his objectives if re-elected as Mayor in 2012 will be to make London the world’s first “Smart City”.

The examples he give include:

• easing parking chaos in London if re-elected by bringing in a system like that used in San Francisco, where 6,000 of the 24,000 metered parking places are fitted with sensors that allow drivers to find spaces via wi-fi. The American city’s $23 million network shows available spots on motorists’ mobile phones and electronic street signs. If drivers want to add more time to a parking meter they can also do it by mobile.
• using real-time “smart meters” to cut energy use in homes and businesses. In Sweden these have resulted in a 24 per cent reduction in energy use.

He expands on his ideas in more details at LabourList.

What he demonstrates is a long-term strategic vision for London that would not only benefit its residents but give London the edge in international competitiveness.  His ideas also highlight the lack of strategic vision currently displayed by the Conservatives in London.

Associated Press has reported that a man has been detained at Karachi airport after electrical circuits and batteries were found in the soles of his tennis shoes.

The man concerned told investigators he bought the shoes from a market in Karachi and had no idea there were circuits inside the soles.  Ostensibly, the circuitry is for massaging the feet (sic), but batteries and circuits hidden in a shoe are reminiscent of Richard Reid, the 2001 shoe-bomber.  Pakistani police are still examining the shoes, pointing out that similar materials can be used in the construction of bombs.

Whatever the outcome of this particular investigation, it seems likely that the practice of requiring airline passengers to remove their shoes for scanning will continue and perhaps be intensified as a result of this incident.

Civil servants are supposed to be in “purdah” during the General Election campaign.  However, despite central Cabinet Office guidance, Government Departments seem to be developing rather different interpretations of what this means and some seem to be taking it to ludicrous extremes.

Three examples that I have come across this week illustrate the point:

• one Government Department has cancelled a meeting that takes place in private, whose papers and proceedings are classified, is only attended by civil servants and official representatives of public bodies, and does not take decisions – canceled in the name of “purdah”.
• another Government Department allowed a meeting of an officially-constituted Advisory Group (on a fairly non-controversial area of work) to go ahead (on their premises) attended by about twenty voluntary sector representatives – but no civil servants attended in the name of “purdah”.
• a third Government Department has instructed a contractor to stop working on a Departmental programme (one that is likely to continue in some form whatever the result of the election) because the work involves talking to the external bodies that deliver the programme concerned – business-as-usual-not, in the name of “purdah”.

I am not sure that any of the decisions make particular sense, but they all stretch the meaning of “purdah” as previously interpreted.

Presumably, civil servants are now so busy producing policy options for so many different permutations of electoral outcomes that day-to-day government has had to come to a grinding halt – no wonder it took them so long to notice the volcanic ash crisis.

This is a story of two Old Etonians: one is Mayor of London and was the year above the other at Eton; the other is Leader of the Conservative Party, wants to be Prime Minister, and is nervously watching his back because the first Old Etonian makes no secret of being after his job.

This might be amusing to watch, if the consequences were not to serious.

But now the rivalry is jeopardising London’s future (and as London is the engine of the UK economy is in consequence undermining the national interest).

We have already learned about how luke-warm the response has been to the Mayor of London’s repeated pleas about the depth of the Conservative commitment to Crossrail, the vital London rail link which is the minimum necessary to keep London moving during the next decade.  A recent campaigning event degenerated into farce as Mayor Boris Johnson tried to get Conservative Leader to give an unequivocal commitment to the Crossrail scheme.  David Cameron kept avoiding the question (although this is a fairly common response from him to almost every issue that is raised with him).

Now, however, the Tory’s Shadow London Minister, Justine Greening, has let the cat out of the bag.  In an interview on LBC this morning, she did give a straight answer to the question and it was not good news.

Here is the transcript:

> Thursday, April 15th 2010 09.25
>
> Speakers        Nick Ferrari
>                 Justine Greening
>
>
>
> NF:     Let’s go the Conservatives first.  Your stance on Crossrail?
> Justine Greening.
>
> JG:     We’ve always been very supportive of Crossrail.   We recognise how
> important it is for London as well but what we can’t do before the
> election is finished is write a budget when we’re not in government.  And
> so we, we can, we’ve said that we know it’s important, we know that the
> tube infrastructure and investing in, that’s important, but we can’t do a
> line by line budget because we are in such a parlous state with public
> finances.
>
> NF:     So Crossrail will continue but you don’t know how?
>
> JG:     What, all I….
>
> NF:     So it won’t continue?
>
> JG:     We, we can’t, we can’t give a line by line budget on projects
> across government, including Crossrail.  Everything’s up for review but we
> think it’s important.
>
> NF:     I’m sure this is my stupidity.  Will it continue or won’t it
> continue?
>
> JG:     I can’t give a guarantee that it will continue.
>
> NF:     So it might not, it can go the other way?  The Conservatives could
> scrap Crossrail?
>
> JG:     It’s possible but at the end of the day we’ve always said that we
> think it’s important project and, and actually the reason this is
> important is we, we want to be responsible so we can’t pretend that we can
> write an entire budget outside of government. We’ve said we’ll do one
> within 50 days of getting into government if we get elected and we will
> then provide some clarity and certainty.
>

So now we know.

The future of London is not a priority for the Conservatives.

They are even prepared to jeopardise the national economy to perpetuate a playground squabble between two Old Etonians who seem never to have resolved their playground issues  from 20 years ago.

• Created a new right of pedestrian access to the English coast, so that every family has the opportunity to enjoy the length and breadth of our coastline.
• In the last four years Labour’s work overseas has helped over 7 million people in sub-Saharan Africa access clean water and sanitation.
• In Europe we signed the Social Chapter and introduced measures including four weeks’ paid holiday, a right to parental leave, extended maternity leave, a new right to request flexible working, and the same protection for part-time  workers as full-time workers.
• We led efforts to agree a new international convention banning all cluster munitions.
• We introduced the first ever British Armed Forces and Veterans Day to honour the achievements of our armed forces – both past and present.

• 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

Scott Charney, the Microsoft Vice President in charge of Trustworthy Computing, is speaking today at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.  He is re-stating both Microsoft’s commitment to “End-to-End Trust” but also the need for business, government and the public to work together to ensure that those using the internet are safe and secure.

The message is an important one: responsibility for internet security has to be shared.  The House of Lords Committee on Personal Internet Security, on which I sat, reported nearly three years ago and used a road transport analogy to make the point: safe road use requires responsible behaviour by drivers and pedestrians, but cars need to have safety features embodied in them, roads themselves need to be well-maintained and properly lit, there need to be laws regulating safe behaviour on the roads (speed limits etc) and those laws need to be properly enforced.

If anything the message has become even more important since our Committee reported.  More and more commercial and personal interactions take place on line.  Social networking sites are booming and an increasing proportion of commerce is conducted via the internet.

The threats to security have also become more pronounced.  The threats are no longer from isolated individuals, but from organised crime and it is also becoming abundantly apparent that some nation states are operating in the same way to infiltrate commercial and government networks for their own purposes.

And the technology itself is developing.  Cloud computing is becoming the norm and this presents its own challenges.  Certainly, this has raised the issue of security for many people (although it is not automatically a given that the security of data held in a cloud is necessarily worse than if it is held on your own servers, particularly if it turns out that they are inadequately protected).

So how do we move forward?

Partnership is certainly essential.  Governments have to work together in setting an international framework for collaboration and for law enforcement.  And at a national level they must also work with IT service providers and with business in general.

But above all, the individual user must be at the heart of all this.  Sensible security arrangements that make sense to the individual have to be devised.  It needs to be acknowledged that most individual users of the internet, whether they are trying to do their weekly shopping or organise their social lives, are rushed and busy.  Moreover, they are not technological experts.  They have inadequate levels of knowledge, so an error message or system alert that makes sense to an IT professional will probably be gibberish to most of us.

And critical to all of this is the need for robust identity management.

Surely, it is not too much to ask that people can feel confident that their personal details are secure, that they can communicate with others secure in the knowledge that the person or organisation with which they are communicating is who it says it is, and that when they are asked to identify themselves they need reveal no more about themselves than is necessary for the transaction concerned.

If today’s discussions at the RSA Conference take us further towards those objectives, we will be making real progress and we can all feel more hopeful that a trusted and secure internet environment is being built.

In yesterday’s Lords Question Time, the Secretary of State for Transport, Lord Andrew Adonis, in answer to a supplementary question I raised, put the boot into Mayor Boris Johnson’s proposal for a new London airport in the middle of the Thames.

The exchange went as follows:

“Asked By Lord Trefgarne

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their policy with regard to a third runway at Heathrow.

The Secretary of State for Transport (Lord Adonis): My Lords, the Government’s policy with regard to a third runway at Heathrow remains as announced to the House in January last year. We support a third runway at Heathrow, subject to conditions, including an initial limit on the overall number of flights. It is for the airport operator, the BAA, to bring forward a planning application in the light of this announcement.

Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that reply. Is he satisfied that the consultations conducted by the BAA are being properly conducted? They have been widely criticised. In the light of things that have happened since the Government made their announcement in this matter, is he satisfied that their original decision is still correct?

Lord Adonis: My Lords, I am satisfied with the consultations that have been conducted. If the noble Lord wishes to draw any particular matters to my attention, I would be glad to look at them, but I am not aware of any which give me cause for concern. The decision to allow a planning application to come forward for a third runway, subject to conditions being met, has stood the test of time, despite two years of recession. Heathrow is still running at near 100 per cent capacity, despite the downturn in business at other airports. It is our main international hub airport. The lifeblood of our national economy depends on it. This Government will not betray the national interest by refusing to take a decision which is manifestly in the best interests of the country.

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the Mayor of London has taken up a position opposing a third runway at Heathrow on the grounds of noise and pollution, but in favour of building a new airport floating in the middle of the Thames to the east of London? Will my noble friend comment on whether that policy position is consistent and in the national interest?

Lord Adonis: My Lords, the proposal for an estuary airport has been widely dismissed by sensible commentators, including most of the official spokespeople of the Conservative Party. The official Tory spokesperson says that Boris takes an independent line as Mayor of London. I thought he was a Conservative, but clearly this is not the case for the purposes of this and so many other decisions. Paul Carter, the leader of Kent County Council, the second largest Conservative-controlled authority in the country, says:

“There is a growing consensus that the estuary airport is undeliverable, unaffordable and unnecessary”.

I could not put it better myself.”

Everybody knows that the European Parliament is at the cutting edge of global political thought.

So it is no surprise to discover that in 2005 (long before last month’s attempted airline bombing made them a world-wide must-have) the European Parliament bought six full body scanners to protect MEPs from being attacked in the Parliament buildings.

Given the legendary efficiency of the EU institutions, it is also no surprise to learn that these six machines – purchased for over 700,000 Euros – have never been used.  Apparently, in 2008 the Parliament rejected a bill to permit the use of such scanners across the EU on the grounds that the graphic images provided by such scanners constituted a “virtual strip search”.  It is thought that MEPs were not aware at the time that the Parliament had six scanners lying around in their unopened boxes.

After the MEPs had voted against the use of such scanners, European Parliament officials then “rushed” to dispose of the unwanted items.  Obviously, there are complex procedures to be followed in such cases, so that the invitation to bid for the six scanners will only be issued in the next few days.  The delay, of course, means that, given the current fashion for full body scanning, there should be no shortage of bidders.

But should the European Parliament still be going ahead with the sales, in the light of the latest security threats?  Of course it should – as its spokesperson perspicaciously points out, “The Parliament is not an airport”.