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The change of regime at City Hall is a complex business.
Transferring power from Ken Livingstone to Boris Johnson requires a wholesale turnover of people at the top - and lower down the administration.
When Tony Blair introduced a directly elected executive mayor for London, his idea was to personalise government. The capital's voters would be easily able to compare candidates and choose the one they liked.
But this kind of one person government imported from the United States, requires the winner to appoint his or her people into many positions of power.
Deputy mayors and advisors within City Hall, plus the chairs and members of bodies such as Transport for London, are all the mayor's creatures. 2008 sees the first mass changeover, and it has clearly not been easy.
In New York, there is a two-month gap between the mayoral election and the changeover of power. Indeed, there was an interval like this in London when Ken Livingstone was first elected in 2000.
Boris Johnson's team have evidently had to make a series of high profile appointments in double quick time. There is a risk that this process will appear secretive and incomprehensible to those outside. This would be a pity - or worse - for a new mayor committed to increase transparency in city government.
At the very least, the Mayor's office needs to explain how initial appointments have been made and, most importantly, how the new system of government is expected to work.
Will the "deputy mayors", like a Cabinet, cover every aspect of City Hall responsibilities? How do "advisors" relate to deputy mayors? Will there be a "first deputy mayor" with overarching power? Will the GLA's chief executive appoint new figures within the Mayor's Office? What will happen to Livingstone loyalists trapped in City Hall on permanent contracts? And so on.
The fact is that the law as it stands does not cover the current situation, where the Mayor wants to hire a councillor as a consultant and appoint as an executive a member of the Assembly.
The Greater London Authority Act 1999, which was amended last year, only allows the Mayor to directly appoint 12 people to his staff. All of these are politically restricted posts and therefore cannot be taken up by sitting councillors. Section 67 of the Act states that he can hire two political advisers. A further 10 staff can be hired but they have to be on merit and an independent person sits in on their interview.
The act makes clear that any other staff would have to be hired by the Chief Executive of the GLA, not the Mayor. The law is vague and City Hall lawyers will need to tread carefully in ensuring by what authority each appointment is made.
The pressure on the new Mayor and his senior advisors is immense. But if they want to be judged to be entirely free of the problems that latterly dogged the previous administration, it is essential that London understands the detailed operating processes of its new City Hall. There may also need to be institutional changes, for example, the creation of an independent "budget office", to create better oversight of what remains a very powerful, mayoral, system of government. All of this needs to be seen to be got right.
* Tony Travers is Director of the London Group at the London School of Economics.
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...but isn't much of this supposedly what the London Assembly is for? To 'hold the Mayor to account'. Tony Travers is right about transparency, but it is a sign of the degree to which confidence in the processes and accountability of City Hall have collapsed in the public mind when a senior commentator doesn't mention the role of the Assembly in this. Of course, how can the Assembly hold the Mayor to account when so many of his party were elected to it? In Budget terms, the only place where the Assembly has any potential power, the Tories have the actual majority (the 'majority' for this purpose is one third of the members...). I sat on the London Assembly as Leader of the only group which opposed these changes to the GLA Act: it was clear they made this situation worse. The Act reduced the feeble Assembly powers, which was intentional. This form of government was not introduced to personalise government. It was devised as a pretend form of devolution, with central government holding the purse strings, taking most powers away from local government, and from councillors who might act in the interests of their voters. They now have less powers, thanks to the Government, and the centralising position of the Mayor has more. The Mayor is not accountable to the Assembly, he is accountable to central government...and for all the talk about the last mayor as a rebel, or having his own mind on Iraq etc, he did the Government's bidding in all matters of local government that counted.
- Damian Hockney, London, UK
