No to an Elected Mayor for Birmingham (Part 2)

The situation in the Metropolitan Authorities is entirely different from that in London. The London Mayoralty arose from the abolition of the Greater London Council and, for example, in London the Mayor does not deliver crucial services such as social care, housing or education and can raise substantial revenue from transport provision and restrictions.

There are many more issues in Birmingham and other metropolitan authorities than those faced by the Mayor of London - including those that inevitably crop up between elections. How can a single person respond to the multifarious concerns across a wide range of services of a million or more residents? Some, however might try to do this. If a directly elected mayor introduces a cabinet system (as in Leicester) how much different in practice is this to the Leader and Cabinet model? If they do not, how much authority is effectively devolved to (non-elected) officers or others?

Since councillors would have no power to get rid of a poorly performing Mayor, the Mayor would not need to be responsive to what councillors say on behalf of their constituents. It is sometimes claimed that Scrutiny will 'hold the Mayor to account' but in the last analysis Scrutiny has few formal powers and could effectively be ignored by the Mayor. It would, of course, be a different situation were Scrutiny to be given some real teeth but this is extremely unlikely. So on the assumption of a three month election period, both citizens and councillors could be ignored for 45 months out of 48.

Theoretically the council could reject the proposed budget of the directly elected Mayor, but the government-determined arrangements are deliberately biased in favour of the Mayor in that rejection of the Mayor's budget proposals would require a two thirds majority of the Council - at present 80 out of 120 in councillors Birmingham - to do so. Conversely, if one political party did manage to secure 80 seats the city could become ungovernable if Mayor and Council were at odds - somewhat paralleling the United States unhappy deadlock between Congress and the President.

The City Council itself would undoubtedly be scaled down in the not too distant future to no more than 80 or possibly to as few as 40 seats. An electoral review is needed but this is under active consideration in other councils. For example Rochdale plans to reduce councillors from 60 to 40 and in Doncaster the executive mayor wants to reduce the number of councillors from 63 to 21.

Cutting down on councillors would produce an enfeebled assembly with diminished representation as well as reduced experience available for the Mayor supposedly to be 'held to account'. I have observed a council in a major city of the United States with fewer than twenty members and meetings that had become little more than tiresome formalities - the active representation of the people was conspicuous by its absence.

In Birmingham, the largest unitary authority this side of the Urals, councillors already serve a much larger number of constituents per head of population than anywhere else. The council can no doubt be faulted on various grounds, but the vigorous representation of the interests of members' constituents is not one of them.

The Executive Mayor may not live in the city and could choose to spend relatively little time in Birmingham and a lot of time globetrotting (with itineraries decided by themselves) at the taxpayer's expense. A directly elected mayor may be a high-cost option. At present overseas travel has to be justified to a council committee. There would be a risk of trimming basic services to support mayoral grandstanding and globetrotting. Swagger is not an essential ingredient in delivering good social care or housing.

The case for an Executive Mayor improving local authority governance, efficiency or the quality of services has not been convincingly made out. Some elected mayors have proved to be ineffective - a situation more likely to arise if a 'protest' candidate wins the ballot. Decisions could be quicker (as they generally are in authoritarian regimes) but they would by no means necessarily be better (as they generally are not in authoritarian regimes). This rapidity, not to say haste, suggests a diminished, rather than an enhanced role for Scrutiny. The talk seems always to be about the Mayor 'beating the drum' and getting him / herself into the media. There is of course a vanity factor here and there is much more to running a city than this.

In Birmingham a lengthy campaign run by the local press could get nowhere near the 5% of signatures required to trigger a referendum. Clearly the citizens of Birmingham were not bursting with desire to have a directly elected mayor, a fact supported by the very low 18% turnout for a referendum in Salford.