| Background Color: |
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| London Assembly | |
| Coa Pic: | London Assembly logo.svg |
| Coa Res: | 250px |
| Foundation: | 3 July 2000 |
| House Type: | Unicameral deliberative assembly of London |
| Leader1 Type: | Chair |
| Leader1: | Andrew Boff |
| Party1: | Conservative |
| Election1: | 4 May 2023[1] |
| Leader2 Type: | Deputy Chair |
| Leader2: | Len Duvall |
| Party2: | Labour |
| Election2: | 10 May 2024[2] |
| Leader3 Type: | Group leaders |
| Leader3: | |
| Members: | 25 |
| Structure1: | Londonassembly2024.svg |
| Structure1 Res: | 250px |
| Voting System1: | Additional-member system |
| Last Election1: | 2 May 2024 |
| Next Election1: | 4 May 2028 |
| Session Room: | Siemens Crystal Building, London.jpg |
| Session Res: | 150px |
| Meeting Place: | City Hall, Newham, London |
| Website: | www.london.gov.uk |
The London Assembly is a 25-member elected body, part of the Greater London Authority, that scrutinises the activities of the Mayor of London and has the power, with a two-thirds supermajority, to amend the Mayor's annual budget and to reject the Mayor's draft statutory strategies.[3] The London Assembly was established in 2000. It is also able to investigate other issues of importance to Londoners (most notably transport or environmental matters), publish its findings and recommendations, and make proposals to the Mayor.
The Assembly comprises 25 members elected using the additional-member system of proportional representation, with 13 seats needed for a majority. Elections take place every four years, at the same time as those for the mayor of London. There are 14 geographical constituencies, each electing one member, with a further 11 members elected from a party list to make the total number of Assembly members from each party proportional to the votes cast for that party across the whole of London using a modified D'Hondt allocation.[4] A party must win at least 5% of the party list vote in order to win any seats. Members of the London Assembly have the post-nominal title "AM". The annual salary for a London Assembly member is approximately £60,416.[5]
Since its creation in 2000, sixteen Assembly members subsequently were elected to the House of Commons: David Lammy, Meg Hillier, Diana Johnson, and Florence Eshalomi for Labour; Andrew Pelling, Bob Neill, Angie Bray, Bob Blackman, Eric Ollerenshaw, Victoria Borwick, James Cleverly, Kit Malthouse, Kemi Badenoch, and Gareth Bacon for the Conservatives; Lynne Featherstone for the Liberal Democrats and Siân Berry for the Green Party.
One Assembly member, Jenny Jones, was elevated to the House of Lords as the Green Party's first life peer in 2013, continuing to sit in the Assembly until May 2016. Sally Hamwee, Graham Tope, and Toby Harris were already peers when elected to the assembly, while Lynne Featherstone and Dee Doocey were created life peers after standing down from the Assembly.
Val Shawcross, AM for Lambeth and Southwark, unsuccessfully contested Bermondsey and Old Southwark as the Labour parliamentary candidate at the 2010 general election, and Navin Shah stood unsuccessfully as the Labour candidate for Harrow East in 2017. Andrew Dismore, Graham Tope, and the late Richard Tracey are all former MPs later elected to the assembly. John Biggs, formerly AM for City and East, served as the directly elected mayor of Tower Hamlets from 2015 until 2022.
London Assembly elections have been held under the additional member system, with a set number of constituencies elected on a first-past-the-post system and a set number London-wide on a closed party list system. Terms are for four years, so despite the delayed 2020 election, which was held in 2021, the following election was held in 2024.
In December 2016, an Electoral Reform Bill was introduced which would have changed the election system to first-past-the-post.[6] At the 2017 general election, the Conservative Party manifesto proposed changing how the Assembly is elected to first-past-the-post.[7]
However, since the general election of 2017, which resulted in a hung Parliament with the Conservatives and the Democratic Unionist Party in a confidence and supply arrangement, no action has been taken with regard to the electoral arrangements of the London Assembly, and the 2020 election, delayed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was held on the current electoral system of AMS (constituencies and regional lists).
| Political party | Assembly members | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | |||||||||
| Labour | 9 | 7 | 8 | 12 | 12 | 11 | 11 | ||
| Conservative | 9 | 9 | 11 | 9 | 8 | 9 | 8 | ||
| Green | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | ||
| Liberal Democrat | 4 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | ||
| Reform | 0 | 1 | |||||||
| UKIP | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | style="text-align: center" | ||
| BNP | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | ||||
On 12 December 2018, following Peter Whittle's departure from UKIP, he and David Kurten disbanded the UKIP grouping and formed the Brexit Alliance group.
In March 2019, following the departure of Tom Copley and Fiona Twycross to take up full-time Deputy Mayor roles, Murad Qureshi and Alison Moore replaced them as Labour Assembly members. The end of the term in office for AMs was extended from May 2020 to May 2021, as no elections were being held during the COVID-19 pandemic.
| Name | Entered office | Left office | Political party | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trevor Phillips | May 2000 | May 2001 | ||
| Sally Hamwee | May 2001 | May 2002 | ||
| Trevor Phillips | May 2002 | February 2003 | ||
| Sally Hamwee | February 2003 | May 2004 | ||
| Brian Coleman | May 2004 | May 2005 | ||
| Sally Hamwee | May 2005 | May 2006 | ||
| Brian Coleman | May 2006 | May 2007 | ||
| Sally Hamwee | May 2007 | May 2008 | ||
| Jennette Arnold | May 2008 | May 2009 | ||
| Darren Johnson | May 2009 | May 2010 | ||
| Dee Doocey | May 2010 | May 2011 | ||
| Jennette Arnold | May 2011 | May 2013 | ||
| Darren Johnson | May 2013 | May 2014 | ||
| Roger Evans | May 2014 | May 2015 | ||
| Jennette Arnold | May 2015 | May 2016 | ||
| Tony Arbour | May 2016 | May 2017 | ||
| Jennette Arnold | May 2017 | May 2018 | ||
| Tony Arbour | May 2018 | May 2019 | ||
| Jennette Arnold | May 2019 | May 2020 | ||
| Navin Shah | May 2020 | May 2021 | ||
| Andrew Boff | May 2021 | May 2022 | ||
| Onkar Sahota | May 2022 | May 2023 | ||
| Andrew Boff | May 2023 | Incumbent | ||
The Assembly has formed the following committees:[8]
The Police and Crime Committee was set up under the terms of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 in order to scrutinise the work of Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime, which replaced the Metropolitan Police Authority.[9]
Note that these maps only show constituency results and not list results.