• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 17 September 2014

We are still awaiting a response to our motion of 24 July about Vince Cable’s [Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills] botched privatisation of the Royal Mail. We ask there whether you are prepared to lobby Ofcom, the regulator, which has a statutory duty to protect the universal postal service over and above any competition considerations. So far they have not been willing to step in because of the more expensive service and the poor delivery - I hasten to add not because of the postal workers. Are you, as Mayor, prepared to make representations to Ofcom on...

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 17 September 2014

It is a quick one. Mr Mayor, if you cannot make it to Tower Hamlets, would you ride the ten minutes down the road in the borough that you live, one of the richest boroughs in this city, and visit the food bank there, which is one of the busiest in London? It is the scale of the problem that my colleague, Fiona Twycross, has been speaking to you about now for months and months. Why do you refuse to even visit a food bank down the road from your house?

• Question by: Andrew Dismore
• Meeting date: 17 September 2014

I assume from your reply, such as it was, that you have not yet put your submission to the Government about this. There are only ten days or so to go and it will be interesting to see what you say. Thank you for your letter, by the way, about Premier House in my constituency, which was helpful but a little vague. Are you aware of the existing permitted development rights that if an office block like ‑‑ Boris Johnson (Mayor of London): The existing permitted development rights? Andrew Dismore AM: Yes, which the Government want to extend. If an...

• Question by: Andrew Boff
• Meeting date: 17 September 2014

Mr Mayor, I would appeal to you to get your officers to look at the London Plan and how you can actually rescue business because, despite what the Government has done - and I think the Assembly is fairly united in opposing this relaxation of planning rules with regard to commercial areas - councils themselves are getting rid of their employment space voluntarily. What they are doing is they are taking the provision in many plans that says you can have housing that is ancillary to a commercial development and they are using the interpretation of ‘ancillary’ as meaning ‘additional...

• Question by: Kit Malthouse
• Meeting date: 17 September 2014

Mr Mayor, obviously you will share my disappointment that having secured an exemption for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea just over 12 months ago, it has now been proposed to be removed. I am pleased to hear you are going to be lobbying for its retention. Would you agree with me, though, that the Government’s current approach to planning rules and regulations is creating a huge amount of uncertainty, not just for local authorities but also for the development community, and there may in fact be a break on development as developers and others wait for policy to...

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 17 September 2014

Mr Mayor, can I raise the issue of sectarian tensions in London from the Middle East conflicts between Sunni and Shia? I welcome the comments you made to Andrew Boff AM that you do not want to see international disputes come to the streets of London. In the past 15 months I have seen a number of incidents which concern me. The first was raised by Lebanese businesses on the Edgware Road about Anjem Choudary’s [cleric] mob inciting clearly religious hatred aimed at Shias. It was dealt with as a public order offence but an opportunity was missed to deal...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 September 2014

I am interested in exploring another aspect of this, which is about the community cohesion consequences of what is happening and whether you feel we are doing enough, giving the right signals and stating very clearly the expectations we have of people and also whether, with the limited public funds available, we are doing enough with, for example, the PREVENT [one of the elements of CONTEST, the Government's counter-terrorism strategy] agenda, which has been massively downscaled.

• Question by: James Cleverly
• Meeting date: 17 September 2014

Mr Mayor, would you agree with me that one of the dangers of fetishising our relationship with Europe is that it blinds us to the opportunities of economic relationships with the rest of the world? My mother was from Sierra Leone and I have family from West Africa who are shocked at Britain’s unwillingness to engage with Africa as an economically growing continent. We made that mistake to a large extent with India, we are making that mistake with China and we are making that mistake with Latin America. I would urge you to ignore the pronouncements from the party...

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 17 September 2014

Mr Mayor, you may recall that in June I asked you about the rise in violent crime in particular outer London boroughs. You said that you had noticed an increase and that you had asked questions and the MPS had told you it was about domestic violence and an increase in reporting. Actually, we have done some further work on this. If you look at the five highest boroughs, for example, Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich, Enfield, Haringey and Hillingdon ‑‑ Boris Johnson (Mayor of London): This is violence with injury, yes? Joanne McCartney AM: Yes, there have been significant rises in...

• Question by: Andrew Dismore
• Meeting date: 10 September 2014

Seeing your cycle helmet there, Boris, it reminds me that you have still not honoured your promise from two years ago to cycle around Stirling Corner. Perhaps you will let us know when you are going to do that. Perhaps you can also let us know when we are finally going to get a decision on the 24-hour signal experiment, which has been delayed and delayed and delayed in terms of actually getting an outcome. The latest I heard it was going to be October, but that is about a year after we were originally promised the outcome.