• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

On the cost of developing the new bus, it has cost what will deliver eight prototype buses could have paid for 96 ordinary hybrid buses, which would have had a far bigger impact on air pollution, and would it not have been better and better value for money and better for the environment to have invested that money in cleaner engines and not worried about spending millions and millions and millions of pounds on designing a hop on/hop off bus? I know that Tories are obsessed with hop on/hop off designs, because it brings back nice memories of days gone...

• Question by: James Cleverly
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

A point of order, Chair.

• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Surely, Mr Mayor, you would be talking about the new model you and your deputy have been, I think, on the defence as against your interventions over the Leveson inquiry and the police investigation that has been on the grounds of efficiency and effectiveness in the Police Service, so can you please explain to us why, and when you tell the Police Service to row back, stop, it is a load of codswallop, and why, on a number of occasions, your deputy tells the Police Service not to pursue other resources into a lawful investigations against allegations of breaking laws...

• Question by: Victoria Borwick
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

I want to follow up, please, on that same point. Of course, as you know, there has been a cross-party investigation recently into tackling childcare affordability which, of course, all Members of this Assembly contributed on including the Members opposite. Of course, it has been welcomed by childcare providers, welcomed by London Councils and we all have a much more positive approach to how we can tackle this issue, which is not, of course, exactly in your gift, Mr Mayor, so let us get that record straight please. We have, all of us, lobbied the Government for greater flexibility so...

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Mr Mayor, can I congratulate you on what you have told us about how you have improved travelling in outer London over the last four years? Boris Johnson (Mayor of London): Thank you. Richard Tracey (AM): Can I endorse what my colleague Steve O'Connell has said about the improvements to the tram link, one end of which of course is in Wimbledon? Also, can I endorse what has been said about the East London line extension which will reach Clapham Junction in my constituency by the end of this year. They are fine records. But the other point that I...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Darren Johnson (AM): On ticket office closures, is it not the case that there is not a shred of difference between the policies that you are pursuing and the policies that your predecessor Ken Livingstone was pursuing? Ken Livingstone had a plan for closing ticket offices and you have a plan for closing ticket offices. Never have two politicians with identical policies bickered so much over something! Boris Johnson (Mayor of London): I am delighted you put it that way, my dear cousin Darren, because actually when we listened to Navin you would have thought that he violently disagreed with...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Mr Mayor, a couple of weeks ago there was a story in the Ilford Recorder which featured a lady who had had to crawl up the stairs at Ilford Station because the lifts were not working. Obviously when Crossrail is introduced that will be a great improvement to public transport in Havering and Redbridge, but can you give us an assurance now that full disabled access will be a facility at each of the Crossrail stations in Redbridge?

• Question by: James Cleverly
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

James Cleverly (AM): I would also like to echo the sentiment of my friend and colleague, Assembly Member Barnes. I was concerned about bringing up the topic of transport in outer London for fear of being branded a sycophant or lobbing you soft balls. Boris Johnson (Mayor of London): That is no crime here! James Cleverly (AM): So I am eternally grateful that Assembly Member Shawcross brought up this subject because it gives me the opportunity to raise these issues without fear of being branded as such. Mr Mayor, could you give us your thoughts on the impact on my...

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Thank you, Chair. Can I say how grateful I am to Assembly Member Shawcross for raising the issues of outer London and the residents of outer London? I live in outer London. I represent outer London. Indeed, I travel in from outer London on a daily basis. I am pleased that after 12 years the Labour Party is actually interested in outer London. Perhaps they will come and visit us. They certainly did not for the first eight years. But, Mr Mayor, my residents have gone through pain as the Metropolitan line has been upgraded and indeed at weekends as...

• Question by: Navin Shah
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Mr Mayor, on the issue of ticket offices, in June 2008 no doubt you will recall that you gave a commitment to this Assembly and to the people of Brent and Harrow. In your words you said, 'Consider the threat has been lifted, annihilated, vaporised, liquidated, exterminated, removed and obliterated as of now'. Since then you have taken a complete u-turn on this matter. I put it to you that you have let the residents down. You have failed them and you have conned them. You cannot be trusted on your word.