• Question by: Steve O'Connell
• Meeting date: 23 March 2011

On that particular point, bearing in mind the pressures on the budget and the effect on authorities and forces outside London, I hope you agree with me that the budget that's been arrived at by the MPA in effect is if anything a tour de force and a great result for Londoners; to the degree that indeed you are increasing the frontline at this very difficult time. Hopefully you will agree with me on that point, but also hopefully you'll agree with me that we should be looking at outcomes and outcomes are that we will see more police on...

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 23 March 2011

Mayor, in the last Mayoral campaign you were very active, quite rightly, in going around London defending NHS services, particularly hospitals which are very important to many communities, against ill conceived and misjudged closures. Now, whilst recognising that clinical outcomes are always going to be important, there is more to hospital services in London than just clinical outcomes, are there not? There are extremely important community issues that have to be taken into consideration and are not taken into consideration by NHS bureaucrats. Would you not agree that Londoners expect you to be speaking up for those community considerations in...

• Question by: Kit Malthouse
• Meeting date: 23 March 2011

I am pleased that you acknowledged that this is a complex issue but I wondered if you were aware that this has been attempted in the past - and I should, by the way, declare an interest as a member of the Passage Day Centre. Some ten years ago when I was chairman of social service at Westminster City Council we came to exactly the same conclusion that the proliferation of soup runs, particularly around Westminster Cathedral and in Lincoln's Inn Fields, were actually entrenching people on the street and keeping people on the street when we were working hard...

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 23 March 2011

Mayor, the Green mayoral candidate has been twittering about bringing in a congestion charge in outer London. If you had the funds would you bring in congestion charges in outer London?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 23 March 2011

I mean we can argue about which version of the Strategy the Commission had, but what is absolutely clear is that the only way to avoid the EU fines and breach the health limits is for you to have short term emergency measures on these hotspots, and that is a crackers way of running a strategy. What you should be doing is getting the base load down so that when there are hotspots you do not go over the limits. Closing road and spraying things and closing construction sites, which is what the Commission is saying you may have to...

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 07 December 2011

Commissioner, I want to try to get from you some idea of how you see the style of policing in the next few years. The reports that have come out since August and the awful affairs in August have rather suggested that there is an attitude that policing has become a bit too much like social services. That has come out in the reports, various ones - I am sure you are conversant with all of them - and the various discussions on television. The assumption has then been made that the people who were committing the offences in August...

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 07 December 2011

The question is about what policing will look like in two years' time. I want to focus a little bit about what police officer strength will be in two years' time. I ask that because at the Police Authority we have been looking at a draft policing London business plan for the next three years and it shows in that the Metropolitan Police Service's plan, given the budget constraints and the budget gaps it has got to fill, is to reduce officer numbers down to just over 30,000, which is a substantial drop. All of us round the table want...

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 07 December 2011

There may not be enough academics looking at police although there are enough ex-senior police officers out there I am sure looking for positions in one place or another. They keep popping up on the news giving us the benefit of their out of date views - ex-Commander O'Connor springs to mind. Anyway, Commissioner, will you continue to maintain robust policing against brothels in our suburban boroughs in particular, which is my concern and indeed in London, which often cause disturbance, nuisance and annoyance to neighbours, to women going about their legitimate business and so on.

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 07 December 2011

We are looking at how the Metropolitan Police Service might evolve in the next couple of years and one of the key parts of this is using new technology to communicate with residents and with members of the public. It is very commendable that internet and text services are now being used to inform people of crime threats in their area and precautions they need to take. What steps is the Metropolitan Police Service going to take to ensure that vulnerable elderly residents who may not have access to text or internet can receive those messages as well?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 07 December 2011

Are you aware, Commissioner, and you, Chair, that the points made by the noble Baroness [Dee Doocey] about the custody centres in Richmond and Kingston probably bear a closer relationship to the fact that there are local by-elections next week in the area than any attention to the facts. The truth of the matter is that the reason that the previous scheme went down was because of a total lack of consultation and communication by the MPA with the local population that the new custody centre was going to be located in the middle of a residential area which, quite...