• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 23 February 2015

Tony Arbour AM: I wonder, Mr Mayor, whether you would agree with me that one of the things that brings politicians into disrepute is the failure to keep election promises. Boris Johnson (Mayor of London): I do. Tony Arbour AM: Under those circumstances, do you think it is a bit of a cheek that those most promiscuous of election-promise breakers, the Liberal Democrats, have come to you this morning, aided and abetted by various members of the Labour Party, asking you to break your pledge, which hitherto you have kept, to reduce the GLA precept? Do you agree with me...

• Question by: Steve O'Connell
• Meeting date: 23 February 2015

Steve O’Connell AM: Mr Mayor, I would echo Richard Tracey’s comments around the off-peak cap and would advise you in future to perhaps avoid these pitfalls in working with TfL. I thank you, however, for reacting very quickly, though I would urge you to ask TfL to perhaps do a fresh push on the Oyster card. There are still a very small number of people who are left in a worse position. They will benefit, clearly, from using the Oyster Card. Moving on, first of all I would like to welcome very much the renewal of the Outer London Fund...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 23 February 2015

Valerie Shawcross CBE AM: We are glad that you have made a partial backtrack on the way to help relieve off-peak passengers from a problem that you created. Boris Johnson (Mayor of London): Off-peak part-time workers. Valerie Shawcross CBE AM: Yes, for part-time workers. Mr Mayor, you do need to accept that this is just one of the many ways in which you did make the entire transport system unaffordable for many Londoners. I just want to talk to you about a particular case study. A young graduate called Kim gave us her story. She is one of two million...

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 23 February 2015

Jenny Jones AM: Mr Mayor, you suggested last week that children could be bussed from Norfolk to breathe our alpine air, but that does not quite fit with the illegal levels of air pollution that surround many of our schools caused primarily by TfL’s dirty buses. You promised some time ago that by 2012 you would have budgeted to have clean buses for London, hybrid or better. Boris Johnson (Mayor of London): We have. Jenny Jones AM: You have not. Where is it in your budget that says you are going to have clean buses so that our air is...

• Question by: Tom Copley
• Meeting date: 23 February 2015

Tom Copley AM: Mr Mayor, I wanted to ask you about what your budget will do for the quarter of Londoners who rent from a private landlord. Last week I was contacted by a constituent, Emma, who lives in the London Borough of Islington. She says: “I live in a two-bedroom flat along with my husband and children. We pay well over £1,000 a month for this privilege. The flat has had numerous problems, many of which we’ve had to fix ourselves as the landlord refused to, and we still have numerous problems such as doors that don’t shut properly...

• Question by: Stephen Knight
• Meeting date: 23 February 2015

Stephen Knight AM: Mr Mayor, whatever the tactics earlier of the protesters raising the issue of lack of affordable housing in the capital, they did at least identify a very important issue, did they not? Boris Johnson (Mayor of London): They did. Stephen Knight AM: The lack of affordable housing is, to quote you, Mr Mayor, “the gravest crisis facing our city”. At the last meeting, Mr Mayor, I asked you whether or not you understood that instead of cutting the council tax over the next few years, as you propose, if that money were ring-fenced for funding affordable housing...

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 23 February 2015

Joanne McCartney AM: I think all of us around this horseshoe realise that the police are under great financial pressure at the moment and an issue that Jenny [Jenny Jones, AM] has raised I was also going to raise about how it looks as if the police are now asking people to pay for protests. Secondly, I think all of us are concerned about funding for counterterrorism (CT). Your own Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime has said that the Government is penny-pinching and it is a scandal that they are not passing on appropriate funding to the MPS. [Sir]...

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 23 February 2015

Richard Tracey AM: Mr Mayor, can we thank you for what you have been doing about the part-time fares and the off-peak point, which of course particularly impacted on the outer London boroughs. My colleague, Steve O’Connell, and indeed you, Mr Chairman, both have raised this particularly with you as having hit their constituents. Thank you very much for your prompt action. In future, could you ask TfL to publicise this sort of thing rather more graphically and rather more fully so that they can be scrutinised and also so that people living in those outer London areas do know...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 23 February 2015

John Biggs AM: History will judge that this is a budget with two sides to it. The first is that you have failed to challenge the bloated budgets and opacity of TfL. Caroline Pidgeon is quite right. TfL can afford to reverse those decisions about outer London travellers quite easily and that will be taken up by my colleagues. The second part of it, though, is about the precept and council tax. I worry about your successor, whomever that is, whether it is a Conservative, Labour, Green or whatever. They are going to be facing £200 million-a-year cuts in their...

• Question by: Caroline Pidgeon
• Meeting date: 23 February 2015

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Obviously I welcome your decision about daily caps as far as it goes, but I do not think it helps those who perhaps work one day a week or who have very variable part-time work.