• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 17 July 2013

Can I just follow up from that exchange and can I say that as, I think, the only nurse sitting around this horseshoe and someone who delivered care during the awful [Margaret Thatcher [Former British Prime Minister] years, where I personally as a ward sister had to take sheets and wash them to put on the bed because we had no supplies in our hospital. The idea that we are sitting here denying the changes that have taken place in our health service from 1997 to 2010 is absolutely unbelievable. Nearly 100,000 more nurses, nearly 50,000 more doctors and I...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 17 July 2013

Are you aware, Mr Mayor, that under your predecessor the Conservative Group on this Assembly supported his move to be the Strategic Health Authority for London? That was one of the rare occasions on which this side of the Chamber actually supported an increase in the Mayor's power and, therefore, to suggest somehow or another it is the current Government which is opposed to giving you this power that, of course, is what had happened under the previous administration.

• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 17 July 2013

Thank you very much, Chair. Mr Mayor, as the Chair of the London Health Improvement Board you have a duty to improve the health of Londoners. To this end, do you agree that plain cigarette packaging, as used in Australia, could be a key tool to tackling smoking and smoking-related disease amongst younger age groups? Where do you stand on the issue?

• Question by: Andrew Boff
• Meeting date: 17 July 2013

Mr Mayor, how did the top-down, centralised regime under the previous Government work out for the quality of hospital care?

• Question by: Victoria Borwick
• Meeting date: 17 July 2013

Is it not true, Mr Mayor, that you have just written to Jeremy Hunt MP [Secretary of State for Health] to ask him again to reconsider the decision about not giving you funding for pan-London, and you are continuing to work with him on the projects that you are doing as part of the Health Board, in order to try to remain your strategic voice in this role?

• Question by: Andrew Boff
• Meeting date: 17 July 2013

Mr Mayor, in helping to understand the potential of branding and sponsorship of London stations, will you bypass the not-invented-here attitude of TfL?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 July 2013

I hope your friends from the United Arab Emirates are happy with your answer to that last question. The reason I interjected was because it was such a stonkingly stupid question actually, Chair. The fares under your Mayoralty have gone up over 40%, have they not? I know life involves hard choices. There is a very hard choice facing my constituents, which is your proposal to remove the ticket office from Whitechapel as one of your savings. Do you accept that there is a tough balanced decision there, that taking away ticket office facilities at one of the busiest stations...

• Question by: Gareth Bacon MP
• Meeting date: 17 July 2013

Val Shawcross and the Labour group are purporting to speak for Londoners on the subject of fares and they are opposing fare increases in every form. At the last election, as you have just said, fares were a central part of that election and you said the fares would need to go up to fund the infrastructure overhaul of the Tube, which again you have correctly said is the largest in London's history. They put to the public that they would fund a 7% fare cut, which would be in by last October. Just for the record you did win...

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 17 July 2013

Just for the record, Mr Mayor, has Val [Shawcross] or anybody in the Labour Party ever come beating on your door suggesting significant cost savings so that fares could be kept down?

• Question by: Gareth Bacon MP
• Meeting date: 17 July 2013

I am sure you are aware, Mr Mayor, throughout the period of consultation the Labour group, and others, have been pushing the line that the reason for savings having to be made in the fire brigade is to fund a 1 p a day, in their words, council tax preset cuts from you. They claim that they could cover that using the preset freeze grants, so not going with the preset freeze or preset cut. Of course that would only raise £9.5 million a year, yet the fire brigade needs to save in excess of £40 million every year from...