• Question by: Tom Copley
• Meeting date: 23 October 2013

You have increased the number of landlords signed up to this by 2,400 in the 17 months since the election. You said by 2016 you want 100,000 landlords signed up. At the current rate it would take over 51 years to sign up 100,000 landlords. Even then that would only represent one-third of the landlords operating in London.

• Question by: Nicky Gavron
• Meeting date: 23 October 2013

We know - and you and I have discussed this - that we have 210,000 homes with planning permission which are not being built. We know that. In May, you told me that you thought land banking - and many of them are being banked to drive up value - is pernicious. Your word was ‘pernicious’. You have just talked about something that you talked about in your Vision, which is introducing a ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ planning permission. You have also talked at Mayor’s Question Time (MQT) with me about compulsory purchase order (CPO) powers and that they could be introduced, you...

• Question by: Stephen Knight
• Meeting date: 23 October 2013

Mr Mayor, on Friday I launched with Vince Cable [Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills] the Liberal Democrat Group’s contribution to the debate on London’s housing crisis. I sent you a copy of it. We are proposing essentially that the number of affordable houses in London should be upped from the current programme you referred to earlier, about 100,000 over your term, to nearer 400,000 through a big increase in public investment and a big use of public sector land for affordable housing. Mr Mayor, will you commit to reading and considering our proposals as part of your...

• Question by: Tom Copley
• Meeting date: 23 October 2013

Yes, but why have we had to wait this long when you were already consulting on a new draft Strategy in 2011? I have the timescale here. In 2010 you published your first Housing Strategy. In December 2011 you published a draft revised Housing Strategy for consultation. That consultation ended in March last year. Now, nearly two years after the launch of this consultation, you have still not published the final Strategy. Why now are you consulting on a new one?

• Question by: Tom Copley
• Meeting date: 23 October 2013

Mr Mayor, but the point of the question was that you were consulting on a new draft Strategy. You launched a consultation, I believe, in 2011. We have then been waiting and we have been getting delay after delay from your office. Whenever we have asked when that final Strategy is going to be published, you have always pushed the time back. Why now, having had that previous consultation on a draft Strategy, have you seemed to have ditched that in favour of consulting on a new one?

• Question by: Steve O'Connell
• Meeting date: 23 October 2013

I think through the Bureau of Leaders that there are conversations to commemorate and mark the loss of members from the London County Council (LCC) and other associated bodies and I think that is wholly appropriate. I know that the boroughs out there are also marking it with appropriate events. I was pleased to learn that the GLA particularly will take part in that and you, Mr Mayor. Therefore, you are saying that you indeed will lead our contingents in commemoration yourself as, in essence, the political leader of the town?

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 23 October 2013

You mentioned the Thames Tideway Tunnel. There is of course, let me remind you, the Northern Line Extension (NLE) into Battersea and also the possibility of continuing that to Clapham Junction, which is one of the campaigns of Wandsworth Council. How soon are we going to see the prospect of some more work for these Crossrail tunnellers?

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 23 October 2013

As I understand it, Crossrail 1 tunnelling will be completed by 2015.

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 23 October 2013

I think there is a team of about 3,500 real experts in tunnelling that could easily be sent around the world or they could decide to go around the world because there are so many projects. There is a metro being built in Copenhagen at the moment and a whole lot of things, as you know, going on in the Far East, China and so on and indeed in the Middle East. Is there yet any specific finalised plan for a route to Crossrail 2? How near are we to getting it?

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 23 October 2013

What about any further into boroughs? I represent Merton as well. Is there any likelihood that the Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme will go to outer London boroughs, or is it simply to be the mini‑Holland Scheme which you have announced?