• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 30 January 2013

Richard Tracey (AM): Putney High Street is almost in my constituency, Mr Mayor, and you will be interested to know that it is in fact at the junction with the South Circular Road, so it receives very heavy traffic as well as being a canyon, effectively, as you say. Can I ask you, are you aware of the work that Wandsworth Council has been doing --

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Murad Qureshi (AM): Can I be bold enough, Tony, to ask you things that you have not really touched on in your report? The first is mansion taxes. Our sister city New York has a 0.5% mansion tax for properties over $2 million. Do you see a place for something similar if it was hypothecated to build social housing, for example?

• Question by: Nicky Gavron
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Nicky Gavron (AM): Thank you for the report and thank you so much for the way you are amplifying it, Tony. This is a little bit different from what Jenny Jones and Murad Qureshi have been saying but it is building on that. Do you think if there was a targeted form of land tax on those sites which have planning permissions, and we know now we have 211,000 homes sitting on land with planning permission at the moment, that would help bring forward housing?

• Question by: Fiona Twycross
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Fiona Twycross (AM): I think you made some really interesting points on English devolution and in one sense localism represents a very basic form of devolution. Did the recommendations of the report represent radical localism? If so, what benefits could devolving revenue-raising powers bring to the rest of England?

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Richard Tracey (AM): Tony, what makes you any more optimistic that the Government is going to accept these ideas you have put forward than they did in dealing with business rates? They first of all said that they were going to hand the whole of business rates over as I recollect and it finished up being 50%, so what is the prospect?

• Question by: Andrew Boff
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Andrew Boff (AM): I do hate it, Professor Travers, when you come here because you answer all my questions before I have asked them. But do you think the Mayor is missing a trick in just lobbying for London when he should actually be lobbying for cities? It strikes me that the 'carrot crunchers' have their lobby groups and unfortunately the cities do not seem to have a cohesive one.

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Jennette Arnold OBE (AM): You have touched on the issue of governance, so my question is about that. If the measures outlined in the LFC's report were to be implemented, what, if any, new powers or scrutiny roles do you envisage the London Assembly and/or local government in the capital requiring? You said in February that it was Ed Koch, former Mayor of New York, who played a great role in bringing the development of city mayors to London. Do you envisage a New York City-style of council in future where the 51 members there have sole rights of approval...

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Joanne McCartney (AM): I wanted to continue the theme, really, about the transport infrastructure. Jennette and I represent constituents in the Upper Lee Valley who are very excited at the prospect of Crossrail 2. But looking at the length of time it took Crossrail 1 to actually get off the starting blocks, obviously it gives is great concern that this wonderful idea may actually take many years or decades in the making. Did you have a view as to whether the better fiscal autonomy for London as well as that certainty would actually speed up the timescale for these big...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Valerie Shawcross CBE (AM): It is a really excellent piece of work and it gives us a good agenda for the future. Last week the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) made some comments that I think we all know intuitively are true about the importance of transport infrastructure investment for long-term growth. How do you think transport investment decisions would change in this city if we did have much more local control?

• Question by: Kit Malthouse
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Kit Malthouse (AM): Professor, it is very interesting, what you have been saying this morning. Obviously the restrictions on borrowing by local authorities were loosened in 2003. I hesitate to be political about it, but the strict introductions that were introduced in the 1980s were in response to irresponsible borrowing by a number of local authorities, not least Liverpool and Hammersmith and Fulham, interestingly, and also I think the interest rate swap debacle where Hammersmith and Fulham lost the case on their treasury management and got into all sorts of trouble. The reason that the Government introduced those restrictions back...