• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Heathrow, Mr Mayor, sits in my constituency and can I remind you and Assembly Member Qureshi that the previous Mayor did look at Heathrow, did wish to introduce a congestion charge around Heathrow until he discovered he did not own the roads and the income would have attained wholly to BAA and not a halfpenny would have come to this organisation, so he rapidly abandoned it. However, recently when he was in the villages around Heathrow, he again mentioned congestion charges at Heathrow which would be an absolute nonsense and achieve nothing to the people of London. Can you assure...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Are you aware, Mr Mayor, that the people of southwest London describe your predecessor as 'The Rhinoceros'? They call him 'The Rhinoceros' because he is short-sighted, thick-skinned and charges a lot! In light of the miserable performance by the people sitting on the other side of the Chamber for whom every silver lining has a cloud, do you think an appropriate name for them would be Eeyores?

• Question by: Caroline Pidgeon
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Mr Mayor, how can you say Londoners are better off when parents with buggies, wheelchair users and people with mobility problems are still able to access only 63 Tube stations?

• Question by: Gareth Bacon MP
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

I do not think that was entirely necessary but anyway. Mr Mayor, I am very pleased, I have to say, not to be a left-wing politician because they seem to operate in a very gloomy and dark world where everything is rubbish. Listening to that previous exchange made me quite depressed, so maybe you can cheer me up a little bit. Tell me, Mr Mayor: do you think that Londoners are better off now than they were four years ago as a result of there being many more officers of the Metropolitan Police Service on the streets?

• Question by: James Cleverly
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Mr Mayor, why do you think it is that the Labour Members are so dismissive of the contribution made by the nearly 6,000 special constables in London? As a member of the Reserve Forces, I am very aware of the contribution that friends and colleagues of mine have made to the defence of the country, and in a very similar vein, those that give up their free time to volunteer as special constables, the nearly 6,000 of them - sorry, it may even be over 6,000 of them now - almost a threefold increase in the numbers. These are fully...

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Mr Mayor, picking up on your last comment about jobs, do you accept that Londoners would have been significantly better off had Olympic employment targets for jobs not been so woefully inadequate?

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Mr Mayor, how many jobs have you created and are you creating as a result of your investment in the Underground and Crossrail and the building of the Olympic homes?

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Richard Barnes (Deputy Mayor): Chair, I know a number of hymns that would lift us, but I have heard the gloom from the Labour Party, and as they are only half-full glass people, then it would be difficult. Anyway, Mr Mayor, I am grateful that Assembly Member Doocey raised the issue of the Olympics under this open-ended question. Is it not true that when you assumed office four years ago, there was no legacy plans for the Olympics? Is it not true that the cost of the Olympics had gone up from 2005 at £2.4 billion to £9 billion in...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

The Liberal Democrats, Mr Mayor, have just spent all their time trying to convince you to take on their budget proposals that we discussed earlier. Do you know how they are going to pay for their proposals? Did you know, for instance, that they were suggesting we raise the congestion charge? Do you think that raising the congestion charge would make Londoners better off?

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Four years when you were elected, Mayor, you inherited policing plans in a budget by your predecessor which saw police numbers rise to 33,404 in November of 2009. Since then, under your watch, police numbers have fallen, and as of last week, there were 2,155 officers fewer than there were at that high point. So it is not true to say, is it, that there is more uniforms present on the streets now? There are significantly fewer.