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

Tempting though it would be to develop that argument further, I would like to return to the subject of the original question, which was the council tax, because this argument Val and her colleagues developed that all you have saved them £3 and something by cutting the council tax, rather assumes the other candidate would have frozen the council tax for four years, so that is incredible. Now, I have conducted my own piece of market research on this, Mr Mayor. At a meeting of Havering Council several weeks ago, I asked the assembled throng if anyone there would raise...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

The precept, Ken Livingstone's council tax was actually £309 when he lost office in 2008. For that, we received 5,000 new police officers, the creation of a Safer Neighbourhood team, a huge improvement in the bus service, the Oyster Card, the Olympic bid, the Crossrail Overground, the Tube upgrade going, great public spaces but now London is in a cost of living crisis and I put it to you, Mr Mayor, you are actually adding to the pain. Your tax and fares strategy is that you are offering a small cut of £3.10 in a total year on the council...

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Mayor, can I just say, if your office had shown respect to all Members and circulated this document to all Members, then we might be in a different position. This document has only been circulated, as I understand it, to your colleagues on the Conservative Group. Am I taking this to be a political document or a document that has been produced by the GLA and that all other Members will have sight to it? Can I just have your confirmation on this?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

On the cost of developing the new bus, it has cost what will deliver eight prototype buses could have paid for 96 ordinary hybrid buses, which would have had a far bigger impact on air pollution, and would it not have been better and better value for money and better for the environment to have invested that money in cleaner engines and not worried about spending millions and millions and millions of pounds on designing a hop on/hop off bus? I know that Tories are obsessed with hop on/hop off designs, because it brings back nice memories of days gone...

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

A point of order, Chair.

• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Surely, Mr Mayor, you would be talking about the new model you and your deputy have been, I think, on the defence as against your interventions over the Leveson inquiry and the police investigation that has been on the grounds of efficiency and effectiveness in the Police Service, so can you please explain to us why, and when you tell the Police Service to row back, stop, it is a load of codswallop, and why, on a number of occasions, your deputy tells the Police Service not to pursue other resources into a lawful investigations against allegations of breaking laws...

• Question by: Victoria Borwick
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

I want to follow up, please, on that same point. Of course, as you know, there has been a cross-party investigation recently into tackling childcare affordability which, of course, all Members of this Assembly contributed on including the Members opposite. Of course, it has been welcomed by childcare providers, welcomed by London Councils and we all have a much more positive approach to how we can tackle this issue, which is not, of course, exactly in your gift, Mr Mayor, so let us get that record straight please. We have, all of us, lobbied the Government for greater flexibility so...

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

Mr Mayor, can I congratulate you on what you have told us about how you have improved travelling in outer London over the last four years? Boris Johnson (Mayor of London): Thank you. Richard Tracey (AM): Can I endorse what my colleague Steve O'Connell has said about the improvements to the tram link, one end of which of course is in Wimbledon? Also, can I endorse what has been said about the East London line extension which will reach Clapham Junction in my constituency by the end of this year. They are fine records. But the other point that I...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Darren Johnson (AM): On ticket office closures, is it not the case that there is not a shred of difference between the policies that you are pursuing and the policies that your predecessor Ken Livingstone was pursuing? Ken Livingstone had a plan for closing ticket offices and you have a plan for closing ticket offices. Never have two politicians with identical policies bickered so much over something! Boris Johnson (Mayor of London): I am delighted you put it that way, my dear cousin Darren, because actually when we listened to Navin you would have thought that he violently disagreed with...

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

Mr Mayor, a couple of weeks ago there was a story in the Ilford Recorder which featured a lady who had had to crawl up the stairs at Ilford Station because the lifts were not working. Obviously when Crossrail is introduced that will be a great improvement to public transport in Havering and Redbridge, but can you give us an assurance now that full disabled access will be a facility at each of the Crossrail stations in Redbridge?