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

James Cleverly (AM): I would also like to echo the sentiment of my friend and colleague, Assembly Member Barnes. I was concerned about bringing up the topic of transport in outer London for fear of being branded a sycophant or lobbing you soft balls. Boris Johnson (Mayor of London): That is no crime here! James Cleverly (AM): So I am eternally grateful that Assembly Member Shawcross brought up this subject because it gives me the opportunity to raise these issues without fear of being branded as such. Mr Mayor, could you give us your thoughts on the impact on my...

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

Thank you, Chair. Can I say how grateful I am to Assembly Member Shawcross for raising the issues of outer London and the residents of outer London? I live in outer London. I represent outer London. Indeed, I travel in from outer London on a daily basis. I am pleased that after 12 years the Labour Party is actually interested in outer London. Perhaps they will come and visit us. They certainly did not for the first eight years. But, Mr Mayor, my residents have gone through pain as the Metropolitan line has been upgraded and indeed at weekends as...

• Question by: Navin Shah
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Mr Mayor, on the issue of ticket offices, in June 2008 no doubt you will recall that you gave a commitment to this Assembly and to the people of Brent and Harrow. In your words you said, 'Consider the threat has been lifted, annihilated, vaporised, liquidated, exterminated, removed and obliterated as of now'. Since then you have taken a complete u-turn on this matter. I put it to you that you have let the residents down. You have failed them and you have conned them. You cannot be trusted on your word.

• Question by: Steve O'Connell
• Meeting date: 14 March 2012

Chair, I thank Valerie for her question. It is one that I considered and she beat me to it because I consider it is a perfect opportunity to highlight what this mayoralty has done for the benefit of my residents in outer London. It is outer London that we are talking about. A couple of years ago TfL took over the tram. I only judge this by the experience of my residents. To my mind, there has been a marked improvement in the tram offering to Croydon, to Merton and to Wimbledon. I urge you, Mr Mayor, to continue that...

• 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?