• Question by: Steve O'Connell
• Meeting date: 14 October 2009

Steve O'Connell (AM): Thank you very much, Mr Mayor. I have to say that when the author of the report poised over the section around back garden protection, he or she must have felt the weight of expectation very heavily on their shoulders. I am pleased at some of the wording around it. I have consulted a couple of senior council leaders and a couple of senior planning executive directors who are content that it does give them the powers to further protect our back gardens. However, in that context, I would perhaps urge you to lessen your temptation to...

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 14 October 2009

With the London Plan I have noticed that it has got the target for affordable housing as 20% lower than the GLA's own assessment of need. So this means that there is half the amount of social housing that is going to be built in the next ten years in London. You have just talked about the increase in population. It seems to me we are setting up problems for the future if we do not deliver the right amount of social housing.

• Question by: Andrew Boff
• Meeting date: 14 October 2009

Thank you, Mr Mayor. This problem is a symptom of a wider problem about buses in-between Walthamstow and Wood Green. Concerns have been expressed by the Waltham Forest PCT about the lack of direct bus services from the north of Waltham Forest to Whipps Cross Hospital. I would hope that any consideration of this matter on this one bus route that we would consider the wider route between Walthamstow and Wood Green and, in trying to solve this problem for this group of residents, I would hope that we could improve those bus services for everyone using Walthamstow Station. Just...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 14 October 2009

Are you aware that this is a proposal from one allegedly respectable Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament in London who is proposing that there should be an additional tax on properties in London worth more than £1 million? Are you aware that there are more than 55,000 such homes in London, many of them are in my constituency, and are lived in by elderly and retired people who are capital rich but income poor and this sort of regressive tax will have a very unfortunate effect on people like that?

• Question by: Caroline Pidgeon
• Meeting date: 14 October 2009

Network Rail has advised me that the British Rail residuary body still actually own the Eurostar platforms and it has not yet abandoned plans for actually selling them off for commercial property development, rather than bringing them back as actual train platforms. What steps are you going to take to stop that happening?

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 14 October 2009

): Are you aware what a scandal this is, Mr Mayor, because there are five platforms standing unused and that has been the case since Eurostar transferred to St Pancras? The security and so on is costing the taxpayer £500,000 each year and, meanwhile, there are trains coming in, particularly from the Windsor direction, which, in some cases, have to stand outside Waterloo Station waiting to get into a platform, commuters are held up and, meanwhile, this Government and this Department for Transport faffs around, frankly, with this. These platforms could be available. Mr Sadiq Khan, the Rail Minister, himself...

• Question by: Victoria Borwick
• Meeting date: 14 October 2009

I think that is disappointing as you did obviously give us a slightly more encouraging answer last time I asked this question and, in view of the congestion you might say there is during the sale process when, of course, we do continue with the post-Christmas Congestion Charge-free time - in other words when people can shop without paying the Congestion Charge - it would seem that, at the moment, we encourage the sales but we do not give that same opportunity the week before Christmas.

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 14 October 2009

): Very quickly then. This is a kind of agree or disagree question. Do you agree with the statement or not, 'Road user charging can be highly effective in altering travel patterns and can be tailored to support sustainable transport objectives'?

• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 14 October 2009

Look, a lot is said about the Evening Standard and the coverage. Why is it then it is all over your strategy? I am looking at 5.25, road user charging, economic and environmental aims. Are you pre-empting the strategy by saying you are not going to do it but you put it in the strategy to chance your arm like you do on many other things in running London?

• Question by: Steve O'Connell
• Meeting date: 14 October 2009

Just briefly, Mayor, thank you. I obviously welcome your commitment about no extension to congestion charging. The rather scurrilous edition of the Evening Standard two nights ago set all sorts of hares running all over the shop, particularly in Croydon I am afraid, because the Evening Standard wilfully fingered Croydon as somewhere where you were looking at introducing road pricing. So can I just have your --