• Question by: Kit Malthouse
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

Mr Mayor, I, for one, welcome the fact that you have, perfectly legitimately in your role as Mayor, set a very ambitious budgetary strategy for the Metropolitan Police Service over the next three years. Would you agree with me that the taxpayers of London are ill served by the ridiculous debate about quantity rather than about quality? We do not have to look very far in London for some shining examples of doing more for less in Wandsworth and Westminster, both of which regularly levy the lowest council tax, half very often, of their neighbouring boroughs' council tax, and yet...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

There is no one on this side, Mr Mayor, who does not support your long-term aim about protecting the vital services which Londoners need. I think the debate is, what are the vital services which are being provided by this building and by the GLA family - and it is those things that we need to concentrate on. The boroughs are looking to you to set an example, and I suspect the Conservative Party nationally is looking to you to set an example, of the tight ship that we are going to need to have over the next couple of...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

Obviously I speak as one of your supporters on this issue and you have the assurance of Labour Members that we will rush to protect you from the knuckle scraping tendencies of the Conservative Party if they come to pillage London and take away its resources! I think I welcome part of your response where you are saying you will stand up for London against a Government which is planning to slash our services. That is a reasonably clear statement from you is it?

• Question by: Richard Barnbrook
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

Thank you, Chair. I think Boris and this house here will be quite happy to listen to what I am about to say. I think the idea is to lead by example, Mayor Boris, and this idea of cuts I suggested last year, not only the idea of trying to reduce the staff down by cuts - which is probably a good idea, I am not 100% sure - and to reduce our wages down. I think there are a lot of fat cats sitting round this table and really do not warrant the £100,000 plus wages a year. To...

• Question by: Andrew Boff
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

I am sure everyone living in social housing is going to be delighted that the Mayor is behind them on fighting this raid by the Government which is purely an electoral raid to try to provide money in its more marginal constituencies prior to a general election --

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

Mr Mayor, you will know that up there in Barnet we are a very cultured lot and we enjoy our nights at the West End theatre or concerts and what have you and that this evening closure from 10 pm is going to put the kibosh on all those thousands of my constituents who enjoy that sort of thing, or, indeed, enjoy spending a night in the West End wining and dining and what have you. A couple of years ago Tim O'Toole [former Managing Director, London Underground] offered me a stark choice: we could either have weekend closures or...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

You referred to the Tideway Tunnel and in your Water Strategy in the summer you were commendably strong in your support for that. So can you please have a word with Hammersmith and Fulham Council where Thames Water has gone on record as saying that the council's calculated tactics of non-cooperation concerning the construction of the tunnel, is not only delaying it but increasing its costs? So can you please speak for Londoners to your colleagues - Conservative colleagues - in Hammersmith and Fulham and ask them to stop blocking Thames Water's construction and get this tunnel built?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

I wonder, when you are discussing Mogden with Thames Water, you might raise a much longer standing problem, indeed two much longer standing problems. One is the Mogden pong and the Mogden mozzies. For years my constituents have been plagued by mosquitoes accompanied by the most awful smells from Mogden. Thames Water has made the point that their difficulty is that it has, itself, to fund any works which are going to be required to deal with the problems, both that which has been set out by Dick [Tracey] and the problem of the smell and the mosquitoes. I wonder...

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

In your answer to Mike Tuffrey you stated that Sir Simon Milton has been to speak to Hammersmith and Fulham Council, who are blocking this scheme, but you failed to say whether he had been successful in persuading them. Could you enlighten us?

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 09 September 2009

Mr Mayor, this is, of course, rightly called an independent strategic review of the buses and, surely, in its independence it has to face the fact that, in the next few years, whichever party is in government, there will have to be some very hard choices about different aspects of the economy and bus fares and bus subsidies and so on have to be one of them. Now you, as Mayor, will be one of the people having to face up to these hard choices. We are regularly told in emails - I am sure you get them, the same...