• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 18 June 2008

The GLA has a procurement policy and part of that procurement policy is that contractors should abide by paying their workers a London Living Wage. Will you make sure that in all your dealings in all the contracts that come out of this building that that is set in those contracts also?

• Question by: James Cleverly
• Meeting date: 18 June 2008

Would you agree with me that, whilst the London Living Wage is important because obviously London is an expensive city to live in, there will also be a huge advantage to Londoners as a whole and to low paid Londoners in particular if more of London's wealth was kept within London and that would give us an opportunity to target more directly Londoners on the lower wage? Would you also agree that, in your position as Mayor, you need to highlight the unfair distribution of London's money to Labour heartland areas around the rest of the country?

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 18 June 2008

Mr Mayor, whilst we are talking about Londoners on low incomes what do you make of the disparaging comments made about the poor of London by Richard Barnes?

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 18 June 2008

Can I ask you to focus particularly on south London in answering this question because unquestionably in south London we are seriously short of underground services and so in many cases the buses have to fill the gaps although obviously sometimes it is the surface rail. Your manifesto commitment to introduce new orbital services was very much welcomed in south London as you will, no doubt, have discovered during your many visits. I think it is important that the pilots go ahead. I think it is important that it is seen by the public, and indeed by the councils, that...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 18 June 2008

I understand that you think there is latent demand for these services but I am just concerned to discover how you intend to fund additional orbital bus service routes?

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 18 June 2008

The previous Mayor made a commitment that there would not be an increase in bus fares. Can you give a similar commitment?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 18 June 2008

I can briefly help you with that last point, Mr Mayor. Close to me are bus stops where the stage coaches used to stop and so there has been no change as far as that is concerned over a couple of hundred years! I have to say that the speed of the buses has hardly improved since then. However, very struck by the point that you made about real time information about buses; it would be extremely helpful, would it not, if your new wonder bus was able to give accurate information to the bus stops for the people who...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 18 June 2008

I would like it to be at the bus stops as well for those unfortunates who do not have the all singing and all dancing mobile phones that I have no doubt the new Londoners will receive. On the general point about improving bus services, it does occasionally happen that bus routes are proposed which residents do not want. Indeed, I have recently submitted a petition to you on that particular matter. I wonder if, in the spirit of localism that the new congress is setting up, if a borough is opposed to the introduction of a new bus route...

• Question by: James Cleverly
• Meeting date: 18 June 2008

Mr Mayor, I think Ms Shawcross' line of questioning again demonstrates the obsession that that side of the Chamber has with the micro management of every single issue of London life. Will you give me an undertaking that, in this issue as with other issues, you will take a sensible practicable pragmatic approach and if the orbital bus service is popular and if it does relieve or reduce demand for certain radial routes, that we will not be obsessed with maintaining things for the sake of their holy cow status and that we will actually allow transport experts to get...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 18 June 2008

Can I ask you then just to focus in on this proposal you have for the creation of orbital bus service networks?