• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 18 June 2008

Do you support then using the precept to increase police officer numbers?

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

Thank you, Mr Mayor. You have already gone some way to answering the point I was hoping to raise in my supplementary but I will raise it nonetheless. Obviously as a party and you throughout your campaign have championed localism and local autonomy and have opposed the one size fits all edict from above. I think the changes put forward by Darzi are another classic example of a single solution trying to be shoehorned into a range of circumstances and, as you say, there may well be examples where polyclinics and the coming together of GPs is entirely appropriate. However...

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

Thank you. You mentioned the situation at Queen Mary's Hospital which is a high profile local example but obviously the impact of service closures in places like Queen Mary's also have a knock on effect to hospitals in the nearby areas that may themselves not be under the threat of service reductions. I think particularly of the situation between Queen Mary's Hospital and the Pru in Farnborough where the services being displaced from Queen Mary's are almost certainly going to cause an increase in demand on the services in a neighbouring borough and an increase in demand in comparison to...

• Question by: Kit Malthouse
• Meeting date: 18 June 2008

I wanted to reinforce Tony Arbour's point but also ask you to consider the plight of those small businesses in London who do not operate necessarily from premises but who need to move around the capital to perform their duty. I have become not the target but the recipient of a campaign from the window cleaners of London, many of whom are being caught in a pincer manoeuvre between the European Union and Transport for London in that new ladder health and safety directives coming in from Europe mean that they are having to carry and use much more equipment...

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

Thank you for all of that and I know you will deliver on all of those promises. Are you aware that one of the principal threats to small retail businesses in London is in fact Transport for London with its pernicious habit of putting in bus lanes and red routes along parades of retail shops? This is having the most deleterious effect on them and they are being closed very rapidly indeed. In the light of this terrible effect that TfL has I was sorry to hear that you thought that there should be a uniform time for the operation...

• Question by: Andrew Boff
• Meeting date: 18 June 2008

Following on from that, Mr Mayor, could you turn your attention towards the attitude of some boroughs, based on the requirements of the London Plan I believe, which has turned into open hostility towards live work units? Live/work units are an important contribution to encouraging enterprise, following on from what James Cleverly has said, but in some boroughs there seems to be the belief that live work units are the invention of the devil and they will turn them down at every opportunity. If we are to be able to localise employment to reduce the need to travel and to...

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

Mr Mayor, will you also join me in celebrating not just the economic benefit that small businesses have but the social and environmental benefits? Small businesses employ the vast bulk of all people in employment and, more importantly, they often employ people much closer to their home. If we were able in some way to help expand the number and size of small businesses within the capital we may well find that fewer people are forced on a twice daily basis to either use private or public transport into the centre of London. With that in mind will you pay...

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

I wonder if I can make another suggestion to you about how you can help small retail businesses. As every single constituency Member here knows, the principal anchor of small shopping parades is likely to be the sub post office. There is a question later on this agenda about the future of post offices. Would it not be helpful if you were able to ensure the survival of these small sub post offices by offering to deliver through the medium of the post office services which otherwise are tapped by people coming to City Hall but, more significantly, offering some...

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

Mr Mayor, when you have discussions with the Secretary of State in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and indeed discussions with the Sports Minister, would you and Kate Hoey stress the importance of Sport England money going into this kind of project which I absolutely agree with my colleague, Steve O'Connell, is an excellent use of money to bring young people into sport? It really is very important that Sport England do, if I may use the expression, keep their eye on the ball in this way rather than perhaps ploughing too much money in other directions.

• Question by: Steve O'Connell
• Meeting date: 18 June 2008

If I may, thank you very much for your answer, Mr Mayor. I think this is a great example of how we can engage young people in worthwhile activities and also break down the barriers often between young people and the police. The police are very involved in this piece of work, both financially and in time, in partnership with the football clubs in our different boroughs; Crystal Palace - I declare an interest as a lifelong supporter - in Croydon and Sutton. What are also important are the statistics. At the time when these activities are going on there...