• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

What concerns do you have, if any, about the rate of clear up and conviction for people that are reported to be criminals?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

You do not have any powers over foreign relations and yet you spend a great deal of your time negotiating with that great democrat Mr Chávez [president of Venezuela] and your friends in the Middle East and things of that kind. You do not have any power there either but you are quite happy to interfere. Why are you not happy to interfere in this matter?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Do you not think that the figures you have just given us on clear up are very substantial spin given that across the whole of London barely 50% of cases which receive a sanction, which are cleared up by police, actually end up in court; fewer than half in many boroughs of cases which are bought to a conclusion end up in court. What is effectively happening is that the only reason that the figures are improving is because of the vastly increased number of cautions, fixed penalties, 'taken into consideration' matters and people who are stopped for possession of...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Why do you not actually address the point that I am making? Not even the Home Secretary is suggesting that rapists who give as their defence that they are on drugs should escape priso,n but what they are saying is that house breakers, burglars, the impact of whom on an ordinary London householder is horrendous, should not go to prison simply because they say that they are feeding a habit.

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

There is of course a case for increasing the number of prisons, but I am not saying that they should go to prison. What I am saying is that the victims of these crimes will get infinitely more satisfaction if these people are brought to court, they are prosecuted and that they can see in public what happens to these people. Simply giving them cautions is really no way to deal with these matters. Whilst on the subject of increasing the number of prison places, do you think it is a reasonable excuse not to send someone to prison for...

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

So, finally from me, are you satisfied then with the rate of clear up by the MPS?

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Over the last two years I have met literally hundreds of people, particularly young people, who say to me, 'I haven't bothered reporting the fact I've been a victim of crime because no one does anything about it'. What message do you have for those people?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

No, no, that was not the question. I asked you whether or not you approved of that proposal: that people who offer as an excuse that they are on drugs or they are on alcohol should be excused prison because of - that they are feeding a habit?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

You are clearly not interested in what the majority, for example, of Richmond residents say about you narrowing the view from King Henry's Mound in Richmond Park which is clearly going to give you the opportunity to put up tall buildings in the narrowed corridor. Because of course that is the reason why you have narrowed the view, isn't it?

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Would you agree with me that the development potential of the South Bank area, North Lambeth and Southwark, which has been well defined and identified in the London Plan and the Waterloo Opportunities Framework is potentially being suppressed by objectors to tall buildings? In particular I am concerned about English Heritage's approach to the Doon Street development. Do you think we are in danger of losing opportunities for jobs and housing in what is the highest potential development area in my constituency?