• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

On the low emission zone here again many of these small traders in markets rely on older vehicles and they are being hit by the Low Emission Zone so not everything about the LEZ is rosy.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

I am surprised to hear that information because one of the bids to the Home Office was for the dedicated security posts, 300 posts, included in that 1,000 you have just referred to and the Police Authority was informed at the beginning of February that we are not getting the 300 posts, we are only getting 97 posts. So there is already a shortfall of 200 in the 1,000 additional officers that you are suggesting your budget will provide.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Can we be clear? Is that a commitment next year if you are re-elected?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

This is a somewhat rhetorical question but I am sure you would like to answer it, Ken, do you really think that the voters of London will need to balance up a sort of accounting question or whether they will want to evaluate whether it was a question of political leadership from the Mayor's Office which has led to the record increases in police numbers in London? Do you think also that they will want to reflect on the fact that some of the parties around this table - i n particular the one that was just heckling, the Bray...

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

I agree taking them out of management structures is a move in the right direction; the trouble is that move is actually reducing the total number of officers. It is not moving them to do something else; it is reducing the total number. Mr Mayor, we are going to sit here and argue about figures all morning. I suggest we do not. I think the reality is that the 1,000 you are claiming and you were so certain of you put in the masthead of The Londoner is actually turning out to be a fiction and is now what you...

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

I always thought it was Murad Qureshi who asked the patsy questions, not John Biggs, but as he approaches his dotage perhaps it is a new role for him! Mr Livingstone, you constantly talk about this increase in police numbers. At the MPA last week I asked the Commissioner and broadly had it confirmed that boroughs are operating at 95% of BWT (budgeted workforce target), which means in Hillingdon they are 22 police officers short, in Ealing about 30 and I understand in Lambeth it is, in round terms, 50. They also tell us, and you tell us, you have...

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

It all sounds extremely iffy doesn't, Mr Mayor? Your 1,000 included the 300 posts we are talking about here which turn out only to be 97; 300 on counter terrorism and 267 on Olympics. On your description just now of not at the cutting edge on the streets I would suggest that virtually all your 1,000 - none of which are being met through your part of the budget, all of which are being funded either by government or by the London boroughs - is not going to be achieved.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

The bid was for 300. The basis of your 1,000 was on the assumption, a rather rash assumption, that we would get those 300. In fact we have barely a third of that 300. There is a shortfall of £29.2 million on that.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

So we have a commitment from you that if re-elected you will ensure that numbers of police officers will go up by 996 next year?

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Perhaps they are acting as bodyguards for you. The reality from the Commissioner does not match up with what you are saying. Or indeed the borough commanders.