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

It is seldom that I agree with Jennette Arnold but I am going to agree with her this morning. I find it an absolute disgrace that after 11 years of government they still have not met their targets for reducing child poverty, that the poverty gap has actually increased and that their economic policies are driving people into poverty now with the risk of losing their houses. What has happened over Northern Rock is an absolutely horrendous disgrace. If she wishes to cross the floor and join my party I will happily give her a free pass. The question is...

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

I can only speak for my constituents and I can only say, on the record, that this is one of the single most important measures that you have introduced because Peter again fails to understand that young people do not dip into their own pockets normally when they are looking for bus fares; it is normally the pockets of their parents. What parents have reported back to me is that introducing the pass for their children to be able to move around their city is one of the single most important actions that you have taken. On their behalf, I...

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

When you are a child you do not drive, the only option you have is public transport. The idea is that you take the bus.

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Lastly, and I do not know if we can put it in the system, colleges have reported back to me how useful this has been as a measure. I was recently at Hackney College and they were saying there that they feel that the young people have stayed in higher education because that has helped them because it is one less thing that has worked as a deterrent against them maintaining their education. I would like some feedback by colleges because I think you will find that that has had a great deal of success in that area.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

You mentioned that a lot of children are living below the poverty line. Undoubtedly this is useful [information] in that context but here you are dabbling in social engineering are you not?

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Peter raises an important question but I think in his questioning he is demonstrating just how little knowledge is held by people about the dire circumstances of many of the young people in London. Would you agree with me that the work that is coming out of the Child Poverty Strategy, the work coming out of the Health Inequalities Framework and certainly the work that I have been part of, the work of the London Health Commission working with Government Office for London and the local authorities, is essential work and is the sort of work that we are intending...

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

lot of children like to be independent; a lot of them will get on a bicycle and some of them will walk, but where travel is free on a bus they will just jump on a bus.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

It is not the right message to give to children that something is free. You do not go into a sweet shop and help yourself to a handful of sweets; you pay for them. Likewise, if you are going to get on a bus and travel from A to B there should be a charge for it, otherwise children get the wrong idea that something is provided free and they can just make hay with it, as many of them appear to do.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

I think the problem is that what you are doing is you are switching an awful lot of other people who do not get their free travel off the buses altogether and the problem for you is that they are going to go back to using their cars again which is precisely the opposite of the effect that you want to create in London.

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

If one listened and believed you, Mr Mayor, you would think you were a one man drive to reduce unemployment in London by putting people in uniform and that we would be tripping over them. But why is it people in my constituency tell me, 'The Mayor tells me we are getting all these things' - and I recognise a question further on from Graham Tope which we will no doubt come in on - but they do not see them. There are 18 dedicated police officers in the London Borough of Hillingdon, the second largest geographical area in London...