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

Yes, but children do not think about what contribution they are going to give in future years. They are focused on the present, quite rightly. Getting on to a bus does not cost anything, it is free. They get the idea that that is a right, that that is free. It is a very difficult thing to shift later on. It gives them quite the wrong idea. We have seen, where children get on to buses, they behave like children very often and it has an effect on all the other passengers on the bus. There are old people who...

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

I think you are diverting the question here. That is what you are very good at, I have to say. Every time we ask for information we are told we cannot have it. We then have to make a Freedom of Information request which takes endless time to do. The supply of information is like getting blood out of a stone, particularly from your office.

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

Mr Mayor, the Assembly has no power anyway. You know that better than anybody else. The only power that the Assembly has is to amend your Budget if we have a two-thirds majority and that is hard to achieve. If we were here 24 hours a day we still could not hold you to account, we still could not scrutinise what goes on effectively so that is not the issue. It is not the issue that Assembly Members have other jobs elsewhere. The issue is that when we want to scrutinise something we get the information at the last minute...

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

Mr Mayor, what concerns do you have about the level of violent crime in London, particularly in relation to stabbings and shootings?

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

I think the message on the ground is that that is not the case. What message do you have for young people who frequently are mugged or bullied into parting with either money or goods by other young people and then do not bother reporting that sort of crime?

• 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...