• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

You keep referring in fact to reported crime. That is reported crime and we all know and accept that reported crime is a significant understatement of actual crime for various reasons. You do not actually talk about reported crime though that is what you mean. So when you produce headlines in the current Londoner saying, 'Crime hits nine year low' it is simply not true and not the experience of Londoners who are experiencing the crime. It is a very good line but it is simply not true.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

There was clearly a very considerable crime wave in your first two years, which put the figures up, so that they could remain at the plateau that they are now on! Mr Mayor, you are on record as saying that the British Crime Survey provides, 'A reliable measure of crime trends since it has a consistent methodology and is unaffected by changes in reporting or recording practices which police figures are subject to'. I am sure you have not changed your mind from that statement. I repeat, the last six years has seen no fall at all in the crime...

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

Is this a commitment or an aspiration for the next four years if you are elected?

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

Not the crime that Londoners experience. Go ahead and ask Londoners whether they feel that there has been a 20% reduction in crime? Of course they do not feel that because that actual crime has not reduced by that amount.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

That is a good target to have. You set a target in 2004 that you would have reduced by now crime by 50%. Whatever measure you use you have lamentably failed on that one.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

Excuse me, Mr Mayor, you have reduced recorded crime, not actual crime.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

No, I was concentrating on this election and suggesting that as you failed over the last four years you should do ' you quoted Brian Paddick, not me ' as he has said, 'I have failed in my aspiration. I will therefore not seek re-election'. It might cause some concern to the Chair of the London Labour Party but I challenge you to do that.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

Will you also repeat and accept for yourself the other part of Brian Paddick's commitment; that if he failed to meet that target he would not seek re-election? Perhaps you should apply that to what you stated on the record four years ago, announce that you have failed and not seek re-election?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

Unless I know something that nobody else seems to know. What I was really asking for was the letter you had sent to the Metropolitan Police Service, because the Metropolitan Police Service has responded to your letter saying that because you do not make any criminal allegations they are not going to investigate it.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

Mr Mayor, we should compare our surveys. I have the figures here in front of me for the British Crime Survey since 2002 which show that they are on a plateau, both for household crime and for personal crime, and that in the last six years, in contrast to reported crime, they have not fallen at all.