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

The key issue is what you know about it from your key aides that are trusted by you.

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

This is a key issue for you, Mr Mayor, in that what you knew and when you knew it.

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

Mr Mayor, I do not find it is wasting time. You quite happily stand up in public at your press conferences accusing people of being racist which is really a throwback to the days when you were leader of the Greater London Council (GLC). I know people who have been victims of racism and who have been victims of discrimination and by use of that word and throwing it around you absolutely devalue it. I wonder if you would care to revise what you were saying?

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

Mr Mayor, surely when all this erupted, given the way you operate, you would have dragged Lee Jasper in and said, 'Sit down. I want to know exactly what's gone on here so I can deal with it properly in the press'?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Our side, last week when questioning Simon Fletcher in particular, made a number of recommendations, not just declarations of interest to be group-wide but a proper code of conduct as ministerial advisers have, proper guidance over how they can and cannot intervene, proper guidance over how a functional body board should meet in public and so forth. There is a whole set of reforms that we need.

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

The key issue is what other activities he was engaged in during that time.

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

Just one final thing. You put great faith in the independence of this inquiry. Why have you asked one of your policy directors, Ms Parchment, to search for the appropriate lawyer? Why not ask the Chief Executive?

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

I am sure you are right, but you miss the point; to get one of your policy directors to search for the lawyer who investigates another one of your policy directors, whatever their personal merits or views, just looks as if it is fixed. Why not get the Chief Executive who everybody knows has, by his role, to be separate to do it? What is the problem with that? Why do you find that so difficult?

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

That is the basis of it; based on evidence. Nobody would disagree with that.

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 20 February 2008

I have started to read Sir Ronnie Flanagan's [Chief Inspector of Constabulary] report. I think it is a report which we can endorse but we have firstly all to sit round and understand what the recommendations are rather than go off and be talking about foot-long forms that are unnecessary and waste police time. There is nothing about wasting police time if it asks the police to deal with citizens with respect and give an account of what they are doing.