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

In terms of your update you said earlier that you update your report if it is good news. Does the loss of a second member of your key staff constitute bad news and can you help us with who this independent lawyer is going to be, what is he or she going to do and, indeed, who is he or she independent of?

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

We are conscious that you have deliberately created this to put up a wall of silence. Do not kid anyone.

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

Presumably you would like that to be after 2 May?

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

Mr Mayor, knowing how you must operate, these are your most trusted aides on whom you rely for your advice and for getting things done, so when were you aware that Lee Jasper had not declared an interest in the 1990 Trust for example, that he should have declared?

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

We accept it may be stupidity but given it was stupid and given that the emails were inappropriate and unacceptable, do you still intend to reappoint Mr Jasper if you are re-elected?

• 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.