• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 December 2007

My desire, as I think you are saying, is to recognise that alcohol is in a sense a drug and does cause as much harm, as does tobacco. The problem is that they are both legal; government gets a lot of revenue from them and yet does not spend enough revenue on tackling the issues that they cause. There is a huge disparity between London boroughs too in treatment here; is your Inequalities Strategy going to tackle that?

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 December 2007

Yes. I do not think you or I want alcohol to disappear from the world, Mr Mayor. It is certainly not my wish.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 December 2007

You are quite right; I did raise a lot of issues in a rather long question. I did want to concentrate on where you ended up, which is the Health Inequalities Strategy. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about the significance you are planning to place on the problems of alcohol in that strategy.

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 12 December 2007

Absolutely. Will you look at putting together a short, succinct, immediate economic case and given that I think there is cross-party consensus. Well, no; not cross-party because the Tories are not on board, but locally they are because of constituency interests. At least at Assembly level we could have, I think, cross-party agreement on this jointly with you to make the case to the Government for the economics. John Biggs could always abstain if he was being grumpy.

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 12 December 2007

I think you are referring to the Colin Buchanan study, which essentially was making the case for expansion elsewhere, as I understand it, although it clearly did put some negatives in there. What we are looking for, given that the Government's case is essentially economic ' Ruth Kelly [Secretary of State for Transport] is saying that jobs will be lost and the economy will suffer ' is a very focused rebuttal of that argument. The sorts of things that we are looking for is the effect, given we have a skills and labour shortage in London, of, for example, having...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 12 December 2007

Of course you will be aware that Make Poverty History was precisely about calling on rich nations to stop pirating the assets of poorer nations and would you not feel that you have gone against the spirit of what Make Poverty History stands for? You should be ashamed of yourself.

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 12 December 2007

It is about that because we import so much of our food. The problem is that food is going to cost more and more. I would like to know if you would be prepared to get somebody at the LDA ' and please do not say the Food Unit because this is much wider than just food ' to do some research on how we could grow more food in London. We are doing all the work on the Green Grid but there has not been enough thinking done about how we can produce more food. Sustain did a report...

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 12 December 2007

With the cost of oil obviously increasing across the world and your quite firm recommendation to the people of Venezuela to support President Chavez's reforms in the referendum, what are the implications for the fact that that referendum went the wrong way, from your perspective, and for President Chavez, in terms of the implications of oil prices for Londoners and the consultancy studies?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 12 December 2007

You will not be relying on President Chavez's oil for London buses for too long then?

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 12 December 2007

If I can just draw us back to the issue, which I think most people will be concerned about; having looked at this deal in some detail, there are potentially implications from the rise in oil prices, on this deal, both in terms of what benefits London may gain, but also what consultancy is going the other way. Therefore can I come back to you on the issue of what are the implications of this on this arrangement that you have made.