• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

I had a meeting on Monday lunchtime with the Redbridge Pensioners' Forum - 76 older people, a very good turnout - many of them avid supporters of you, looking forward to coming to Peoples' Question Time to see you later on this month. They were, pretty much universally, against the articulated bus. They were unhappy about the fact they could not get a seat on it, which as older people they need, and they were unhappy about the level of fare evasion which they have seen there. They were also unhappy about the suitability of the vehicle for roads. Do...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

What I wanted to pursue with you is how, in practice, you can get a good working relationship with boroughs given that on any individual site there will be a variety of differing factors which may mean that an affordable housing target cannot be reached. Can I invite you to go beyond what was a perfectly straightforward answer, which I entirely accept is right. In the media this week our good friends The Evening Standard cited the Coin Street tower block just down the river from here where there are plans for swimming pools and so forth but no affordable...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

On any given site there will be a range of reasons. I am not raising those issues because I have a particular view; the view is best decided locally by the borough. What I am trying to get at is, given that you tend to adopt a very adversarial approach, would it not be better to be working with boroughs so that we can have that precise variability and each site is judged on its merits, instead of you coming in with your target and beating up certain boroughs on a not very logical basis?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

We should recognise that Paris already has, I think, five Crossrails and Frankfurt has a couple of them. Members of the public here might come away from this debate thinking that Crossrail is a massive disaster for London. You have confirmed your view that it is not. Just to reiterate from the Labour side of the Assembly that we think this is a pretty damn good thing for London. The suggestion was that it is bizarre that the Minister should go to the City of London asking for money. Would you agree with me that, far from being bizarre, it...

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

The point I am making is that 3% extra levy on the business rate is not just going to be for 7 years; it is going to go on for 25 years and do other things.

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

So the trains will be labelled first and second class will they?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

Would you not agree with me first of all that a good answer to Peter Hulme Cross's question would be that the business case for Crossrail demonstrates that business and the economy in London will benefit massively as a result of it being built, and that is why we are proposing and building it?

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

Mr Mayor, the question from Geoff Pope which we have covered in this was are you actually still confident that Crossrail will begin operating in 2017?

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

So it is a 3% levy on the business rate from 2010 to 2035, by which time it will have been absorbed into the general level of taxation and everyone will have forgotten what it was like in the first place because we do not last 25 years in business. Really it is a sort of extra tax in perpetuity on business.

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

You are not getting the money that you need.