• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 23 May 2007

So you are saying that the pace of investment has accelerated. Is that over and a+bove the initial investment programme?

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 23 May 2007

This is obviously one of those issues where the Government - in this case the Legal Services Commission - is trying to resolve what is basically an efficiency issue by putting in place a national system, but it will not work for London, and London needs to be released from an overly rigid national fee framework. You mentioned ethnic minority communities. I have to say I am particularly worried about the impact on the clients of ethnic minority companies. I gather there is a proposal that there would be a minimum size of contract so that the smaller firms -...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 23 May 2007

What I am complaining about is you having a manifesto commitment that you have not followed through on. I am agreeing that this is a crucial issue. I would say to you that the way to deal with the difficulties that all boroughs are rightly in - we have all been there in our time, or most of us have in terms of borough councils. The way to deal with that is not to beat them up and to threaten to take away their powers and to try and get the government to give you the powers to gang up...

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 23 May 2007

In your excellent Food Strategy, this whole issue of health inequality is raised as well. The issue about health inequality comes up. It takes in housing but there is also this issue that even when you have affordable houses, what you need is a network of shops so that people can afford to buy the right food, and we do have food deserts here. I am curious about how the whole issue of food is embedded within your Housing Strategy? Perhaps I can be more specific; one of the issues that comes out for health inequalities is this whole issue...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 23 May 2007

The point is, I will agree, but surely there is a distinction between boroughs who are absolutely opposed to the goal - and I would put Wandsworth in that camp - and those that support the goal but have practical difficulties for getting there, and that is where you should be working with them?

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 23 May 2007

Staying with this issue, the last point that I want to raise with you and I do hope that you will agree with me and get your support for some action on this, is that the current statutory definition of overcrowding states that it is acceptable for children to sleep in living rooms, hallways and kitchens. I recently visited a couple with five children in a two bedroom flat. The only space that the children could just gather, because everywhere else was beds, was in the passageway, which was just totally unacceptable. The problem here is that the definition has...

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 23 May 2007

I am sure that you will be feeding that into the Department and our Prime Minister in waiting, because Gordon [Brown] recently made a commitment to increasing affordable housing, but I think he stopped short of talking about the specifics and the need for more affordable family sized housing. I know about the issue in London. Is this similar across the country or do we have to make a specific London case for more affordable family sized homes?

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 23 May 2007

I want to press you with three supplementary questions about three specific areas; firstly, about the areas most in need, second, about family sized homes and, third, about this unchanged definition that we have had of overcrowding since 1935. We have a situation where - and I quote from LHC's (London Health Commission) report, where `Travelling east along the Jubilee Line from Westminster to Stratford, a year of life expectancy for residents is lost at every stop'. We know that some of the worst overcrowding is found in homes in East London in the constituency of my colleague, John Biggs...

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 23 May 2007

I really wanted to ask the Mayor whether he agreed with Margaret Hodge [Member of Parliament for Barking] on overcrowded housing?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 23 May 2007

Jennette [Arnold] convincingly made the connection between housing and health, and that indeed is the question, so I hope you will allow a question to look at the housing issue. In your 2004 manifesto you set a target of achieving 50% affordability in terms of the housing, and you are falling well short of that. The figures I have show that something like 15,000 homes a year over the last three years have fallen below the level that would have been achieved had you met your manifesto commitment. So what update do you have for Londoners? Are you going to...