• 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...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 23 May 2007

As an aside, I think there are more than 50 pubs in the London area called The Green Man. If you are successful no doubt they are all going to be called The Ken Livingstone! Possibly that is going to be a project that you are going to look to. We are very struck by the amazing altruism of these companies which are going to be initially putting up the cash. I can well understand them being willing to do that for local authorities and for public buildings, but, as has already been hinted at by Darren [Johnson], the vast...

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

Unlike Tony's carping, I want to wholly welcome it. The only sting in the tail on the overseas visits is this visit sets a standard of outcomes for Londoners that we will apply to your other visits, because we have been critical of those and we will go on being critical of those, but this one is 100% approved! I appreciate that the subject matter was focusing on practicalities of action at a city level, but can I ask what discussion, if any, there was about aviation? I am very keen that this remains firmly on the agenda. You just...

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

What I am hearing though, in going round London, are a number of concerns that this seems to be a great gathering of the white western economies, with the exception of Japan if they were not there. We have relationships with Johannesburg and some major cities in India, but what do you think the timescales will be for involving the mayors of other cities in Africa and Asia? It seems a little bit of a dilemma here; The white western world is gearing up to save itself, while currently tens of thousands and sometimes millions of Africans are dying and...