• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 21 February 2007

Can I just be clear, Mr Mayor, about these figures? As I understand it you say there is £5.1 billion altogether, which includes, you are now saying, £1.9 billion for regeneration. So it was the £2.375 billion plus the £900 million that Tessa Jowell identified. Are you now saying that that £900 million is to do with core Olympic costs?

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 21 February 2007

Mr Mayor, allegedly the Chancellor is talking about any other cost overruns being transferred to the Lottery with potentially up to £2 billion being suddenly removed from good causes. Does that not give you cause for concern about money being removed from good causes across London?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 21 February 2007

The only thing that concerns me when I look through the Memorandum of Understanding, is that there is no time limit. So, irrespective of what you say, I cannot see anywhere where it says that there is a point at which Londoners may have to stop paying for it. Therefore, whether you are Mayor or not, there has to be a sharing agreement to be agreed, as appropriate, with the Mayor of London and National Lottery funding. What I can see is a situation where the Government can effectively enforce, over a very long period, as in Montreal, Londoners to...

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 21 February 2007

You say the Memorandum does not mention Council Tax but it does on a couple of occasions. It talks about increased Council Tax in point 8, and in point 9 it says an increase in Council Tax precept. So you can assume, surely, that when you move on to point 17 what it means is the Council Tax. If there is an overspend, then there is going to be a crisis. My main point is, irrespective of your claim, you are not going to be here on the centenary of your birth, some years hence, as Mayor, and that is...

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 21 February 2007

We would all agree with that. Essentially the lottery has specific games that are there to fund their contribution. However, the suggestion now is that more money will be shifted from the lottery - which everyone buys tickets for and contributes towards good causes - and that would mean less money being available for other good causes. Does that not give you cause for concern?

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 21 February 2007

Mr Mayor, you have gone on record - and I think from your comments this morning - as saying that essentially this regeneration scheme is unviable without the super casino, or regional casino. Does this mean that the whole project as far as you are concerned is dead, or what is going to happen now?

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 21 February 2007

Do you think the Casino Advisory Panel was given virtually no choice by the Deputy Prime Minister's antics and the lobbing that went on in favour of Greenwich?

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 21 February 2007

In Wembley, where the application was withdrawn, the world was going to end if there was no super casino, but yet, much more imaginative schemes have come forward now as proposals to produce proper regeneration as opposed to get rich schemes. Do you not think that that is what is going to happen in Greenwich?

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 21 February 2007

I really have to come in here. You know perfectly well when you handed over the social housing in the huge estates in Wandsworth the state they were in. Wandsworth looks after its estates, we have mixed tenure on the estates, we still have loads of rented properties on our estates. The other thing they did, they reached the target on hidden homes. They have gone out of their way to build homes in all sorts of places. We know that a mixed tenure works. Otherwise you have ghettos. This is why life in Wandsworth is so much better for...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 21 February 2007

Well I am glad to hear you say that as far as you are concerned it is a political decision, because there are four Labour boroughs where the target is infinitely less than your target; the London Boroughs of Newham, Greenwich and Tower Hamlets, you have accepted less than the target. It is only, I suggest, that because Hammersmith has become Conservative controlled, that you have decided that you are going to oppose this. Your Housing Strategy itself - and you repeated it this morning in an earlier discussion on housing - suggests that boroughs know what their own needs...