• 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In Wembley, where the application was withdrawn, the world was going to end if there was no super casino, but yet, much more imaginative schemes have come forward now as proposals to produce proper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...

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

If that is the case, why have you decided to issue a decision on the Prestolite factory site in Larden Road, where you think that their decision, which was supported by your officers, on the share between socially rented and housing which is affordable, was wrong?

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 21 February 2007

I was keen to know your views on shared ownership schemes and whether they are affordable any more in London? And whether we could, realistically, call them affordable housing, given the basic salary level requirements asked from Housing Associations are reaching £47,000 as a minimum, from the last few examples I have seen in my neighbourhood, and that, increasingly, 100% ownership is unattainable and they get hammered with service charges as well?

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

It so happens that Hammersmith and Fulham has the highest percentage of social rented housing in west London, it has the 11th highest percentage in the whole of London, it has 34% above the London average of social rented housing in this ward, and yet you have turned this down. What I particularly object to, in your attack on Hammersmith and Fulham, is that in your press release on the matter you have suggested they should consult Andrew Slaughter who is the Labour Member of Parliament for the area, rather than consulting the Leader of the Council, the person who...