• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

It mentions the Mayor. I doubt you are going to be dipping into your own pocket!

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

You are both mentioning it as being the milch cow are you not?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

We certainly hope your optimism is borne out, but I think a lot of us - and the polls show most Londoners - think there will be an over run and that they will end up paying the bill. How happy are you about dipping into the lottery for this? When the lottery was first set up it was there to alleviate a wide number of causes across the country, large and often very small. Every time we say: `Oh, the lottery will bail us out' is that not going to be all those many more small but very good...

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

If there is an over run though, in 2012, what is to stop the Government saying to you or whoever is Mayor at the time, to continue the 38 pence levy for longer than the 12 years as it is at the moment?

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

When you say it has to be passed by the Assembly, all you need is one third of the Members to support you. With your Labour Members and your Green allies, that is fairly easy. It is a bit of a spurious argument.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

If the Memorandum of Understanding was to be acted on - and I can only assume it is there because it will be - it would be quite possible, would it not, for a future Government to screen their funding to you in such a way to take account of the bill that it thought London should be fitting?

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

We know the cost of developing the various different venues could increase quite markedly as development costs increase. That may be an optimistic forecast that we can sell the land to cover the costs. The key issue that people are going to be concerned about is who is going to fund the budget gap, and how is that going to be found? What is your view on that?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

I am glad you have clambered on board one of our initiatives! My point is the lottery, in the end, is mentioned as the milch cow is it not?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

You are sidestepping the point. You understand very well that the objection of this Assembly, the objection of London councils, collectively and individually, is to say that they know best on these matters, not you, and they do not wish you to take over decisions which they ought to be making. What you are suggesting, in your wish list, means that local authorities, the London boroughs, are going to have infinitely fewer powers. I have no confidence and, on the face of it, the Assembly has no confidence that your powers of determining what ought to happen in a London...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

That is extremely ingenuous of you to say that just because so few were dealt with at inquiry or there were complaints or something of that sort. The truth of the matter is that the investment which is made by a developer in a scheme which is currently referable to you is so great that the risk of you directing refusal is so expensive you are able to use that suasion to say to them: `Unless you agree to all of these things, I will direct refusal'. What I am suggesting to you is that with the increased powers which...