• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

And the Liberal Democrats.

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

It does sound a bit like the Olympics. You are saying: `Let us wait and see', but here is another area where it does look as though Londoners are going to have to foot more of a bill at the same time as enduring intolerable delays on the Underground.

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

This is not a good indication of Gordon Brown's PPP for the tube though is it?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

We agree about the end goal. The question is what are the mechanisms for getting there? I take your point about commitments about purchasing energy sources offsite, those can be changed. Is there not a fact that even if developers put in, for example, a micro turbine on the roof, there is no requirement on them to go on using it? Are there not real practical problems with this commitment such that you have to add the words in: `Where feasible' in to the London Plan?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

Can I make one practical suggestion that your officers may want to look at? I agree the ideal is the onsite but, where it is not feasible, can we look at whether developers can commute that obligation - rather than let them off the hook because it is not feasible - but commute it in to money, and put the money in to a fund which could then be used for things, exactly as you said, lagging roofs would be the most effective short term cut in carbon emissions? The problem there is simply one of money. Can we look...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

A lot of us - and this probably applies to other political parties as well - occasionally resent the monopolisation of green issues by the Green Party and the other mainstream parties do have strong green strands to them. In the US presidential election, votes for Mr Nader effectively denied the progressive party the presidency. Is there a similar dilemma for Londoners, notwithstanding the green deals, and what we need to do is entrench green politics within the mainstream parties?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

How have you funded your commitments to the Green Group? Has this been through tax increases or through savings elsewhere in the budget?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

I understand the pressures you were under when the GLA was set up. Isn't the crucial difference that in the first term you could ignore us, in the second term you cannot, just because of the arithmetic in this building?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

Clearly there has been a big ratcheting up of Green initiatives in your budget since you had to rely on the support of the Green Group to get your budget through. Do you now accept some of the criticisms I made of your budget in the first term, that there was not enough of a focus on environmental spending in the first term?

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

Clearly we would support you on that. One final question. Do you agree that your budget deal with us injected genuine momentum into the visionary East London Green Grid project which has the potential to be the defining feature of East London for generations to come?