• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

If you are going to be boring we had better not send you!

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

You mentioned the parallel with party conference. Is not £20,000 or £30,000 for a drinks reception out of all disproportion to what goes on at party conferences?

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

One further point. What did Jones Lang LaSalle expect to get back for their £12,500 that they subsidised your subsidy for?

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

If the Conservatives are the spawn of the devil, is not the CBI the running dogs of capitalism! What are you pouring wine down the running dogs of capitalisms' throats for nothing back? What did we get back for it? If we got CBI support for not building the third runway at Heathrow, for example, that might be money well spent, but actually the CBI is in the vanguard of making the case for expanding Heathrow, and here you are pouring wine down their throats.

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

I do not doubt that you should be friends. I am slightly puzzled as to the need to sponsor a drinks reception for big business, because the CBI membership is substantial businesses, in order to get the message over. You talked about 1,000 delegates. What did you, the GLA, TfL or the LDA actually do to get messages over, having got the sponsorship platform?

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

I thought you might find it difficult to disagree with that statement. In that case, Mr Mayor, will you be voicing your concern both to the Attorney General and, presumably in private, to the Commissioner at the proposals from the Metropolitan Police to the Attorney General that they be given powers to ban flag burning when they feel appropriate, to determine what should not be on slogans, either on banners or chanted? Is this not straying too far down the road of preventing people from being offended, rather than preventing them being harmed?

• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

Sorry to say this but you are about to be consulted and there have been discussions to bring it before the Authority, and the Authority can take a view. It is only over operational issues that the police cannot be directed, and we are pursuing that. My question to the Mayor is this - and we seem to have lost this in this debate in terms of some misinformation going on - where is this fine line between being able to be offensive and incitement to hatred and incitement to violence? Where does that lie, when we can pick and...

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

I am not going to stray now into a debate on the structure of the governance of police in this country, but, rightly, in my view, both you and the Metropolitan Police Authority are prevented from intervening in operational matters but, surely, clearly, our role - whether it is you, the Assembly or Police Authority - is one in terms of policy. Issues like this, whilst we may not - and would not wish, necessarily - to prevent the Commissioner from expressing views, they should at least take account of the views of the elected Members and they should have...

• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

In that sense it is not right to be offensive to people in certain circumstances. What I am talking about is incitement to violence or actions where it could lead to incite further violence. How do we, as policy makers, give that advice, or give clear directions, in policing public order situations?

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 13 December 2006

Thank you, Mr Mayor. That sounds very much like a review in all but name. Do you agree that the role of the police should be to protect the public from harm, rather than to protect the public from being offended?