• 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?

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

Thank you very much. Lots of lovely quotes there and it is great to demonstrate that our programme has been full of social justice as well as environmental justice. In Stern's Report he recommended that to avert economic and environmental disaster we have to spend 1% Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Thanks to all your budget commitments to us we are spending about 1% of the GLA combined budget. What do you think is reasonable to spend on it, and do you think you should be supporting bigger budget demands from us to encourage you in the right direction?

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

With hindsight, you could have started earlier. One of the arguments you used to make in the first team was that on the environmental side you were not the major spending body and it was about producing policies, whereas I was arguing it was about implementing those and finding the resources to implement those. You are finding those resources now with the pressure that you are under from us. Do you accept you do need to keep finding resources to tackle climate change? It is not just about producing policies that you expect the boroughs to follow?

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

It was related to the deal that was done with the Green Group.

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

Given that both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrat Party only want to build half a Thames Gateway bridge I think it is quite reasonable there should be a lively discussion on the issue! I think in both cases they like the northern part, but not the southern part. That is politics for you! Would you agree that you are the greenest Local Authority Leader in the country and that green voters should celebrate the fact that they have voted for you in the past and should think hard before supporting another candidate in the future?

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

It took four years to put it right. Can we move on to a commitment you made to the Green Group to give £65,000 to the opponents of the Thames Gateway Bridge? Did that prove to be value for money for Londoners?

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

So they would have thrown away all the other things if they had not got it?