• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Why can't you take a lead in this? You have got strategic oversight, and the fact is you could go to the boroughs and you could ask them to put a minimum provision of sports facilities.

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Why do you only seem to oppose leisure centre closures if they are Conservative or Liberal Democrat closures and not Labour closures?

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

I am glad you have got some hopeful targets, but the fact is we are actually seeing a reduction in sports facilities in London at the moment, and the figures are in this excellent report that the Greens have published; in fact at every athletics track there are 200,000 Londoners who might use it, for every pool in London there are 60,000 who might use it, and these facilities are diminishing. I am sure you know that London has got two Olympic-sized swimming pools, whilst Paris has got 18 and Berlin has got 19. We are sadly, woefully behind. How...

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Mr Mayor, one of the things you can do is to start the expansion of proposals to encourage people to participate in sport outside of the five so-called Olympic Boroughs, for example expanding the `kids swim for free' scheme. Are you proposing to do that?

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

In that case could you at least take the message to Government, along with all these other messages that we ask you to take, that we are actually having a reduced number of facilities?

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Yes, sports participation and health; and one of the things they said to us is that they hoped to get a member of staff to drive through the sports participation and health, but they need a budget to do that and that has to be from the Government, and I was wondering whether you would back them in that bid?

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

One of the areas that you can encourage is private sector investment; swimming pools by their very nature lose money, but private sector investors are prepared to do it. However, one of the problems is the interference from your office on planning applications that would have a swimming pool plus other facilities. Are you prepared to relax those arrangements to encourage the development of sports facilities?

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

I do not want to go into that, but there is a clear issue here, because it was the interference from your office that prevented that scheme from proceeding and of course is now on ice.

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

2012 offers not just an opportunity to increase targets for sports participation but also there is the knock-on effect on the health of Londoners as well. At the Health and Public Services Committee yesterday we had evidence from Dr Sheila Adam (Executive Director, Public Health, North East London Strategic Health Authority) about the 2012 Health Board and the work they are trying to do.

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Absolutely. The core GLA's Environment Monitoring Process already commits you to put in place procedures for monitoring timber procurement policies. Why was there a failure and what are you going to do to improve the monitoring so that this does not happen again?