• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

I think we have to put some positive incentives to minicab drivers, having gone through the registration scheme. I think it would help reinforce what is a successful safety scheme

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

A very simple question, a bit of an old chestnut really; now that minicabs, private hire vehicles, are easily identifiable because they have plates on them, are we moving towards a position where we can reconsider whether they should be able to use bus lanes?

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Thank you, Mayor. In fact it would actually solve the problem. There are just one or two sensitive locations where minicabs have had trouble picking up and dropping off, and it is a particular issue when it is late at night and there are people who have been concerned about homophobic attacks et cetera. The taxi licensing scheme for minicabs has been a great success, a real step forward, and it just would be helpful to have full facilitation for people to use these things at night. If TfL cannot find a way of making a pick up and set...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

This is still a problem for black cabs in some parts of London as well, such as outside Liverpool Street station, where when they want to set people down outside the station, who are very often my constituents who are travelling to Ilford and Romford. They are not allowed to do so in the bus lane because they will get ticketed so they have developed the habit of setting them down in the middle of the road, and therefore putting those people at risk because they have to cross what is actually a very bus lane with a lot of...

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Elizabeth you raise a serious point, but I am not going to let you ask Valerie (Shawcross) in a session which is questions to the Mayor. It is sad the incident you describe but this is not actually on the question paper, unless the Mayor wants to give a response to that.

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

But in the meantime you will see if it is possible to bring them in to get some sort of voluntary code?

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Thank you for your answer, which will I am sure inform the debate on a motion shown on the order papers of this meeting. So I am only going to pose one follow-up question. In the days after the Kings Cross explosion Councillor Paul Convery of Caledonian Ward and others have been able to get the company McAlpine and its sub-contractors to cease using acetylene cylinders when cutting on the concrete core. Will you use your good office to get the rest of the industry in London, as soon as possible, to sign up to such a voluntary code of...

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Thanks you.

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Mr Mayor, you will remember that in 2003 we did a scrutiny on TB in London and it did show a very poor result then. One thing that you can actually do is ask this Single Health Authority (SHA) that we now have to inaugurate yet again the London TB Group; the London TB Group did a very good job of highlighting problems in London, but they were disbanded by the NHS in 2004. This is something that you could do with the SHA. There are still great pockets of deprivation and people who have TB invariably live in deprived...

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

In your conversation [with the Strategic Health Authority] can you take the position that it is additional work that is needed and that we should commend the work of Dr Sheila Adam (Executive Director, Public Health, North East London Strategic Health Authority) who has the lead responsibility on this area; a lot of work has been done, so it is about asking for more, and one of the issues you could raise is for the long-term support of the mobile unit. Whilst you are doing that, could we congratulate Pentonville Prison for their excellent work in terms of their prison...