• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 21 June 2006

I agree with you ' not about keeping the lot - but surely do you not see that so much of this money is going to relatively unproductive areas of the economy? Many economists in the North East, Northern Ireland, and the North West are saying that the private sector is being crowded out because of the amount of money that is coming from London and the South East. In other words, it is disenabling the rest of the country.

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 21 June 2006

I realise that, and a good one actually.

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 21 June 2006

If you look, for example, at the latest sort of value added tax (VAT) registrations and de-registrations; we pointed out a year ago that in central London, the disparity between closures and start-ups had narrowed and had gone the wrong way. Now it has happened, for the first time in a decade, across the whole of London where the number of closures has exceeded. One of the main reasons given is excess taxation, difficulties of doing business in the city. You made the point yourself about there being a point at which people and businesses cannot take any more taxation...

• Question by: Andrew Pelling
• Meeting date: 21 June 2006

I have heard your comments about local discretion on taxation. Would you be in favour of there being an income tax that you could levy on Londoners yourself?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 21 June 2006

Yes there is.

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 21 June 2006

Or bringing some of the money back that is being paid to sustain outside.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 21 June 2006

Clearly if it is too expensive, it will probably never get off the ground.

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 21 June 2006

You could give Scotland the Olympics and we could have Crossrail.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 21 June 2006

You state in this article `Crossrail is even more important than the glamour of the Games'.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 21 June 2006

I noticed that you have taken a full page in your favourite paper, the Evening Standard, to extol the virtues of Crossrail. Does this presage a change in your perception?