• 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...

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Thank you. A lot of people talk about the screening of immigrants coming into the country; a lot of them do not show up the fact that they have TB, but they may be carriers, like you said, and it is poor housing conditions, overcrowding and dampness that actually brings the TB out into their system, so there actually is no point spending a lot of money on screening.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Have they given you any indication how long they think it would take?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Obviously one of the questions that I think will strike a lot of us is, do you really think that Capita is going to be able to cope with such a potentially complex regime. I think many of us feel that Capita find it pretty damn difficult to cope with what it is already dealing with.

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

As you suggested we are really happy about this and we are probably going to make your life somewhat easier in putting this scheme forward because we will be saying you are going soft in your old age and it is far too easy and it is not enough. There is going to be a balance to be struck between not encouraging more vehicles coming in because congestion is pretty bad and you are trying to reduce pollution at the same time, so how are you going to strike that balance? Are you going to review this every six months...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Can I risk this new friendship by saying that whilst this is absolutely welcome it would not be necessary if we had a national scheme that had vehicle excise duties that actually deterred the sort of vehicles we are concerned about from ever being bought anywhere in the country; So will you add to this local few square miles scheme some effective lobbying of Central Government so that we can shift the balance of taxation onto environmentally damaging activities and away from environmentally benign activities?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

I certainly support the principles of this, but are you now going to guarantee that you will have an open mind on the detail?