• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

I do congratulate them. If I take, for example, the Borough of Haringey, whilst crime is down overall, and especially the amount of murders have halved in the last year, street crime has gone up. What can be done about that?

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

I have indeed, yes.

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

They sad fact is they did not.

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

One of the problems is the potential under-reporting of crime. Just to quote an example that happened some two days ago in my constituency, where a young man leaving school was set upon by seven yobbos, beaten up and robbed. He reported the fact to the police. This was in broad daylight at 3.45 in the afternoon. By 10 o'clock that night the police had still not responded to that crime and to that young man who needed hospital treatment following the attack. That has led to the view of a lot of people that there is no point in...

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

During the recent elections I came across an old lady who had encountered burglars in her house, she had phoned the police and they had told her to get out and leave the house. She duly did and the burglars fortunately left as well without attacking her. That had happened, once again, in broad daylight and still by 10 o'clock that night no police response had taken place.

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

Given the same statistics point to the fact that more than 800,000 crimes in London went unpunished and undetected and not cleared up, are you happy with those sorts of statistics?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

You are no stranger to it yourself, of course.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

Could I be the first Assembly Member to publicly congratulate Angie Bray and her inclusion on the top-100 Tory candidates' list for parachuting in to a winnable seat? I suspect that the other parties on the Assembly would be very happy to wish her a speedy and thorough journey for two reasons. The first is that we might refresh our representation here of course, as much as we love Angie. The second is that if the logic that she has applied as a key leading member of London's Tory Party on the Congestion Charge and the tram and so on...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

I have a further question. Can we look at the example of Capital Standards, where I think I am right in saying that the only boroughs that refused to sign up to Capital Standards before the election were Conservative boroughs. Given that there are a number of new Conservative boroughs, some of which are signed up to Capital Standards, would you think that the new `vote blue, get green' strategy means that they will continue to participate and support that scheme and encourage the remaining boroughs to sign up to it?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

Indeed, Angie (Bray) then said, 'we continue to rigorously oppose both the central Congestion Charging Zone and the western extension'. I guess what is interesting about that is if the Tory Party supports the principle of a Congestion Charge but then finds that the only real example of it in the whole country is one that they cannot support, then that begs the question of what the hell they are talking about. I suppose the question is whether they could ever offer leadership, which means offering people hard decisions with hard choices, or whether forever they are going to be...