• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

I am very happy to congratulate you again on achieving the Safer Neighbourhoods Target - you know we support that at least as strongly as you do - but actually if you are going to achieve your target of a 50% reduction by the end of your second term, you are going to have to accelerate the reduction in crime by six-fold. Do you know that you are little over half way through; do you really think that this is still a realistic target?

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

I cannot think of anyone that would do that, we all would share your aspiration. You demonstrated to us earlier this morning, I think about carbon emissions, that when you are falling short on the targets set you rethink the strategy. However we define the figures you are falling short on a very desirable target and aspiration. For the second half of your term are you going to rethink the strategy and the priorities? Safer Neighbourhood Teams are excellent, we all support those; we have yet fully to see the results from those, but it is not going to be...

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

I entirely accept it is going in the right direction, I think that is very welcome, but actually as recent as last September, you said simply `yes' to my question then about whether you stood by your claim to cut crime by 50% in your second term. My concern, and I would have thought that it would be your concern too, is that by having what, frankly, I think was always an unrealistic claim, you are in danger of turning a success story into a perception of a failure. Why do you want to do that?

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Okay, I do think that that is an area that we need to follow up. Lastly, my regular hobby horse with you, as we are talking about other agencies, not quite an agency: more policing on overground rail. We discussed this at last Mayor's Question Time I think. Have you thought further about increasing your commitment to policing on overground rail in the second half of your second term?

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

Transport 2025 really presents the whole strategy that we must be led by financial and commercial needs of the City and the West End, and that transport needs to follow that commercial trend. Now, why is it that we are not doing more to actually put in transport schemes first and then see commerce follow, that is what has always happened before, and certainly when the DLR was extended to Canary Wharf the City moved there? Why are you allowing big commerce to dictate the whole strategy for land use and transport in London?

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

The other important thing that you mentioned is reducing the need to travel, but the sort of schemes you mentioned were the soft schemes which made for greener travel. Surely we should be looking at land use policies, which actually mean that a number of people do not need to do anything other than walk or cycle to work, which is about land use policies integrating commerce, services, residential. Why is that not a key plank of the strategy for the Thames Gateway and transport 2025?

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Just to reiterate, I think apart from possible problems along Ilford Lanes, it could quite easily accommodate trams on both sides of the river on the transit scheme.

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

Well, yes, but that is a different tone to exactly five years ago when the transit proposals were published with pretty pictures of trams and trolley buses on the front and lots of claims about reducing carbon emissions on that basis. Now it does seem to me that you have not lost your interest in carbon emissions, but you are losing the argument with the Government in the 2007 review, and that is more the real situation; you are unlikely to get funding for these sorts of transit schemes with zero emissions.

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Can we stick to the point.

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Can I just go back to the comments you made earlier about the transit schemes. The East London and the Greenwich Waterfront Transits TfL have recently shown us around. I just wanted to look at the likelihood of the upgrading to trams along those lines. Yes, clearly there are going to be more households down that way and I think there is a particular case there, but in light of the apparent rejection of West Londoners for the tram on the Uxbridge Road, is this a convenient switch that would help the infrastructure down there quite readily?