• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 15 November 2006

On the budget issue, we saw environmental and legacy commitments being scaled back in Athens as a result of going over budget. Can you give an absolute guarantee that there will be no scaling back in London from what was promised in the bid documents?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 15 November 2006

We were assured at the time by the Mayor and everybody else that that was a robust costing. So you can imagine how depressed we feel when it turns out not to have been anything of the sort.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 15 November 2006

So at that time you will be a lot more relaxed about getting into detailed scrutiny with us about individual items within your budget?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 15 November 2006

Could I ask you one other impossible question to answer then which is when you have finally negotiated with the Treasury your revised budgets for the Olympics, and we agree a sum, will that be a fixed sum which we can be confident to go forward with until 2012?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 15 November 2006

Okay, so the environment is a major feature, but we may have to see some scaling down on the bid commitments because of cost overruns?

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 15 November 2006

A discrete point, as it were. You have mentioned the need for an adequate contingency budget. I do not think any one would argue with that. Are you able to tell us, in terms of the percentage of the whole, what you would regard as an adequate percentage?

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 15 November 2006

If the budget is delayed by Government, for whatever reason, is it possibly that, say, by June next year we could have the budget that you are working to so that we can do our job?

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 15 November 2006

So could you give us an estimated date when this Assembly will have the budget? You said it was going to be this December, what are you now saying?

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 15 November 2006

Mr Higgins, when you came before us in June you explained that you were going to go through the budget in detail and work it up, and we had great sympathy for that, because obviously you have got to own your budget. It looks like you have done that, and you have submitted it to Government but, at that time, you thought we would have the budget by the end of the year. It now appears that the Government is squabbling again, presumably more departments fighting with each other. Obviously the timetable for the Olympics is not elastic, and I...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 15 November 2006

But you cannot give a guarantee?