• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 25 February 2004

Given this new clause which you have inserted since June, will that result in looking at the policy again and a change in direction?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 25 February 2004

Map 5A(ii) of the London Plan sets out spatial location of housing by gross capacity. Essentially, it sets out all the sites that were identified from the earlier Housing Capacity Study of 100 and more dwellings. The map in the final plan is the same as the one in the draft plan. Do you remember that map was criticised prior to the Examination in Public because it was shown that it only represents about 95,700 sites? In other words, identified large sites only account for about one third of the total required provision. Do you really think that you will...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 25 February 2004

The Plan requires some 336,000 homes by 2016. For that to have any credibility surely you must have an assurance that the boroughs can actually find the room to deliver those homes. What assurance is there about that at the moment?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 13 October 2004

This is very important also to Athens, which is about overspends and who will meet the bill, because my sense - and this is a recurrent theme through today's questions - is a concern amongst some party groups and amongst Londoners, as well, that there is a potential outcome where there is an overspend which comes back to haunt us, like the Montreal Olympic Games of 1976, year, after year, after year. You have gone some way to answering this today, but again, it would be very helpful for us if there were a very clear, unequivocal statement coming out...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 13 October 2004

I am sorry I just must comment on that, because we hear you saying that all the time about every type of finance, that the Government would not dare not give you the money, Mr Mayor, and time and time again, the Government does indeed dare not to give you the money. Therefore, I do not think that is necessarily a comfort for us to hear that from you now, and I think it is leaving it far too late, by the way, to address the overspend issue next summer when we may have already won the bid. Londoners, if...

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 13 October 2004

Alright, coach park. Two years is temporary? You will be damaging wildlife; you will be cutting down trees. There is no protection for trees under the plan.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 13 October 2004

I know that quite a few detailed assurances and commitments have been made in this area already, but I think experience teaches us that you have to tell people again and again, and our job is to examine those proposals again. Are you happy after this meeting to make another written representation, to us, if you like, which could be used in communications in east London and which will clarify points about training; local contracts; the fact that you are going to get local firms, rather than Burger King or whoever, into the area; the fact that contractors will be...

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 13 October 2004

Is there not a bit of a dilemma at the heart of this? I am not sure whether it is the Mayor who can help answer it. On the one hand, we are all passionate about the Games as a nation, and a lot of people are going to be attending. On the other hand, there is a mass exodus from London which frees up space on public transport. Can you have both of those statements?

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 13 October 2004

As the member for the area that Jenny just spoke about, I do have to start by just thanking Jenny (Jones) for her cross-party support on this. I also have to say this is has been a matter that has exercised the previous Member for this area, myself, and the elected members of the borough, and it was central to the discussion of the five-borough bids. All that could be done has been done, and it is one area where we have got some assurances, and also, the community are going to win before the Games, whether we get the...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 13 October 2004

The first is that I am a great fan and supporter of the Olympic bid, as I hope you know, not least because it benefits my constituents enormously. One of the assurances that I think some people in east London, where there is some residual cynicism about the bid, would like is assurances about the ways in which you are going to link the bid into local contracting, local recruitment, training of local people, and relationships with local schools, so that it will be a bid that strengthens the area. There is a history of colonial intervention in east London...