• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

One of the things that you have not really talked about in your answers is that while we bandy around this expression, `learning and skills', nobody actually defines precisely what skills are actually going to do the trick, and help deliver some of the solutions. Am I right in thinking that one of the skills that we need to put much more focus on, if we are going to get more people into work and skilled up, is language in this city of ours. The question - really for Mr Faulkner - is whether he finds that languages do provide...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

Can I put that to the rest of the panel? Do you think that it would be useful if all GLA strategies were subject to a poverty impact assessment, and that we take a more across-the-board approach?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

There's nothing wrong with leading questions, I think Kate (Green) very helpfully put it on the agenda; I am just exploring this line of inquiry.

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

Bishop, are your sermons subject to one of these impact studies?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

So, the Mayor has new powers now on skills, and we've just heard that he is going to be playing a leading role in that. Can I ask the rest of the panel how you see that making a difference in terms of tackling poverty?

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

I suspect, Mr Ross, that you cannot commit the Mayor, or can you?

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

Mr Faulkner and panel, going back to your opening remarks, I very much concur with what you said, because it squares with my own personal experience. The businesses are prepared to invest in training of their staff when things are prosperous; when things are not so prosperous they cut back, and training is one of the first things to go. At the moment we have a situation in London where unemployment is rising, where the closure of small businesses, according to the VAT figures, is actually more than those businesses which are opening, so, we seem to be in a...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

Can I put that to the rest of the panel? Do you think that it would be useful if all GLA strategies were subject to a poverty impact assessment, and that we take a more across-the-board approach?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

Picking up on Kate (Green)'s point about more joined-up thinking on targets and so on, in linking with other strategies, in 2003 the GLA Consultation Tackling Poverty in London had a number of recommendations including the commitment to assess GLA policies and strategies for their contribution to poverty reduction and to produce an annual Poverty Monitoring Report on the success of GLA interventions. Can I ask John why these recommendations were not carried out?

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

Certainly my perception is that the LSC has failed to encourage a breadth of skills training, and that's why we have this deficit in the building trade. Joiners, plumbers, they are all Europeans coming in and filling these jobs, and the indigenous population in young people leaving schools are not getting a chance because they do not have the skills and there is somehow no way that they can get the training. So, I am afraid, this is very true and I see this all the time in my constituencies. There is, actually, a wonderful life for people who have...