• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

If 30 per cent of working age Londoners are workless, what kind of skill provisions do you think are best targeted at them?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

It also presumably includes people who choose not to work.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

Forgive me, but that presumably, therefore, includes everybody who is in further education, which means they could not really be pursuing a job could they because they would actually be pursuing their further education.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

So, what does working age in that sense mean, because you mentioned students a minute ago?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

Are we using the new age definitions, whether you are working now to the age of 68, or what is your definition, age 16 to?

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

I would like to ask firstly about Assisted Area status. You know my concerns with that, especially with developing part of the Lea Valley. I know the Chair sent a helpful letter in the summer and this Assembly also lobbied on this. Do we have any news, first of all, as to where those negotiations are going?

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

OK, and finally you mentioned earlier that London is relatively under-funded for all these interventions. At the same time we have all the two city strategies that you mentioned. Is that the best way of actually increasing intervention nationally?

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

Mr Lewis, I think you should receive credit, all of us in public life should receive credit, but perhaps you would address Mr Tuffrey's point about the red spots rather than the things that you want to receive credit on.

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

I agree we have those problems. I am not sure they are so extremely different from other parts of the country. But against that, we have massive opportunities in London that single-industry towns, where the industries closed in the north of the country, do not have. In terms of the LDA, whatever the causes of it, the facts are there, that it is getting worse in London compared to the rest of the country. In terms of what the LDA is doing about it, your snapshot is very stark. The ones with red blobs are in this area and all...

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

I am glad to hear that because, of course, Tottenham and Edmonton have got some of the highest worklessness rates in London. I want to just briefly move on to the London Skills and Employment Board. Do you have a timetable yet as to when this strategy may be developed?