• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 17 December 2003

My question is not on the budget but it is rather on your omissions. I note that in your update you have made no mention whatever to the expansion, or planned future expansion of Heathrow Airport. Now that your shoes are firmly underneath Tony Blair's bed, can we assume that you are accepting their Airport Development Strategy?

• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 17 December 2003

You are right, they are alarming.

• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 17 December 2003

The Council Tax is over 100% and you know that. So can we come to the budget? The Council Tax increase you talk about as being minimal but you have now hit the Guinness Book of Records with 103% by our calculations in four years. I do not think anybody has ever managed that in the Western world. But given all that, do you think it is credible when we actually received your budget papers to find in Transport for London (TfL) for this year that lo and behold having gone to all the trouble and talked about all the...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 17 December 2003

When you say involve the boroughs do I assume that you mean each of the five boroughs that have a very strong interest in that park? I think there are more Croydon residents who use the park and aspects of the park than Bromley or indeed Lewisham.

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 17 December 2003

I think the communities that live in the five boroughs around Crystal Palace will be absolutely delighted because this is our best chance for a generation to make that park what it should be, a strategic park for the whole of south London. You have talked about the sports facilities. Do you see the need for a masterplan for the entire park looking at its environmental impact, the potential for raising some money to keep the park in better condition, the leisure effect, as well as the possibility of a transport interchange there now that we hope we will be...

• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 17 December 2003

It is not me that cannot bear with you; it is people who cannot pay their Council Tax that cannot bear with you much longer. If this under- spend is going to disappear mysteriously by the end of the year why have you included it in the budget and transferred it to reserves, which you have then used for next year's budget to keep the Council Tax down? Can I remind you (I know this is a very feeble kind of Assembly and presumably your new comrades in Labour are signed up to block any kind of movement to prevent...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 17 December 2003

Regarding Crystal Palace, the Act was set up, the whole thing was precisely set up with you in mind, a recreation of the Greater London Council (GLC). They deliberately did not give the GLA powers to run things directly. So I am intrigued that you think there are the legal powers, because if we can run Crystal Palace why not bring back the Royal Festival Hall and South Bank Centre? Why not bring back Hampstead Heath indeed? Why not bring back all of those things that are actually London-wide assets back into London-wide Government, and is this Government policy?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 17 December 2003

The point is that people see the light and then join us. In your case, you yo-yo about trying to rejoin them extraordinarily in terms of political strategy just at the point when they are on the way out. I can see why this lot want you back in because they are hoping your threadbare coat tails will save their seats, but why you think that will help you...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 17 December 2003

You indicated you have started your update on tax credit. I just want to give you fair warning that we will have to add that to the long list of topics where we will need to examine what you have said and what the Government is saying in your new-found role, this `marriage of convenience" coming to Tony Blair"s electoral rescue, apparently; the first case, I might say, of a rat re-rejoining a sinking ship. We will need to look at what you have said on tax credit and what you will now need to be saying on tax credit...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 17 December 2003

Yes, yes, yes. £1.451 billion is the increase that you reported on over the four-year period.