• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

In fact, the current Commissioner (Sir Ian Blair) said that this service review was to identify £300 million for redeployment once he had taken over. Last Thursday, at the same time you made this announcement, you also said £150 million had been identified for, I assume, redeployment. How much of that are you going to use for PCSOs?

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

I am sorry that such an announcement is dependent on the availability of a photo opportunity, but I have been asking questions regularly about the process.

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

We will look at the details when they come, but roughly, when can we expect some action? How many more years?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

Can you confirm that the roll out of PCSOs will continue to be on the basis of one sergeant, one police constable (PC), and three PCSOs for all neighbourhood teams for the whole roll out?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

Is there not the danger of the perception that people will think that there is an ongoing and continuing cosiness between your office and some of these outside organisations with which they have a variety of contacts, and that you should be extra careful under those circumstances?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

Appointing someone who has clear links ' and nothing wrong with it, in itself ' to organisations like Socialist Action, the Socialist Campaign Group ' these are highly partisan areas. The ESF was criticised for being highly partisan. You might well want to do it, but why not go through a merit test, rather than do it by single tender, again, to make sure there was no political favouritism?

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

Is the Mayor aware that there is, in fact, a cross-party audit panel of the London Assembly, and there is a full programme of internal audit, which happens to be conducted by an external company, and an external audit programme, and that that audit panel and those auditors have consistently found good quality, good practices, and consistently high standards of probity within the GLA? Does the Mayor think that if any Member of this Assembly had any serious concerns about a matter of probity within the GLA's expenditure that they ought to make that complaint and that information available to...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

Is not the key thing here, I am sure we would all agree, not only that everything is above board ' and I am not suggesting otherwise ' but that it is seen to be above board?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

You see, that is the problem. You promised the most transparent form of administration that this country had ever seen when you were first elected as Mayor. What we have, on any view, is a situation where your senior policy adviser in that field is, in effect, promoting a Mayor's decision ' he is the officer who is responsible for bringing it forward, in other words ' which involves the grant of £100,000 of public money to the organisation which he happened to work for, until he became your senior policy adviser when you were first elected and which, by...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

Nobody in your office would have had an inkling? I understand your point there. The issue is that your office ' we have established in previous scrutinies ' had very deep involvement in the organisation of the ESF. That is the rub. Given that your office knew of the members of the ESF organising committee, why not then just be cautious? That is all I am saying.