• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

You are going to use neighbourhood police to make sure people form an orderly queue at the bus stop?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

All right. Thank you. We have heard about the difficulties in making the revocation of passes work. What is the view of the MPS and the British Transport Police about this proposal?

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

I sometimes wonder whether I live in the same city as some of my fellow Assembly Members. It is clearly being rolled out very smoothly, the free bus travel for under-16s. I was just wondering, as a kind of technicality in terms of procedures between the MPS and TfL, what things you have in place to protect the rights of children and young people under the Child Protection Act and data protection requirements.

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

Well, Mr Mayor, of course, you will know where the story came from. It came from suggestions from certain Church of England Bishops - the Bishop of Newcastle (The Rt Reverend Martin Wharton), the Bishop of Sheffield (The Rt Reverend Jack Nicholls), and other figures.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

I should hope so, too, but the ALG has recently warned that boroughs could lose millions of pounds in services for vulnerable groups under proposals to change the way central Government grants are distributed to councils. Here is London losing out, potentially, again, and yet London is contributing more. London needs to get this money back, and to say, really, what you just said about the £500 million - you keep on talking about the underinvestment that has been in the transport system, in the waterworks, and so on and so forth. It can be underinvestment, but London is still...

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

Thank you, Mr Mayor. In fact, the London Chamber of Commerce estimates it at between £10-£20 billion in their recent report. Even if we take the lower figure of £10 billion, which is close to what you just mentioned there, and if we take it that there are 3 million households in London, that works out an average of over £3,000 per household of what London contributes over and above what it gets back. That is a huge figure by any standards. Yet, here in London, as you are very well aware, we have considerable unemployment. We have the five...

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

Can I just ask one thing, Mayor. One of the things that many of the organisations ' London Chamber of Commerce ' a lot of the businesses ' London Dungeon are saying is, `Can we waive the Congestion Charge until after the next school half-term holiday' to encourage those very visitors you have talked about from the southeast, who will not come in? They do not seem to want to come into London.

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

Thank you, Mayor, for that. Taking it from the point of view of business, you talk about the extra money back, but the problem is that business and individuals are paying more and more in taxes in London. One of the difficulties that we have, in just pure practical terms, if you look at the London Chamber of Commerce recent reports and its updated report ' and I will make sure you get a copy of that ' and also what the British Retail Consortium said the day before yesterday, is that London has been hit, unlike any other region...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

Given that affordable housing is a key component of your vision for the Thames Gateway, what about affordable insurance? Is that being factored into the equation, given the warnings we are getting from the insurance industry about the cost of insuring individual homes? Is that affordable?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 14 September 2005

I am sure the whole Assembly joins you in sharing your comments on the people of New Orleans. In terms of the Thames Gateway, there are 96,000 new homes planned for the greater London part of the Thames Gateway. Much of that, as you say, is in areas that are highly protected by existing flood defences. However, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) estimate that over 5,000 of the 96,000 new homes will be in areas that are at significant risk from flooding. Do these need to be looked at again?