• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 20 July 2005

A final question from me: will you support the Commissioner of the MPS (Sir Ian Blair) in his call for the creation of a criminal offence of glorifying terrorism, wherever that takes place?

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 20 July 2005

Perhaps we should be careful about the term `backlash,- as well, because it implies that the effect is on those who are responsible.

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 20 July 2005

Mr Mayor, it is the sloppy use of language that we have which concerns me as much as anything. One of the words which we use both within this Chamber and outside is the word `Muslim,' as though they are a readily identifiable, readily picked-out group of individuals. I would defy anybody within this Chamber to join me on a Saturday afternoon in Southall, which is an incredibly important part of my constituency and ' if you will forgive the slang ' to spot a Muslim. What we have to recognise is that the whole of the Southeast Asian community...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 20 July 2005

As I watched the incident unfold on television, I was struck, Mr Mayor, by the professionalism of the transport staff on the Underground, who managed to deal with the incidents as soon as they had happened, but what happened at central control was another story. It took some time before the Underground, as a whole, realised it was under attack. That is not necessarily surprising, because it is not something that had ever happened before, and they would not know, but I would just like to know: how long did it take before that realisation was there, and what have...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 20 July 2005

Nevertheless, you have no problem with the principle?

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 20 July 2005

The Commissioner, the Prime Minister, and indeed everybody else who grabs a soapbox at the moment, have been saying that the Muslim community must come and talk; we must given information, etc., but they never say how. The only numbers we publish are for the anti-terrorist hotline, which is in English, advertised in English. It is not reaching out to the extended families that exist within the Southeast Asian world who understand what nephews and obscure people within the groups are doing. We do not make it easy for them to talk to us.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 20 July 2005

I am sure you are right on that. I suspect that most people who leave their bags unattended are probably visitors and quite likely not English speakers. I wonder, therefore, whether consideration should be given to notices in other languages and even possibly the announcement that all of us hear every few minutes on the London Underground in a different language, but certainly notices in different languages. It is more likely to be visitors who simply do not think of that, and you are right: there is not much point in fining them.

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 20 July 2005

You see no problem with that?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 20 July 2005

Will you be echoing calls by the local Member of Parliament (MP) for Holborn & St Pancras, Frank Dobson, and the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), that the Fire Authority review its decision for the removal of fire engines from central London?

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 20 July 2005

Perhaps we should be careful about the term `backlash,- as well, because it implies that the effect is on those who are responsible.