• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 22 June 2005

I suppose we should be grateful for your frankness on this, and I suspect residents of outer London will be grateful for the fact to know that if you would get these powers, it is your intention to spread the social problems of inner London to the outer London boroughs, just as vigorously as you sought to do so before the GLC was abolished, so we are very grateful for that. Can you help about this, though? Do you intend to look at some unintended consequences of the London Plan in housing matters? May I give you this example. In...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 22 June 2005

Can I simply add that the Commission on London Governance has been looking at housing, and it has been very interesting to listen to the evidence of key players on housing. Can I say you were far more polite about GOL than many of the experts in the field. The head of the London Housing Federation (Berwyn Kinsey) said, `The strongest reason for letting the GLA take over is that GOL have done such a bad job of having the strategy and having the money. They have represented us badly.- We are all very pleased that the announcement has now...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 22 June 2005

What I was actually looking for ' and indeed, I find it in your Report, when you comment on page 6 about the powers being transferred to you, and you say, `I look forward to working with Ministers to agree arrangements for the budgets for housing investment to be transferred to me.' Does that mean that you foresee the GLA as becoming a Housing Authority, like the Greater London Council (GLC)?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 22 June 2005

What I was actually looking for ' and indeed, I find it in your Report, when you comment on page 6 about the powers being transferred to you, and you say, `I look forward to working with Ministers to agree arrangements for the budgets for housing investment to be transferred to me.' Does that mean that you foresee the GLA as becoming a Housing Authority, like the Greater London Council (GLC)?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 06 April 2005

The simple yes is that there are now 36,000 extra flights a year under Labour since 1997 coming in and out of Heathrow. If we are going to get really technical, why are you and the Government still clinging to the 57-decibel level as a means of measuring noise disturbance when the World Health Organisation level recommends 50 decibels, and, supposedly, that is what the Government has actually signed up to?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 06 April 2005

I would certainly welcome that. Have you detected any change in thinking on the Government's attitudes towards aviation?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 06 April 2005

Obviously, you had discussions with the Government when the White Paper initially came out on aviation, but since your Sustainable Development Commission reported and produced a very good report that you welcomed, have you specifically discussed that report?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 06 April 2005

Yet you think the Government is still running scared of decisive action.

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 06 April 2005

I can see that. Of course, the frightening aspect of this is that under the Tampere II discussions late last year, which are designed to dovetail in with the European Constitution, it was made clear that Europol will be turned into a proper operational police force, and that there is a considerable amount of this, which is Article 3-275 and Article 3-276, in the new European Constitution or the proposed one. Could you possibly confirm that you will look at these Articles which I will provide to you and confirm that you might oppose them?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 06 April 2005

I take your point on this business of it being theoretical, but the problem is that similar was said with regard to the situation with journalists in the EU. When journalists investigating fraud, like Hans-Martin Tillack, were raided at the behest of the EU's fraud office, OLAF, their investigations and their equipment was taken from them and, ultimately, it was made quite clear that it was done incorrectly, wrongly, and on the basis of wrong assumptions and statements. However, the German courts have now made clear that those immunities do stand and that actually there is nothing the journalist can...