• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

I wondered if you had done any work to find out how much a London-wide referendum would cost council tax payers? Secondly, given that Veritas now seem to be wanting to support the Olympics, do your assurances today mean that they should now do so?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

I understand that but there is this additional memorandum.

• Question by: Nicky Gavron
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

On the back of Darren's (Johnson) point, just to say that the Mayor made an earlier decision not to predicate the whole development of London in the London Plan and the regeneration of the Lower Lea Valley on the Olympics at all. It is the London Plan that sets the statutory framework for the kinds of development that are going on there that he is talking about.

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

Are you saying that the things we really need in London we are going to get anyway, regardless of the Games, and the things we do not really need, I do not suppose it really matters whether we get them or not?

• Question by: Nicky Gavron
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

There are a considerable number of applications that come before the Mayor that actually want extensions of footprint as it is called in the Green Belt or Metropolitan Open Land. This is a Royal Park. My question to the Mayor is, is he not right in accepting that this application is of singular ' it is called sui generis ' significance, because it is a school of international and national significance? Those are the only grounds on which this could be given special protection. Should he not now be going to Government and asking that we have some sort of...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

There are many hundreds of thousands of people who are doing that. You say that this acts against the promotion of inclusiveness. I wonder if you are aware, Mr Mayor, that in fact the proportion of ethnic minorities that attend White Lodge which you have just said is a world-class, national institution is in fact greater than the proportion of ethnic minorities in the country. I wonder if you are aware that every organisation concerned with the Park ranging from English Heritage to the Royal Parks Agency to English Nature think that the original advice which was given to you...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

I am a little bit concerned that we are looking at trying to make exceptions, even though people are providing a top quality service in the public interest and all the rest of it. It does discriminate hugely, do you not think, between the outer London boroughs who do have huge tracts of green open space and the inner London boroughs who have no other option but to find brownfield sites and to find creative solutions to accommodating things on brownfield sites? It should not be an option do you not think that they should just be able to go...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

Can I get this right, Mr Mayor? You are blaming the Ballet School for this rather than blaming yourself? It is a feature of recent events and indeed other matters that you always blame the other person for getting it wrong. In this case, the only person who is out of step on this matter is you.

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

Immediately adjacent.

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

You are going on and on about it but I wonder if you have actually looked at the figures and actually looked at the statistics. There are large numbers of children from inner London who go there and the explanation you have given me is not going to be any help, I am afraid, in replying to a parent who has written to me on the matter. She describes herself in her letter as, `Until now, a firm supporter of dear old Ken.' She goes on to say, `The plans are sympathetic to their surroundings and an improvement aesthetically on...