• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 26 January 2005

There are two things in particular where I think the LDA is really falling down, and I would like to have a comment on them both. The first is the issue of the Green Grid, which is this idea of laying out a connected system of green space over the whole of London before any more development takes place because, if we do not do it now, we have lost the land. It is absolutely urgent this goes forth, and somehow I feel the LDA has not grasped that this is quite an urgent piece of work. The second question...

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 26 January 2005

If you advertised though and spent the same money on advertising you would get more space. The amount it costs to print each page is more than it costs to get the money from the individual component parts, if you like, therefore it is almost a completely uneconomic way of doing it.

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 26 January 2005

In your earlier comments about the powerlessness of the Assembly, you talked about the transfer of some powers, which effectively would be from the boroughs to the Assembly. The point is interesting because the LDA has a budget of £380 million odd, but although it is money coming into London this is an area where there is even less influence by the Assembly. We effectively have little power to influence the rest, but no power to influence this. Firstly, do you think that is a satisfactory position? Is it not better if you are talking about changing of powers to...

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 26 January 2005

Mr Pelling, would you like to give a statement as Chair of the Budget Committee?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 26 January 2005

Will you make a response therefore to Barking & Dagenham who have said that the precept should be restricted to well below 5%?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 26 January 2005

Has it not struck you that there may be people outside this building who are right and you might be wrong?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 26 January 2005

Are you prepared to have a discussion with the Labour administration in Brent, which you once represented in Parliament, who express the view that the GLA should agree to an increase close to the rate of inflation, and certainly not above 5%?

• Question by: Nicky Gavron
• Meeting date: 26 January 2005

For the first time this year there has been a budget and environment process which looks at the way the GLA group meets your objectives through its business planning and its budgets. There has also been a helpful scrutiny looking at the way objectives are met for the GLA group, but the function of the Core GLA in monitoring and making sure that happens is very important. I just want to relate this to the Annual Survey. The Annual Survey this year included climate change for the first time and I noticed that air quality, pollution and climate change were...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 26 January 2005

Will you be telling Mayor (Steve) Bullock of Lewisham that he is talking through the back of his head when he says that any precept increase in excess of 5% is unacceptable?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 26 January 2005

That would apply across the board, not just to Assembly members, but presumably to outsiders. That does not validate the Assembly, or what we do, or our role in anything to do with London. I think the core I am getting at is that surely if you look at the LDA, with its enormous budget, it is effectively a form of unaccountable top-down government, masquerading as devolution.