• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

I wanted to ask about health and safety because we have had the draft Procurement Principles given to us and certainly the (Assembly's) Health and Public Services Committee was somewhat disappointed that health and safety and achieving good health and safety was not one of those principles. Can I just ask whether you are going to do some detailed work on health and safety and standards and also how you would monitor that not just for the principal contractors but to ensure that those health and safety standards filter down through the various subcontractors that will be used?

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

I am very pleased, Marc, that you seem to have taken on board an awful lot of what happened at the committee meeting last week. Although it is certainly true that the LCCI said that it was happy with the information it had got, they were referring to a meeting you had had the night before. Certainly, when Bob Blackman (AM) and I went to see them a couple of weeks ago, they were complaining long and loud to people around the table that they had had no information at all. I am delighted to see that you have picked...

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

That is fine. I was surprised that the LCCI told us that 80% of their members employed 10 or less people and that that was the business profile in London as a whole. I think perhaps more needs to be done to make sure that those people are being included because a lot of businesses that employ less than 10 people will not have somebody dedicated to go on the website and to look for all the information. It is not easy to find information. It is quite difficult. Can I just mention targets? Manny (Lewis) mentioned earlier ' and...

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

I note what you are saying about all the activity that is going on to encourage local firms. I accept that we have got to follow the EU procurement procedures and the IOC procedures. However, one of the things that we would want to look at is, has all this activity been a success? What are your success criteria in terms of achieving local contracts?

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

My final question is about procurement, which leads neatly on to it. The draft Procurement Principles mention a number of key criteria that have got to be met including a list of things like community benefit, local labour and London's Living Wage, which I know the Mayor in particular is very committed to. Could you just explain why the first contract that you have dished out, the one for under-grounding the power lines, you have not managed to get the contractor to agree to pay the living wage and that, according to the ODA, they have just agreed to pay...

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

Can I stay with tendering and contracts? Marc talked about Atlanta, so I want to actually direct my question to Manny (Lewis) and Mary Reilly because what I want is absolutely the buying from the both of you. We have got local good practice. Can I just refer you to the TfL terms to their contract? I will just read here that when they sent out invitation to tender for the development of the East London Line, that had within it terms that ensured fair opportunity for smaller suppliers, particularly of those led by BME groups and women, whom we...

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 07 December 2005

Chair, could I just come back and say I do want your firm commitment to the extent where, will you inform us if you could utilise the TfL model and I only say that because it is in our legal structure and whenever we look abroad and we are looking to bring stuff back, then it just does not fit as well as something that we have developed. That is the cast-iron assurance that I am seeking.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 09 November 2005

Good, excellent. I have just two specific questions: one is, we have already mentioned Manchester Square. However I want to mention it again because there are residents there who do feel that they have been deprived of fire cover and they are nervous about the fact that they have lost fire appliances from that area. What can you say to reassure people that their fears are not well-founded?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 09 November 2005

One thing that does occur to me obviously with all the improvements and modernisations and so on, where are you? To some degree it rolls into the question I will be asking later on. How much have you managed to take the unions with you in the last couple of years and where are you now with them?

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

Quotas are now being discussed politically. Hazel Blears (Minister of State for Crime Reduction, Policing, Community Safety and Counter-Terrorism) has talked about positive discrimination; indeed a whole range of people have talked about positive discrimination. Do you think that there should be whole, visibly ethnic minority intakes to Hendon? If you are against quotas, are you also against positive discrimination?