• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

There has to be something ready, and you must engage with Londoners.

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

I know he did.

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

This sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare to me. How are people who are endeavouring to run a business, make a small profit, and pay their mortgage going to be expected to wade through all these committee meetings, board meetings, sustainable-development-checking processes? Mayor, you will have to ask them to put off the Olympics until 2016 at this rate.

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

I know, but you said in a radio interview recently, `We are the Mayor's agency for businesses and jobs in London, and for the first couple of years, we will be doing most of the work in respect of the Olympic Games.' Now, you cannot make a statement like that on the radio in a national radio programme, and then not expect local companies to think that they can ring up us or ring up the LDA and say, `What is the position? How can we get some of these jobs?'

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

I am sure you could.

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

If their input is going to be meaningful, it cannot be after the contracts have been let, and the horse has bolted, as it were. It also cannot just be producing more imaginative, visionary statements that do not translate into practical reality on the ground.

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

This is a question to Mary (Reilly). It is about the training and employment framework that you have mentioned already. I recently visited Canary Wharf, where a training centre was set up on site by the Canary Wharf Group with the Universities & Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) and with Lewisham College, which seems to me to be an excellent example of good practice about how workers who have low skills can go on site and, during working hours, get that extra help they need. I know that UCAS is pressing for a similar site to be set up in the...

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

Thank you. My concern is that your response is also filled with words like `initiatives' and `best practice.' I am just thinking from the point of view of SMEs, small building companies basically, which have to comply ' and I understand why ' with all the relevant details of the Contract and Procurement Code. For example, they have to show adherence to sustainable construction practices. They have to adopt a suitable supply-chain procurement policy, and they have to apply sustainable management techniques for energy, waste, and water. That is before they put their name on the top of the form...

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

If the contracts are let on a competitive basis across the European Union, what is going to be put in place to force those firms ' whoever gets those contracts ' to employ local people, or can they bring in people from all over Europe to do this work?

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

Fine, but just can you please tell us about it, because if I do not know, what chance is there that local builders know? Can I just make one final point: speed is of the essence. The Construction Industry Training Board estimate that 88,000 recruits are needed over the next five years ' not in 10 years' time, but over the next five years. You need to get your act together, and you need to get your act together now. Bob Blackman (AM): To build on those questions: the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had a key concern, which was the...