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

We keep hearing that the Olympics are going to be some panacea to deliver regeneration, transport and environmental improvements. If we do not get the Games, is there a plan B, or are we facing devastation if we do not get the Games?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

Everyone was talking about legacy before that though. I think the problem we have with this and the reason we go so strongly for the referendum is because if the people of London were to vote, it would then be down to them. This idea of legacy, if you go back eight years, everyone said that about Athens: legacy was the big word from everybody about Athens and now it does not have one.

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

Just to come back on that issue, what are the messages, therefore, if we are not successful in the Games?

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

I was not actually going to touch on the subject of overspend today, but I think, given what you have said in answer to Veritas, I just need to ask you whether or not there is an overspend - and frankly none of us know whether there will be and how much it might be. That is something we will not know until it happens. Are you trying to deny what the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) was only too happy to confirm in a parliamentary written answer that there does exist a memorandum of intention signed by...

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

I appreciate that is ticking that particular box, but there is a memorandum of intention that goes beyond that.

• 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...