• 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?

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 23 February 2005

I just want to raise a couple of questions. I understand Richard's (Barnes) concerns and they are valid if you are going to compare possible development with America. However, I do not think there is any way you can sit and compare the journey we have taken here with what went on in America and I do not see us ever getting near that position. Issues about white lash or white backlash, I think, are quite remote. If you look at actual positive action, positive action has time and time again been received well in those communities because it is...

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

How would you define institutional racism?

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

I would be grateful that that is the case, Mr Mayor. Indeed, like you and indeed Len Duvall (AM, Chair, Metropolitan Police Authority), we work very hard with the MPS to ensure that it is serving London properly. However, when Bill Morris (former General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union) was writing his report, he warned of a `white backlash' and that worries me greatly. I wonder how you believe we can actually avoid a `white backlash'.

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

Yet you agree with Sir Ian (Blair) that it remains institutionally racist?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 09 November 2005

Obviously as I represent some of the central parts of London, I hear what you say about the fact that there has been a benefit to outer boroughs in terms of getting there speedily, but obviously any loss of minutes for central London is something I would have to view with some concern. In my view, it is better that there should be no loss of minutes and just extra facilities for outer London than that anything should have to move out at all. In any part of London this seems to me a better way forward. However, can I...