• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

I think the exchange that occurred before we went on to talk about the railways demonstrates that your relationship with the boroughs has not been as good as it could have been over the last four years. Do you still stand by your view that we should reduce the number of London boroughs to five, or have Members of the Assembly managed to convince you otherwise?

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

The point I was making illustrates that political talk is very cheap. There is a severe danger that people will grandstand and say whatever they want to in an assembly which does not have actual power. The question is what politicians actually do with the power when they are given it. I do think we have a serious case of `chameleon politics' going on here, where you change colour according to whichever institution you are in. There will always be arguments between layers of Government and organisations about issues and interests. Let us get back to what Londoners want. I...

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

I wonder if I could make a statement of personal explanation. The briefing primarily came from Camden. There was support from the boroughs of all three political administrations. As you say, it was a postponement and not the undermining of planning powers, as you characterised it.

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

Do you not have a problem with what I think is hypocrisy from the Liberal Democrats, who are saying here that they are friends of London and support the GLA, whereas as I understand it, in the House of Lords our Liberal Democrat colleagues moved an amendment under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill to weaken the legal authority of your London Plan? In other words to undermine your planning powers. What do you think about that in relation to this presentation we have just had about Liberal Democrat views?

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

Yes, but what is going to happen? You have been telling us throughout this question how much you have said, and how much you have drawn the Prime Minister's attention to this and that, but we still get legislation put upon us because the Prime Minister's wife gets stuck in a traffic jam. This is not very good evidence that your persuasive powers are working at all on the party that you have just rejoined.

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

I would be interested to hear you expand that argument. Certainly for my residents in Redbridge and Havering, this looks like another mechanism to increase their council tax bills, and yet the money would be spent in other boroughs where you would say the need is greater. They see higher bills and worse services, and they see exactly the same mechanism repeated which you have brought into play on a London-wide basis.

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

How do you think that places like Hainault, Harold Wood, Wanstead, and outer London areas, can possibly be run by an administration based in Tower Hamlets, where the bureaucrats would have no idea what those places were like? They have little enough idea about the extent of their own borough.

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

Can I make one further point? I was delighted not to have had to pursue the matter because of the Government's statement earlier this week clarifying the relationship between borough Unitary Development Plans and the London Plan. The statement explained that it is where there is `significant harm" that the Unitary Development Plans would be affected, which is not a phrase that has been used before. I think a great deal has been achieved, and you still have your London Plan.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

I am not going to be driven down that route today. You have mentioned quangos. The Government Office for London, which is universally disliked in London government, has more power now than it did when the GLA was created. It is responsible for administering 40 spending programmes in London, with expenditure totalling over £2.5 billion last year. How is that evidence that the Government is intent on devolving more powers to the GLA, rather than to GOL?

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

The security and safety measures come in many forms and one of them is communication from underground to overground, so that operatives both within LUL's employment, the police and the ambulance service are always in connection with their control room. I raised this issue with you in May 2002. I learned from last week's meeting on London resilience, and from elsewhere, that nothing has changed. The 22 deep Underground stations in London remain inaccessible as far as communications are concerned for the Metropolitan Police Service and the London Ambulance Service. We also learned that commercial considerations are getting in the...