• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 22 October 2003

It might be helpful if in advancing your case you perhaps used up?to?date figures. For example, I noticed that the October edition of Planning in London quotes Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) figures showing that 83% of Wandsworth planning applications are dealt with in eight weeks and that whilst Bexley does commendably well at 81%, sadly it is no longer top of the league table. But in any event, how do you think that Bexley's work on its planning applications is going to be assisted if it is put into some sort of Super?Borough? One based on your...

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 22 October 2003

I have the good fortune and good sense, along with 260,000 residents of Wandsworth who are already living in a `Super Borough'. We cannot understand for the life of us why on earth you would put forward this proposal to have five Super?Boroughs. What are they going to be called? London Region North Central, West, South, East, or London District One, Two, Three, Four or Five? This is not the sort of thing that local people want to engage with. I am absolutely surprised that from your background you would suggest such a thing. The remoteness of this bureaucracy would...

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 22 October 2003

Oh dear, oh dear. Chairman, I am glad Ken is forecasting a Labour gain because I seem to remember that absolutely everybody forecast that Labour would hold Barnet and Camden comfortably last time. They were all wrong then and they will be even more wrong next year. Of course, it was the last Conservative Government that gave more powers to London Boroughs than ever before. One thinks of the abolition of the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) which allowed Boroughs in inner London to conduct their own education services. What a great success Westminster, Wandsworth and Kensington and Chelsea have...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 22 October 2003

Listening to you now I am confused about what role you actually see for the Super Boroughs because obviously you want to see a clear strategic role for the GLA. You are talking about local service provision at the community or the neighbourhood level. What have the Super Boroughs actually got to do? Surely the best place for strategic decisions is at the London wide level, and surely the best place for local decisions is at the local level?

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 22 October 2003

So would we not be much better talking first about role and function?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 22 October 2003

But the scale of merger you are talking about is far more dramatic than putting two similar areas together.

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 22 October 2003

At your press conference yesterday you announced that TfL had overcome the concerns of local residents. How have these concerns been overcome?

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 22 October 2003

That expenditure and the fears that you put through West London certainly ensured that my seat will not be a Labour gain, as I believe it was predicted the day before the election in 2000. You will be aware that the project is under review and is likely to come back in January/February of next year. How soon will you be able to give a positive or negative response to that review and let the people of West London know what is likely to happen with their transport system?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 22 October 2003

I have an elderly relative in her 80s who lives in West Ealing who has written to me repeatedly about this and I am getting rather fed up with it. Every month she gets another newsletter through her letterbox from either the Liberal Democrats or the Tories denouncing this scheme and telling her that her street is going to turn into a rat run and that she will not be able to cross the street for hours. I know where she lives and it is a total nonsense and scare mongering. It is not going to happen. There is a...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 22 October 2003

But you have also stated your support for the green belt in Northeast London in answer to Noel's earlier question. Would you reaffirm your support for keeping that piece of green belt as well?