• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

I am astonished at your recent benevolence to the Government; no doubt it is because you want to rejoin the Labour Party. The truth is that the Government has rolled London over completely in the amount of Government grant that London has received as opposed to the amount of Government grant that the Government's friends in the North have received. Do you not think that the Government's support in the Lords this week, which suggests that there is going to be an extension of Council Tax bands and progress with revaluation on this basis, is going to hit London and...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

He also suggested that you might try to scrap weekly and monthly travelcards and replace them entirely with the Oyster Card pay-as-you-go system. Can you assure Londoners that travelcards are safe?

• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

I am not sure if people in Outer London feel that £0.70 becoming £1 is not an increase but there you go. We will not argue about that. You said in answer to earlier question that your 60% increase was this astonishing success in Government grant and that if you got half as much again in the future, that would be counted as a great success. Now you have committed London to an Olympic bid and all that may develop in terms of cost. You have committed in terms of Tube unions to a four-year pay deal; you have got...

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

Absolutely but the need for those fire rescue units is because we are the capital city and therefore that is a cost that should be born by the Government, just as royalty and diplomatic protection is a cost born by the Government in grants to the Metropolitan Police and not born by the London taxpayer. Surely the same applies with Fire Authority. Costs associated with being a capital city should be born by the Government.

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

Can I bring us back to reality? You referred to the Fire Authority. There is of course, Mr Mayor, a increasing black hole looming in the Fire Authorities finances and you have referred to the increase in Government grant but the Fire Authority is basically paying at some stage increases in fire service pay, paying the bill for London Resilience" because it is the Government grant which has been extremely slow in forthcoming " and for the costs and so on associated with integrated risk management, the savings for which will not come onstream immediately. One of the first drafts...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

That seems, if I may say so, to be a touch optimistic bearing in mind the previous experience. I do not know if you have had a chance to read Andrew Clark's article in The Guardian on 12 September " In which he made quite a detailed review of the problems that face you. He suggests that one option available to you is to expand the central fares zone so that your high price increases that you have applied to the Tube in Zone 1 apply to more people. Have you done any work on that? Is that something that...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

If you do not get the money you are going to have to make cuts in TfL projects. Have you done any work so far on deciding which priorities you are willing to set aside?

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

But you probably know as well as I do, Mr Mayor, that the Treasury is telling the Home Office to contain its increases in grants to about 2.5%, roughly the level of inflation. I can see what you are doing is building up a campaign to identify what the costs are and say "Yes, this is what I want to do" and then come March, just before the vote, saying "But we cannot do it now" and putting it off and putting it off. I think you are trying to hoodwink Londoners, Mr Mayor.

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

It is interesting that you should raise policing again, Mr Mayor, because it is clearly an issue that exercises all of us and you talk quite happily about the step change. If you do not get Government grant for step change, which will cost about £750 million over the period, are you prepared to put that onto the precept, raising what Londoners pay per head from £50 to nearly £200 per head?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

But however short of money you are, you are going to persevere with this bridge, which is going to soak up hundreds of millions of pounds of money, is going to lead to huge traffic increases in the area, is going to make people ill and it going to do absolutely nothing to regenerate the local economies there or create jobs.