• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 18 June 2003

You have chosen to raise the St Patrick's Day thing. It helps me reinforce my point that this is about protecting you from yourself. Suppose a situation existed where a Mayor needed to give a contract to a newspaper whose political support he might be seeking to sway a significant section of the voting public in a forthcoming election. A prudent Mayor would want the decision making process to be absolutely copper?bottom, robust and above board. But instead, the second St Patrick's Day contract was given on your personal say?so. All we are asking for is the proper procedures that...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 18 June 2003

): I hope you appreciate that what I am concerned about, and indeed other Members have said this, is the process rather than the merits ultimately. The other issue in the process that concerned me about risk was the fact that in relation to the first contract, as I recall the contracts were only actually signed a matter of two or three days before the event was due to take place. Therefore, a good deal of work had been done in anticipation of a contract. If anything had gone wrong this Authority could have potentially found itself at risk. How...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 18 June 2003

The point I was making was how did you justify the way in which the handling of the surplus to be carried over was not, in effect, tied up with your fiduciary duty. I was making the point to you that the scrutiny established that there was no guarantee that if we had to go somewhere else as an organisation that that money would be carried over to the next year's event. In other words that was putting that money at risk. How do you square that risk with your fiduciary duty?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 18 June 2003

The question was a very specific one about the handling of the contract which you signed off.

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 18 June 2003

You asserted too that you take careful account of your fiduciary responsibilities over public monies. Part of the contract involved the carry over of surpluses from the first event to the second. But when the scrutiny looked at it there was no clear mechanism to guarantee that those monies would be carried over in the event that someone considered some other tenderer was suitable on the second occasion. If you act in a fashion that effectively binds you in to a second term with the same contractor without any guarantee of recompense if anything goes wrong, how can you square...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 18 June 2003

): I am troubled as to how well you read the report, because some of your attack upon the Assembly seems to centre upon the assertion, which to my mind is irrelevant for the purpose of probity issues, that nobody was suggesting an alternative. If you have read the report you will recall that Andrew Pelling specifically raised the issue as to why approaches were not made to a number of Irish?based organisations, including those in the Irish business community: the Irish Bank, the AIB, and other business institutions with strong links in the Irish community. So, upon reflection, would...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 18 June 2003

If someone takes over from you at the next election, would you be happy for your opponents to have the same types of meetings in private to be able to override procurement procedures and so on? Or do you feel that if it was one of your opponents instead you would actually prefer to see some far more rigorous controls, more rigorous public accountability and much better openness?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 18 June 2003

Well why not go back to the bad old days where every local authority in the country held their planning meetings in private without any public scrutiny and public access, if that is the best way of making planning decisions? Why should not every planning decision on every authority be in private?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 18 June 2003

But you have made it quite clear in your submission on the White Paper that it was not related to being an MP. I will read the full quote again: `If I am lucky enough to be elected as London's first Mayor, and bearing in mind that I have already served five years as Leader of the GLC, I would not seek to serve more than one term." If you do not do what you say, and it is a question of trust as you have just said, can Londoners trust their Mayor?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 18 June 2003

Can I just take you back to the word you used which was `crowding'. The current LUL management refuses to actually accept that there is such a thing as overcrowding on the Tube. Although I think most us Londoners here who get wedged against other people's armpits every morning would probably disagree with them. First of all, do you as Mayor accept that there is such a thing as overcrowding on the Tube?