• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 26 March 2003

Thank you very much for the detailed statement. I did suggest to the other Assembly Members yesterday that we actually get you and Emma to act out a reconstruction, Crimewatch style, but they were not too keen on that although it transpires we got a very detailed statement from you anyway. Do you expect your readmission to the Labour Party to proceed smoothly now?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 26 March 2003

Or alternatively, you could reflect upon your previous experience with the courts and conclude that perhaps a jury in a defamation action might be able to come to a view, given in mind that the qualitative difference as Graham Tope observes is worlds apart here, is it not? This is not the paparazzi, these are not the fantasies of Private Eye. If this is right this is a concerted abuse of power by the media or on the other hand an abuse of office by you. Why not litigate that?

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 26 March 2003

You said just now that if any Standards Board or for that matter the police were to speak to people at the party there will be different recollections, different stories, different statements. Earlier on you actually - when you describe them as outright liars - you said there was no scope for confusion. Now you are suggesting that, I think quite rightly, that at 1.30 in a party a month ago there is scope for confusion because people have different recollections. And I come back to the point, does this not need to be resolved rather than just let to...

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 26 March 2003

Did you speak to the police or to the ambulance men?

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 26 March 2003

No, I understand your feelings about the Evening Standard. I think we probably all do. But do you not feel you owe it to the office of Mayor of London and not just Ken Livingstone, but to the office of Mayor of London actually to take some action to close this matter down one way or the other; to actually lance the boil and to deal with it rather than just let it run on for as long as the Evening Standard, or anyone else for that matter, wishes it to run on.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 26 March 2003

The police will be investigating, or not investigating as it happens, whether or not any criminal actions took place. As you know very well the code of conduct applies regardless of whether an alleged act was criminal or otherwise. I would just suggest to you that it is likely to run on and on because I do not doubt that either later today or by tomorrow the Evening Standard will be doing what it did last week and suggesting that what you said to us this morning is not the truth or the whole truth and so on. It will...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 10 December 2003

It is a mark of failure, is it not, Chairman, that the MPS is unable to say whether or not we are properly reimbursed for the true costs of these functions?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 10 December 2003

Chairman, will you not accept that the complaint about the Met having to carry out national policing means that ordinary policing in London suffers very significantly because of the extraction which is required from the boroughs. If I refer again to the question of President Bush's visit, and I am willing to lay odds that Blunkett will roll you over on that one as he has rolled you over on MPS funding in general, whilst the visit was taking place, crime in the suburbs increased. Crime in the suburbs increased simply because the Met was responsible for this national function.

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 10 December 2003

During the past month Londoners have expended more than £4 million on the visit of President Bush, a man who I was happy to see visit London. I am sorry that the Mayor was unhappy to see President Bush visit London. We have not received reimbursement for that sum of money. When the matter was discussed earlier again this morning as to whether or not these things should be provided by a national police force, both you and the Commissioner raised the spectre of some all-powerful police Tsar who would be answerable to no-one if we were to have a...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 10 December 2003