• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 26 March 2003

Can I just thank the Mayor for that very long and detailed explanation. I am extremely grateful for it. I have only got one question, really, Ken. Are you going to sue the Standard?

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

Can I thank you Mr Mayor for being so frank with us today. I understand why you do not want to sue, for libel presumably, the Evening Standard. Have you considered referring it to the Press Complaints Commission?

• Question by: Toby Harris
• Meeting date: 26 March 2003

TOBY HARRIS: I hope it was of reasonable quality. KEN LIVINGSTONE: It was, it was. TOBY HARRIS: Clearly the last few weeks have been enormously diverting in terms of your time and energy, in terms certainly of distraction. This has been a period when you have been launching the draft Spatial Development Strategy. Can you give us some indication of the extent to which have you have been occupied in dealing with these matters when perhaps you might have been dealing with the business of London?

• Question by: Toby Harris
• Meeting date: 26 March 2003

First of all Mr Mayor can I thank you for the very full statements that you have made and the detail into which you have gone and I hope that it is not necessary for you, or indeed any or politician, to have to go into such detail about such matters in the future. As you will no doubt be aware lots of people around and about are busy speculating as to what may or may not have gone on at the party. And you have given a very clear indication. Much of that speculation has not found its way...

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

I only ask that because there is a report in the Press Association referring to this which carries a direct quote from you, apparently, to be in these terms asking if it was you who told your office to put out the statement and you said, of course it was, which you confirmed to us. And you are quoted in direct speech as saying, "Robin was recovering. He could not handle the press directly." I said "Do you want us to put this out?" And he said yes, which gives the impression of a direct conversation.

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

I wonder who drew up the words that appear in that first statement?

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

This may be one of the Evening Standard's problems at the moment. You welcomed, or you were quoted as welcoming, the possibility of a police investigation to clear it all up. Would you welcome an investigation by the Standards Board for the same reason.

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

This is not the time for us to debate the effectiveness of the Press Complaints Commission but you have said this morning, again, that the behaviour of the Evening Standard was, I think the word you use was a "disgrace". I think it is qualitatively different to taking pictures of you in your swimming trunks on a beach which demonstrably was of interest to some of the female Londoners, around this table anyway. That is qualitatively different to what we are here debating this morning. Are you actually saying that you believe the Evening Standard to have acted disgracefully and...

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

I have only two short and final points. From my understanding of what you have said, no one other than your partner and your Chief of Staff -- from the GLA's offices or contacts -- had any involvement in the words that were actually in Mr Hedge's initial statement?

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

I quite understand your distress at family and close friends being involved. You have made the point about the apparent discrepancy and growth in detail between accounts that were given in first newspaper reports and subsequent ones. In hindsight, do you feel it might have been better to have given us the detailed statement that you have today when you came before the Assembly on 19th June?