• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 16 July 2002

He didn't write this press statement as a private individual. I mean, we're trying to get it over to you that he wrote it under the umbrella of this Authority and as a member of your office.

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 11 December 2002

Would you agree that the evidence indicates that one of the biggest problems about retention of health care professionals, as with other public sector workers, comes at the point at which they wish to move into house purchase. Is the Mayor proposing to learn from the schemes which have been developed in North America, for example, by golden share schemes, to ease the route of health care and other key sector workers into house purchase?

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 11 December 2002

Neale, I was very concerned indeed when I read the London Plan, that there is no acknowledgement there of the needs that a population the size of Sheffield would have for health - for housing, yes; for education, no. Knowing as we do from our scrutiny that there is something like 40% vacancies in GP practices, and that we train 50% of GPs in London, but that they don't stay unfortunately, I'm amazed that you didn't draw this to the Mayor's attention when he was writing his London Plan. There is no mention at all, I think, in the London...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 11 December 2002

I wonder if you would agree, therefore, that the important point of increasing the sustainability of health provision in London and, by analogy, other public sector things, will be therefore to adopt an holistic approach in which the housing policies of the Mayor give much greater emphasis to intermediate occupation, which seems to be the demand that's coming from the health economy in London?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 11 December 2002

I think that is important and whether it will come to the Health Committee to be looked at when the report is published, because otherwise you don't know if the money is being well spent. Can I move on to the skills issue and the issue around refugees who come to the country, amongst whom there is reckoned to be at least 1,000 potential doctors? I wondered if the Mayor had taken any steps to support requalification? There have been various schemes going. There's a scheme at the Institute of Community Health Services and a couple of other ones. Has...

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 11 December 2002

Much to be done. On the housing issue - assuming the extra 50,000 nurses aren't all going to want their own homes, which would take up the Mayor's entire plan for affordable housing, what are you doing? Are you actually measuring the success regarding how many key workers from health go into the new housing that's theoretically coming on stream? How are you going to judge whether it's a success?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 19 June 2002

But you are part of the history now. You've been doing it two years. The purpose of this question is to see how you are structuring TfL to challenge the bureaucracy which you've already identified as a key problem.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 19 June 2002

But you see, I think the average Londoner is more interested with the daily grind of travelling around London than with issues such as the traffic lights we debated earlier and they want to know that there is a body responsible for Transport for London which is clear and decisive and knows what's going on. Now, I read assiduously the reports of the TfL Board - and very exciting they are too - but it doesn't have that level of command. You've already indicated to us today that you're too busy to really provide the leadership as Chair. Where is...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 19 June 2002

You sacked your main dissident last year. Ken Livingstone: He was the person that voted against the budget. John Biggs: But as I understand it, the purpose of a Board is to deliberate and to debate and to conclude after a proper thoughtful discussion on the priorities and programme for Transport for London. I see no evidence that the Transport for London Board does that on a regular basis. Even though it is full of very well qualified people, the fundamental flaw seems to be that it does not give guidance, it does not challenge - this goes back to...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 19 June 2002

You sacked your main dissident last year. Ken Livingstone: He was the person that voted against the budget. John Biggs: But as I understand it, the purpose of a Board is to deliberate and to debate and to conclude after a proper thoughtful discussion on the priorities and programme for Transport for London. I see no evidence that the Transport for London Board does that on a regular basis. Even though it is full of very well qualified people, the fundamental flaw seems to be that it does not give guidance, it does not challenge - this goes back to...