• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

So are you saying that a London-wide waste authority would have come to a different decision about the Bexley incinerator?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Which is most likely? Is the Secretary of State amenable to making legislative changes, or will we need to do it ourselves?

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

What worries me is, I'm very concerned for borough commanders as well, because boroughs differ so widely in the policing challenges, and it seems to me that when there is some creativity in the borough commanders' development in their policing objectives, then they're quite often squashed - and I know we've got a question coming up later about Commander Paddick and the cannabis initiative in Lambeth. But it does seem to me it is actually extremely difficult for borough commanders to be creative about the problems they face.

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Given your closeness to the preparation of that gracious speech, do you expect those directions to be targeting the criminal, rather than the crime, or do you expect it to impose yet more statistics, which the Home Office can fiddle?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

I have a feeling we won't get to the question to which this supplementary will be perhaps a little more appropriately targeted, but it does fit with this as well. I attended last week a meeting of the Covent Garden Community Association, where there were about 400 residents present. And they have the good fortune of being in a very lively part of London, and the misfortune of the problems that brings. And they welcome the support of their borough commanders, but they span two borough areas. And I'm wondering whether you think the relationship is quite right where, in...

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

One of the other sets of pressures which will exert itself on the Police Service is from the Government of the day. Yesterday, your Labour Chairman, John Reid said that Labour was not infallible on law and order, and indeed accepted that there were a number of failed initiatives over the last five years since you were in power. He said we should be prepared to say, "We tried that and it did not work". If one looks at the number of issues that haven't worked, you could include the child curfews - none of which have been imposed -...

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Given that that is a list of those who are exerting pressures on the Police Service in London, why do you not accept the premise of the question?

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

It is indeed.

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 22 May 2002

Well, this is the problem, isn't it? If I was setting the budget for the police as you do, then I would want to have some say in how it was spent and the sort of services that people in outer London were receiving. And I wouldn't want to just shrug that issue off on the people who run the MPA, particularly if, like yourself, I was someone who didn't think the MPA was adding much value. I read all about it. Roger Evans: I can tell you that they were very supportive of your work dealing with unlicensed taxis...

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 22 May 2002

Well, on the question of value for money, of course the issue that we've chomped on about a lot is issues of partnership. Can we now assume that with the new people moving into the ALG that you will work with them better than you did in the past?