• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Would you agree with me that probably the single greatest factor, and there are many factors, but the single greatest factor in what has determined up to now, what is a relatively high and a relatively low performing borough, is actually the political will to do so, and making it a political priority? And if you do agree, then what evidence and what monitoring are you doing to ensure that we get value for money from the significant sums of money now being put into traditionally low performing boroughs, who demonstrably have never made it a priority?

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

I know Mr Duffy is keen to interfere all he can in boroughs. Some of us can't keep him out of our boroughs. Whether or not a borough has wheelie bins I would say is a matter for the borough council, and not for anybody else. Would he accept a scheme that we're about to introduce in Barnet, which is where in the past the Labour administration, if somebody phoned up for a second bin on the grounds that they needed one, just delivered it, our administration tends to send a waste minimisation officer round for advice on why they...

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Are you telling me then that the priority is not to give the money to low performing boroughs in order to drive them up. Surely, that is the priority.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Would you not accept though that the majority of the money thus far has, as I say in my question, probably rightly been distributed to the low performing boroughs. What I'm really wanting to get at is what incentive there is for the high performing boroughs, those boroughs who have already made it a priority, actually to receive some reward, some recognition, from the distribution of this money.

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

I believe they're not currently, yet they were featured very prominently in the Code when it was launched in March. They gave comments about their support for using recycled goods. Could you explain that?

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

When it comes to companies, do the companies that have signed up include McDonald's and Coca-Cola?

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

So, those that haven't are not necessarily not going to? Which ones haven't?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Except you didn't actually say it when you tackled the Mayor on it.

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

But the reality is they aren't ready. And I'm just trying to put the people's point of view here. And I felt in Mayor's Question Time, you actually expressed quite a great deal of contempt for police front counters, which flies totally in the face of what the Met Commissioner has done by stopping any further closures. And the commitment of assistants, who are so desperate that they are willing to volunteer to open them, when most of them think they should actually be staffed by police. So, you're saying that you don't believe they should have access. All I...

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Okay, so they can't get through to their local police station, 999 isn't answered quickly, and you don't believe that they should have access to a policeman necessarily locally, to any one particular means.