• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 27 February 2002

Can I return to the basis of the question - the Spatial Development Strategy in the suburbs? Ken, what you have said today about increasing the density in the suburbs disturbs me. I have in my constituency an area known as Southall, which is well known. Ealing council has followed your plans, your ideals, your wishes and your visions probably more closely than many others, and the effect is particularly felt in Southall, where they have pursued your housing density figures with a vengeance. The net problem is that the suburbs become overcrowded and over-dense. Traffic congestion increases, businesses are...

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 27 February 2002

Can you tell us how long it will be until we get the Cultural Strategy? Before you give me the answer you have already given, can you say when you last spoke to your Head of Culture, and what plans you have to introduce your cultural strategy? It is key to what is happening in the outer London boroughs: you know as well as I do that the well-being of tourism in London depends on you producing a Cultural Strategy.

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 27 February 2002

I want to return to the subject of outer London and to what you can do to help there. Do you accept that two thirds of all jobs are in outer London - let us get that into context - and that one of the busiest sectors over the last five years is around the creative and cultural industries such as tourism, hospitality, leisure and so on? Alongside your recent support, which we welcomed, for West End theatres after 11 September, what work are you doing to help theatres, museums and other cultural attractions in outer London? Can you assure...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 27 February 2002

You know I am a fan of the tram. Currently four tram/guided bus schemes are being considered under the Transport Strategy. What are your thoughts about the phasing of those projects? Is there any prospect that all might be scheduled? When will the white smoke emerge?

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 27 February 2002

Are they also going to look at the Perth experience, as you described it, which led to a 15% reduction, without, it says, additional cost to individuals? If we can achieve anything like that in outer London, that will be a major success.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 27 February 2002

Traffic congestion is a major problem in outer London as well as in inner London. Will you tell us what you are going to do to tackle that? In particular, will you encourage TfL officers to work with boroughs to see how the project in Perth, Australia, can be implemented and applied, perhaps in pilot schemes, in outer-London areas?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 27 February 2002

Do you accept that, even with all the local employment possibilities that you describe for inner London, and even with the best public transport infrastructure in the world, there are still some natural limits to the number of people you can cram into and out of central London every day? And will you say that?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 27 February 2002

I will try to be concise. You painted that gloomy picture of employment prospects in outer London, and said that people will still be wanting to go into the centre; but there are some natural limits to that. We cannot just keep cramming more and more people into central London. Have you given up on a more dispersed employment pattern as a vision for London altogether? That seems to be the direction in which "Towards a London Plan" was heading. On the one hand, the Economic Development Strategy document did not paint such a gloomy picture: there was not quite...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 27 February 2002

One of the problems for that, I think, is how you co-ordinate the major strategic developments in London. If you are looking at a timetable just within TfL, what do you do about the major strategic developments such as the Elephant and Castle, when all these things need to lock in together? At the moment, for example, TfL does not have a Lambeth borough officer, so there is little co-ordination within TfL and across the other strategic developments - not necessarily because of internal disorganisation, but because those links have not yet been created.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 16 October 2002

You talk about the fact that you would be more likely to get something to go towards a big capital project but, I am asking again, have you thought about how you would actually secure that bond?