• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 27 March 2002

I am interested to see the way you described the Bromley case as being such a clear test of principle, when I got the impression that you were saying that if there had been a trade off and a quid pro quo it would have all been all right. It's a funny sort of principle that's so easily overcome, but I think you accept there is a real need and pressure on school places in the London Borough of Bromley?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 27 March 2002

And I'd like to hear more from you, obviously not now but over the coming months, about how you are going to work with those adjoining areas which very much have our objectives in common. I think that's very important for Londoners. Could I ask one other question then, which is about the schools issue and open space? I have a feeling, and again this is something where a Mayor of London might be able to offer leadership, that there is a real problem with public assets which have been disposed of too readily in the past and which are...

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

What you are saying to us then is that we will maintain and protect both Metropolitan Open Land and Green Belt around London? That in the next 14 years we will house, employ, educate, enable to travel an additional 700,000 people and still be sustainable and still protect and improve the environment of London?

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

These are Green Belt. Because in Southwark I think it's Metropolitan Open Land not Green Belt. Are you therefore saying that you will also defend vigorously existing Metropolitan Open Land?

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

I don't know the particular Bromley sites, but are you confusing Green Belt and Metropolitan Open Land?

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

I think your original reply referred to the Green Belt. Will you confirm to us that you will oppose any suggestions of expansion into the Green Belt around London?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 27 March 2002

Will he give us his undertaking that he will instruct the LDA to put actual numbers on their papers headed `Performance Targets' to give effect to precisely what he has been saying?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 27 March 2002

If we've got this level of growth in schools, never mind houses and everything else, where are they going to go? Brownfield sites obviously, because nobody wants to build on green space, so I had a look in the LDA strategy- one of my little cures for insomnia since I arrived here is reading all these great strategies. I finally tracked a reference down in the LDA Corporate Plan where the figure is 30 hectares of brownfield land reclaimed per year. Now I don't think you need a degree in maths or geography to know that, if the population growth...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 27 March 2002

We want colour but particularly we want questions answered which is what this morning is about. I still hope that we are all here to ask questions from this side and have straight answers from that side. We see this population growth and these projections, from the Liberal Democrat perspective, as an opportunity. We must seize the opportunity of the growth and the economic development and the drivers behind it and the wealth created, to redress some of London's historic imbalances and injustices. One issue is, for example, the poor state of schooling in many inner city areas. Can I...

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

Do we not have any responsibilities to the rest of the country? You are constantly championing this world city role and trying to grab more and more growth for London. Have we not got responsibilities to make the case for strong regional economies throughout the whole of the country and to make the case for regional government that can build effective regional strategies around the whole of the country and not just London grabbing more and more and more of the action?