• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

It is strange, then, that, at the Economic Development Committee yesterday, the London Chamber categorically denied that there had been a view from the mayoral office, and said that the office had said they were not taking sides on whether there should be a merger or not. The Mayor: We are not taking sides, but I made it clear - Eric Ollerenshaw: You just said that you want the measure to go ahead.

• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

At the end of this, when we do some evaluation - hopefully the LDA will do it, rather than wait for someone else - we should learn the lessons of this. I am not saying it is just this one - there are others. Would you agree?

• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

How can we avoid the debacle of the debate in the Budget Committee about an odd half-million quid and whether it is here or there, whether it is GLA or LDA; and why should the LDA be the cash cow when the GLA should pay something towards it?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

I am grateful for that comprehensive reply. What do you think the benefit was at the end of the day? Did we get anything out of it?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

Have you had any response from Ministers to the specific points that you made, when you went up to the Labour party and other conferences, about the case for London?

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

In answer to John Biggs's earlier question, you said that the congestion charge was not a tax but a charge, and that it should be passed on through increased wages and cost increases. Would you advise borough leaders now to be making their bids to the Secretary of State for an uplift in the RSG to pay increased wages, and do you think that Milburn, the Secretary of State for Health, should be having discussions with the Chancellor for a higher sum of money to pay the wage uplift you are saying should happen to pay for your congestion charge?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

Do you acknowledge that the Tories are mining a very basic populist seam on this issue? Do you remember that it was only two years ago that Kensington and Chelsea Council, which happens to be Conservative, strongly supported a congestion charge? Do you recognise, in response to the Conservative tactic, that your scheme, if it is to succeed, needs to be presented in a fairly popular and populist way - as was discussed at massive length earlier today?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

But anybody would have to pass through the congestion zone to get to those fire stations, police stations and hospitals that sit within central London.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

Thank you, but at least it gives me the opportunity to come back to where we left off. I was intrigued by your answer to my question, when you talked of looking to managers, when deploying their staff, to take into account your congestion charge - presumably as a way of not having to pass on the cost to the National Health Service. That implies that you are suggesting that staff may have to move house or change their place of work, but as you know as well as I, that would entirely miss the point anyway, because these people...

• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

I am not sure about taxis, but longer-term, there is a whole list of festivals that you are developing. In the Budget there are plans for a St Patrick's Day parade next year, and the Respect festival presumably will go ahead again next year, and it will all culminate in 2004 in a "Re-elect Ken" festival. The Mayor: Now that's an idea. [Laughter.] Eric Ollerenshaw: I like to help out. Given also your plans for the pedestrianisation of part of Trafalgar Square eventually as a kind of world-class square, don't you think that some thought now needs to be given...