• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 12 December 2001

I think all of us want to see the system of Borough Commanders work and I wonder if you would agree in that context that it is important to recognise that there's an underlying principle here. Would you accept that, to a degree, the burden of paying for policing in London is gradually shifting towards council taxpayers and that therefore it is particularly important that people in each borough are able to be satisfied, not only that they get the sort of policing that they feel that they want, but also that the priorities adopted in that borough reflect their...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 12 December 2001

I'm glad to learn of those two initiatives. I was aware of the first one, but not the second. I think that is good news. The concern, I think, that many people have is that to achieve the sort of partnership that we all want to have at borough level, it's important that the various groups that you've referred to have sufficient information to be able to question the Borough Commanders in a constructive way. Are you perhaps thinking of making sure there is some guidance amongst Borough Commanders to make sure that, for example, each of the community partnerships...

• Question by: Louise Bloom
• Meeting date: 12 December 2001

You touched on your visits around the boroughs, Toby. Perhaps you could tell us how many borough visits you've now actually completed and how do you intend to both use and share this knowledge that you've gained on your visits round the boroughs with both us and perhaps even, dare I say, the wider public?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 12 December 2001

At the MPA Sir John Stevens did actually say he was going to put a halt to the closure of police stations.

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 12 December 2001

The answer was not deep and thorough, you're just dodging it, in as much as you are saying local people are deciding for themselves in partnership with the police. So the assurance is that it will be on the agenda, because you then go on to say it'll be down to Borough Commanders to make those decisions as to how best to deploy their resources and you say it is an affection for the building or some other sort of condescending thing. What local people want is access to the police when they're in trouble, they don't have to get...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 12 December 2001

I won't do it in French, although I am tempted to, and I approach it with the observation that in the village where I have a house in France, I'm always struck by the very good relationships that there are there between the local police officers and their community - just so that nobody tars everybody with one particular brush. What I am interested in is this. That sets out a factual position. Are you satisfied that this actually works in practice and that Borough Commanders are perceived as being genuinely responsive to the concerns of the communities in each...

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 23 May 2001

Thank you for that. I only wish that your strategies exemplified that in action, because most of them are concentrated on the centre and the east; most of them ignore the outer London boroughs, particularly the west London boroughs. At the west London conference which you recently attended, you made it clear that, on the plans for the new home for the Greater London Assembly, the one mistake you noticed was in your own office, where your desk was facing the wrong way. You asked that the desk be turned round, so that you were facing east London. You were...

• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 23 May 2001

I am broadly supportive of the plan. It is a Londonwide plan, and some Members need to remember that, no matter how much they bat for their part of London. It is out for consultation now, but can you talk about some of the mechanisms for bringing people together to deliver some of the issues that will be in the interests of west London as well as east London, and of south London as well as the north? Can you give us your views on the diversity of the mechanisms that are required to develop London?

• Question by: Andrew Pelling
• Meeting date: 23 May 2001

I buy the dream of investing in east London: after all, it is a continuation, as you have said, of the previous Conservative Government's philosophy. But it is a matter of balance. I hope that you understand my point of view from south London. Although I appreciate that reference is made to the south London corridor and the corridor out to Gatwick, the plan leading to the London plan, as it were, which you published has acres of information on east London and talks about 50% of the job growth coming in east London. This debate about the balance of...

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 23 May 2001

I have travelled around the east end as a member of the Economic Development Committee, and I have been appalled by the neglect which has been allowed to remain there - Meg Hillier: After 18 years of Conservative Government. Richard Barnes: After 40 years of Labour councils in the east, they have allowed the economic and environmental deprivation which councils in the west simply will not accept. Economic literacy tells us that you must sustain the heart and the lungs of an economy in order to drive it forward and bring the east up to the levels of the west...