• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

Lord Harris, I notice you have appreciated Merton's problem with only 303 but that is not 303 bodies, that is their workforce plus their vacancy level and it is that question around vacancy levels I want to talk to you about. 333 police officers have been identified, and given up by central and support departments. No, can I take that back, 333 police officers' posts have been identified. Now these are not bodies that have been transferred to the boroughs and what I would like to know is, was this a cynical exercise by the central and support departments -...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

Quickly, if David Blunkett did go to Brixton Police Station yesterday one of the things he may have noticed is that it is almost impossible to hold a meeting in Brixton Police Station because of the noise from the air-conditioning and other plant and equipment there and they have to go elsewhere. Can I just urge you as Chair of the MPA to take a look at the building stock in Brixton as an urgent priority because it does need some attention and all the resources that the police service receive is important to their work and the building stock...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

Thank you. I think we all recognise that the MPS and the MPA are struggling with serious London-wide issues but you used the phrase earlier on, "areas of greatest need" and I hope you would appreciate that the area I represent, Lambeth and Southwark, is one of the areas of greatest need. Street crime in Lambeth is I think twice the average of London. And yet if we look at any of the aspects of resource allocation for Lambeth as it is at the moment - we talked about the serious shortfall in staffing - it's about 10% of our...

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

Toby, are you aware that the terms of reference of the project board, which I chair, reviewing resource allocation formula are restricted simply and solely, not simply but solely, to looking at the allocation of that slice of the cake given to territorial policing? Would you agree with me that actually the bigger problem highlighted in the discussion this morning is the total amount that is allocated to territorial policing in the first place? When are we going to look at the division of the whole cake given to the Met, however large that is, and increase the amounts given...

• Question by: Trevor Phillips
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

Thank you, and I hope that what you've said will be taken as a pretty clear signal that the MPS has broken with the days in which stop and search was effectively used as a biased tactic against one part of our community and that that part of the community can now be reassured that under the new MPA we are never going to return to those days. The issue of stop and search really has been around in various versions for about three decades but it exercised the PCCGs considerably in particular parts of London. I wonder if you...

• Question by: Trevor Phillips
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

Thank you, Toby. I wonder if you could take us a little bit further on this stop and search question. This clearly is historically an extremely important issue for all Londoners but particularly for African Caribbean communities and also, indeed, Bangladeshi communities in the East End. Now, this exercise, as you say, has shown some promise. Where is the MPS going with it from here?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

On the subject of PCCGs, do you understand the concerns of my Police Community Consultation Group at Havering who are worried that the MPA is requesting personal information from them which they would not want to have on record? And do you understand our concern that, when a member of the MPA officers was actually invited to attend the group and meet us last week, they failed to do so? Can you undertake that someone from the MPA will actually go and talk to them, apart from myself as their link member, someone who's actually responsible for the use of...

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

Will you publish, with as much notice as possible, the dates of the meetings in each of these boroughs, at least to the GLA and MPA members?

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

Can I say I strongly support the concept of borough policing but it does not help when borough commanders seem to be shipped out on a regular basis. In Barnet we are now on our third borough commander in about 15 months. The last one disappeared almost overnight three weeks ago and he had done a lot of hard work building relationships with residents' organisations, with the Police Consultative Committee and others. Suddenly he is duly promoted to higher service, which is great for him but rather undermines some of the confidence which the public have placed in the high...

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 01 January 2001

I have actually two questions. One that there's a perception of crime in certain areas where you may not reach automatically so, for instance, in one of the reviews we are looking at which is the fear of going to open spaces or green spaces. What negotiations are you having with, say, parks police about proliferation of parks police so that people feel comfortable in certain areas where you do not necessarily reach?