• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

You may not be aware that Westminster City Council and the city of London Corporation run a considerate builders scheme which includes not only safety issues but the noise and pollution impact of building sites on local residents. We note that you are unwilling to condemn London boroughs without knowing more about the position, but would you join me in congratulating Westminster and the City of London on these schemes, and in promoting them to boroughs in the rest of London? Perhaps that last bit is a job for your new appointment rather than for you personally

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

I do not know, but I think that I am one person here who has worked on construction sites, and the only UKATT member. London has a particular problem, given the low wages and high density of construction sites. But also, we have a very mobile work force, which drives wages down. Construction workers - not members of UKATT - who do not speak English cannot be properly inducted on a construction site, and that presents a huge safety problem. I think that the GLA has a part to play, because it is a particular issue for London. I support...

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

I welcome that answer very much. According to the BRE, the United Kingdom construction industry has one of the worst safety records for any industry - not just in the United Kingdom but in the world. That is a deplorable situation to find ourselves in. I welcome the Mayor's commitment to supporting the Health and Safety Executive's campaign, and I hope that we can do so in practical and tangible ways.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

Are you aware that the Government's position in justifying this situation - which I think is deplorable - is that, while licensed taxis can be hailed on the street, thereby limiting customer choice, private hire vehicles have to be booked in advance, so customers have an opportunity to shop around? Do you share that Government view, or would you for once agree with me that it is wrong for transport operators to discriminate against guide dog owners? Will you take steps to try to redress that when you are able to?

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

I would agree with Margaret Thatcher - [Interruption.] - as I note you did. However, one objects to paying for them twice. We pay through our central taxation, which is then skimmed off up to the north. However, my second supplementary question is about reserves. The sums which you propose to raise from Londoners would increase the Metropolitan Police Service reserves by a minimum of £20 million. Can you give the Greater London Authority - and through it the Metropolitan Police Authority - the assurance that it is not your intention to try to hold those reserves centrally, providing yourself...

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

Thank you; and as a wily politician I congratulate you on avoiding the question. The question relates to the £60 million which you, at your press conference, earmarked for police officers in London. However, the question stands in its own right, and my supplementary is this. You have mentioned several times the diversion of taxation and funds from London to elsewhere in the country. If the Metropolitan Police had been funded at the same levels as it was four or five years ago, its central Government funding would be about £220 million a year higher than it is now. You...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

Does not your last point raise again the spectre of the old and deplorable GLC overspill estates, which caused enormous social problems in many of the outer London boroughs? Is that not in truth an exceedingly old-fashioned and reactionary way of addressing London's housing problems? Should you not instead be looking at much more imaginative means of encouraging low-cost and assisted purchase, which would reflect the evidence that the vast majority of workers - even those who suffer from the comparatively high costs in London - would wish to buy rather than rent if there was a means to do...

• Question by: Andrew Pelling
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

I was rather concerned about one of the points you made at the press conference on this issue. You said that you could remember your days in Lambeth, when there were no gardens, and that you did not see the point of having gardens in Lambeth. Is there a danger that your willingness to concede higher density might see a return to a 1960s-style high-rise flat approach to housing in London?

• Question by: Andrew Pelling
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

Thank you for that full answer. What would your response be to those people who decry the general principle of a 50% approach, and who say that it might actually deliver less affordable housing rather than more?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

That is not affordable housing