• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

Thank you for your response, Mr Mayor, which did not answer the question. Would you like to have another go?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

could you perhaps tell us, as you want to change the statues - and presumably you are not like the Emperor Caligula, who replaced all the heads of statues in Rome with his own to bring them up to date, or Saddam Hussein, who has produced a nice set of murals of himself around Baghdad - what sort of people do you think would be good examples to put on those plinths?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

Seeing that we are not going to have the statue of the unknown pigeon, as suggested by your environment adviser - perhaps his only constructive suggestion in this entire debate -

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

Because it was a private company building a railway.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

But our dilemma is that it is not just Gordon Brown against Ken Livingstone: Chancellors since the second world war have tightly controlled public borrowing. They would perceive a bond issue to be public borrowing by their criteria. You have to say how you are going to fund the improvements to the decrepit Underground without the PPP. There is no other show in town. That does not mean that it should not be stopped if it is proved to be unsafe, but you have to answer that question.

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

My understanding is that PPP has factored in a 30% increase in fares for Londoners as part of their funding regime. Does the Mayor agree with me that perhaps they are not being robust enough about penalties for poor performance? At our meeting with Keith Hill, I felt that he was a bit laissez-faire when he was questioned about the penalties and how they were going to keep the standards up. You touched on this yourself when you were talking about cleaning after these events - that sometimes it is easier for the contractors to incur penalties than to put...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

Actually, there are 41 stations across London with just one appliance each. The fire service is meeting its targets for getting appliances to incidents in 92% of cases, and Hornchurch is not one of the areas where there is difficulty in meeting the Home Office targets. We are looking closely at a couple of other areas to make sure that we do meet the targets. I am intending to come to Hornchurch, but what I want to talk about is how we can reduce risk and danger to the community there. The Fire Authority's view is that what would help...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

You are giving me quite a lengthy and - dare I say it? - rather shifty and evasive reply. It was nowhere near as lengthy when you were asked the question by people in the local area before the election: as I recall, the answer was "Yes" when you were asked whether you would reinstate their fire engine. Why did you make that promise if you knew what you know now? Nothing has changed, so why did you mislead people in that way?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

Thank you for that answer, Mayor, except that you did not answer the question. You certainly did not answer the last part, in which I re-issued my invitation to you to visit us in Hornchurch. Since you said that you would be glad to visit Fire Brigade headquarters with Val, I am rather surprised to hear that you are not happy to come and meet local residents and firefighters who have, to use Val's own words, been upset and demoralised by a letter she wrote to the Romford Recorder recently, telling them that they would not have their fire engine...