• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

Just a quick one which interests me. What I am interested in is consultation and I just wondered what consultation you carry out with the Deputy Mayor, Councillor Gavron, when you make your monthly statement attacking the Blair Government. The statement you made yesterday about Nazis and Vichy regimes and aliens in the Treasury, I just wondered if there was a formal consultation process between yourself and the Deputy Mayor?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

I suppose the question was based on the premise that you might have gone on it and concerned as we were for your safety, the prospect of you with your balance problems, that you referred to the last time, being on an unstable bridge with a lot of Labour luvvies might naturally have given us concern for your welfare and longevity. So I am delighted that that wasn't the case but is there a more serious point to it. Given that the architect of the Millennium Bridge is the architect who is responsible for our new building that we have...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

I am sure Gordon Brown, a dear friend of yours, will be delighted to hear your support for public spending in Scotland, but on a more serious point, isn't right that London has been remarkably ill-served by the Government over the last 3 years, that we have seen cuts in public spending support for London across a range of services, not just the question of deprivation index which you have raised, the question of the shifting of the burden of some Police funding onto London taxpayers when a lot of those are national funding, and in fact the general way...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

Would you deal with perhaps the second part: will you take up the question of the Barnett formula with the appropriate ministers as a matter of urgency because many of us believe that all that we genuinely attempt to do regardless of party here is hampered by the fact that London is not provided by Central Government with sufficient resources and that more to the point, the current formula is deliberately skewed against London and there is a feeling that there is unwillingness on the part of the present Government to change that formula because of the effect it has...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

As long as we accept that as the strategic definition, that's fine. When you come down to local safe to school routes, local residential areas and so on, clearly the borough is much better placed to decide what local people want.

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

I appreciate that there may be pinch points where there is a conflict at say the boundaries of boroughs and so on, but would you agree and commit yourself to the view that as a matter of principle it should normally be the London boroughs who are the people on the ground and who are the people who are best judged to work out which are their local transport needs and that the Mayor and the Assembly should only interfere with those needs in cases of genuine and overriding strategic interest.

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

I am grateful to hear that there was consultation to start with but would you agree perhaps that one of the problems that we had with the old GLC regardless of which party that controlled it was that frequently it was seen as being burdensome and oppressive in its dealings with the London boroughs and a body which interfered too much in matters of detail rather than matters of strategy.Following from that, would you be looking to a means of putting in place consultation with individual boroughs as well as through the ALG on the basis that the adjustment of...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

Have you considered how high a priority this consultation exercise should be as against those other items and what are the items that are likely to be lost in consequence of the McDonnell exercise?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

Are you saying to me, Ken, that this exercise will involve no additional costs?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

I think that usefully brings out the fact that in the course of the GLA Bill going through and indeed the course of the elections for the Mayor and the Assembly, the Government was very anxious to hide the fact that here is an extra £5 million a year nearly, that London ratepayers or council tax payers are going to have to pick up the tab for as a result of the Government's proposal to set up this body. You might consider whether or not that gives any kind of value for money to Londoners. Secondly, do you not think...