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

Can I just be clear about an answer that you gave to my colleague, Bob Neill, a while back? I think you seemed to suggest that in some way it was in the interests of Londoners and passengers that sometimes strike action should be considered because it was important that our workers were paid properly. I have, in the past, described you as soft on strikes, soft on the cause of the strikes, and I can now see why I probably said that. Surely if you, as the Mayor, continue to give that sort of comfort to people who are...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

Is the majority of the Board a group of Livingstone yes men?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

I suppose the obvious question is that job advertisements have appeared on your authority, I assume, for senior positions. It would be rather stupid, in my opinion, for us to advertise jobs which were then not going to exist. It may well be that, as I suspect is the case, you have confidence that the Board will rubber stamp or agree with your proposals but it does seem a bit cart before the horse to advertise for posts, to run the risk of disappointment in the event that Transport for London, against my expectations, becomes actually quite a strong and...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

So, implicit in that, you are accepting that you have a long term relationship with Graham Tope and indeed with the Leader of the City of London, probably with Toby Harris, Susan Kramer as well; I am pleased to hear that but I don't quite believe it.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

I think we all know that although it may all stop with you, you do need to rely on the advice of people who are close to you and so I sense partly in a previous question that although Graham Tope may have been appointed to your Cabinet he is not exactly going to be one of your closest confidantes; on your corridor you have 4 or 5 people who have been in various factions and groups with you down the years and some who have been on the GLC with you. It seems to me that they are your...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

The buck must stop somewhere and a Cabinet without collective responsibility is a bit like riding a horse backwards basically. You need to have some sense of where you are going and I think a lot of us genuinely feel that there is a potential contradiction there. We have legislation which creates a strong Mayor and that Mayor needs to speak with a single voice. You are implying that it doesn't really matter what comes out. It could be off the hoof, it could be contradictory, it's just one happy family. I think the evidence is that things don't work...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

That answer seemed to cover a multitude of sins because fundamentally it does not answer the question of whether he agrees with Lee Jasper's statement that Lee's non-appointment to the Police Authority was a Labour Party stitch-up and secondly if he is happy that that statement was accurate and whether he is happy that all his spokesmen can make any statement of their choosing on any matter that they like whenever they choose to. I think we might need to adjust the boundaries if, for example, a member of your Cabinet advocated fox hunting in London, would that be something...

• Question by: Louise Bloom
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

That's quite a few people covering various different areas of the whole equality issue, but how do you envisage that those people will then work together to actually produce a totally integrated whole within the Cabinet rather than hiding off different bits and pieces all over the place?

• Question by: Louise Bloom
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

What concerns me about this whole thing is how we get to the so-called "hard to hear" voices. I am sure that in our boroughs and other various areas of our lives we have always been involved with consultation exercises and know basically it is all the usual likely suspects who actually get round to filling in the forms and sending them back. Consultation exercises have a notoriously low response rate from the Londoners themselves. I am sure the key stakeholders will all be delighted to tell us all what they want but how are we going to get to...

• Question by: Trevor Phillips
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

The Chair pointed out for information that the Bureau of Leaders had set up an exercise looking at exactly that point: how do we reach people who don't fill in forms and who aren't part of voluntary groups and so on.