• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

In agreeing that salary of £45,000 per annum for Mr Wetzel, did you regard his qualifications and experience as being appropriate for the full time executive Vice Chair of Transport for London and given your commitment to seeking world class management for London Transport, do you regard Mr Wetzel's appointment at that salary as part of your package of world class management?

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

Is your housing commission going to be able to look at the costs of rents, of high rents, in London. I would just like to cite a Council flat in the ward which I represent, which isn't meant to be the most salubrious of wards, and one Council rent is £300 a week and I was wondering if your housing commission could look into that?

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

Mr Mayor, the policies of Wandsworth have always gone through their various committees which are open to the public and also through the Council. Which again is open to the public. We have had extreme scrutiny and nobody could find anywhere that we have done anything that is untoward or even have done anything similar to Westminster. I really must say that your information is totally inaccurate. Wandsworth Council have got a huge social housing stock and it now has an affordable housing stock within the borough. It is one Council that has in fact refurbished its social housing stock...

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

Mr Mayor that is not actually what I asked. But I want to go a bit further. In fact Wandsworth Council has, in negotiation with planners, accepted affordable housing on the large planning sites along the River. However what I am asking you to do is to apologise for your extreme language. This will do nothing to enhance the office that you hold, nor will it make negotiations with local authorities any easier. I must emphasise Mr Mayor that your extreme language is really quite disrespectful to the office that you hold.

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

I have been around the NHS, as you have and many in this room have, for some time and I just think we need more than hope and I would ask you to join me working with an organisation like the Sickle Cell Society and certainly members of the Assembly to actually do a little bit more than hope and do our best to ensure that this happens. This affects a significant proportion of people and just looking at London there is actually a need for additional screening and counselling and more research and education and training for their condition.

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

The Metropolitan Police are already labouring under a 2% efficiency target year on year. There are only so many years when you can actually make an additional efficiency saving. Your 3% is 1% above that. The Metropolitan Police are also suffering from reduced budgets year on year and a reduced share of the national cake of police funding. Is it your intention to squeeze the Police until the pips squeak, or the ratepayers of London, bearing in mind a 17% increase in Police precept this year?

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

I will have second on this one and then I will take a written reply to my last question, if I may as a trade. I was trying to reconcile the budget papers between the cabinet and the budget papers that went to the Budget Committee and there was a dog that didn't bark in one of them. In the budget paper that went to the cabinet, there was no reference, I notice, to I think £3.5 million which ought to be put away every year in order to save for the elections in 2004. Whereas in the Budget Committee...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

But I hope you would agree that everybody would expect the GLA to be efficient and not to be wasteful. In light of that, will the consultant that I know you are bringing in to review the budgets of the functional bodies to help progress the process of finding efficiencies, also be looking at the core budget of the GLA itself? There are quite major increases in the GLA's budget being proposed next year and we ought to have a determined striving for efficiency right across the family of the GLA, including the core administration?

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

Mr Mayor in a report to the Budget Committee there was a forecast underspend of £4 million for this year because the full staffing compliment is not in place. But you have asked for additional funding of £3.5 million. Now if the staff are all in place for 2001/2002, will we be in deficit because you will carry forward will you a £3.5 million additional spend and perhaps even more next year?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

Having heard Elizabeth Howlett's views on incineration, have you more faith in the Conservative front bench spokesman, Archie Norman's opposition to incineration and commitment to the Tories moratorium on incineration and the whole energy from waste project?