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

But the Treasury is going to be key to running this capital city and the Treasury is going to be extremely important in handing over the money we need to improve transport and I'm back to it again, are you actually damaging yourself and this city because of this personal hang-up you have got about your treatment by the Labour Party?

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

I think the original quote finished with "and after all, I have given them all jobs". Do you think it is perhaps more because of the way you have been handing out this largesse to many round this table, I think it was a green Darren Johnson who first accepted it and its gone on and on that that might be influencing them in their willingness to go along with you? I just wonder how many members of the Labour Group on this Assembly you believe go along with your statements about the Government in terms of its failures.

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

Are there other people you have approached who you feel have been blocked in taking up their appointments by the Labour Party?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

I hope we can move away from words like scuppering and I hope that you will agree that those concerns that were expressed to you are indeed legitimate and bearing that in mind would you actually consider shelving your plans for Trafalgar Square were it to prove impossible to produce satisfactory solutions to the problems of traffic gridlock that have been predicted by a number of traffic experts and also to the threat of increased anti-social behaviour that we have seen in neighbouring squares like Leicester Square. If you couldn't deal with those problems satisfactorily, would you agree that it...

• Question by: Toby Harris
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

Well, just as a point of personal explanation, I am deeply touched as always by the Mayor's faith in my abilities to wave magic wands about policing in London and no doubt other matters as well, but I suspect that the policing of this square will be an operational matter for the Metropolitan Police Commissioner rather than the responsibility of the Metropolitan Police Authority or even its Chair.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

I actually asked you whether you would pause to see the viability before going on to other phases.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

Well I am not certain that at this stage if you could absolutely predict that there will be a congestion charge because that, of course, still lies with the decision on your budget which the Assembly will come to, so I am not certain that you can predict the outcome of problems on the basis of something which hasn't itself been settled. But if I can just go on to my second supplementary. If you do go ahead with the scheme in Trafalgar Square, would you agree that it would be worth waiting for a decent period of time to...

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

In your position now of negotiating with the Government - and I heard your speech yesterday in Bournemouth, very good, very clever, well balanced, you even got some claps from the Tories and the Liberals and Labour - but you seem to have this thing, it may well be because of your history when you were in the Labour Party, or the fact that you were thrown out of the Labour Party, then burying the knife. What I want to know is, is this revenge for when you weren't allowed to stand as a Labour Party member or is it...

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

That's actually not the point. The point I am trying to make is: you are now the Mayor of London, we accept the election results. Yesterday in a number of articles you compared this Government and indeed the past Government, well let's deal with this Government, with to the Nazis. You also said that there were aliens in the Treasury. Now you made the comment earlier that somehow this was a comment you had made a long time ago. According to all the newspapers you also did this in an interview yesterday. My point is that we understand your own...

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 29 June 2000

But would you discuss with the boroughs who are particularly affected by those decisions what the decision might be before you came down as it were on one side or the other?