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• Reference: 2010/0072-1
• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 21 July 2010

How do you see the relationship between your department and the Mayor's office differing from that under the previous government and what prospect do you see for greater devolution to the Mayor and Assembly?

• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 21 July 2010

We are really talking about the Mayor's wants. Are there Government wants? You have outlined the Government vision around devolution and on the NHS strategic functions that are being taken back into Government and obviously Ministers will want to take stock. Is there not a case that some of those strategic aspects carried out by the Strategic Health Authority for London should not come under the Mayor's ambit? Is there any thinking about that going on in Government at this stage, or if not at this stage, at some stage in the future?

• Question by: Nicky Gavron
• Meeting date: 21 July 2010

My first point is that in thinking abut the London Plan in relation to boroughs and in relation to the point made by Roger Evans about consultation, I think if one is not very careful, the time will be taken up with consultation. That is what takes time - consulting. I just want to point out that we had nearly 1,000 responses to this London Plan, which is three times as many as the previous London Plan, which shows that something is working around consultation. The second point is a strategic point. It is really important for us to be...

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 21 July 2010

Minister, there is quite a geographical expansion of the Mayor's powers with the Port of London Authority (PLA), going into the Thames Estuary. I just wanted to know whether it was the intention, or is the intention, to get the Mayor involved in planning issues to deal with wind farms, changing shipping channels or even airports. Is that the thrust of this? I just want to know where we are going with this.

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 21 July 2010

I have got a question about planning and the historic environment. We are just running out of time so I think the best way forward, Bob, is if I could invite you to join me in visiting the historic site of Shakespeare's first theatre. This is not in south London as people would think, but in Shoreditch. Why I would like you to do that is that you will then see the importance about planning at a local level, but also the need for some assurance to be given that a site like that could be preserved. I am just...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

I think you used the phrase `extremely excluded', and I would be interested to hear what disaggregated information there is about the people in poverty that we are talking about, because my experience has been that there are some people in our communities, some communities in fact, which are so extremely poor and excluded that I am not sure that the state is even capable of inter-meshing with the levels of poverty that they are experiencing. For example, there are members of the Somalian community in London, of whom probably more than 75% are unemployed, who cannot afford to dress...

• Question by: Nicky Gavron
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

These families are generally led by women; I wondered how significant you thought the gender pay-gap in London was, which is increasing - widening - here, whereas it isn't in the rest of the country. I understand that the most typical job for a woman here is paid at £5.30 an hour, whereas the most typical job for a man is paid at £17.50 an hour.

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

I was just wondering what the impact of the minimum wage has been in London in reducing relative poverty. Clearly, it affects those in employment, rather than those outside it, but I would like some idea of what the experts feel has been the impact.

• Question by: Nicky Gavron
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

You've just said that the proportion of children living below the poverty line in lone-parent families is high ' I do not know if you have the exact figures?

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

I understand that there should be a London rate, and I think there has been work done on that, on the living wage. Coming back to Kate (Green)'s point that tax credits are more significant, one of the experiences I have come across is that the bureaucracy of targeted financial programmes can be such that it actually puts off a lot of people from sitting down and putting in the applications that they are perfectly entitled to make. I don't know if you have got any thoughts on that, and how that can be cleared up so that it's a...