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• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 15 November 2006

Given the fact that Jack Lemley has actually raised these points, as Sir Roy (McNulty) and you have said during meetings beforehand, there is clearly a problem. I now see somebody senior leaving and, as a former journalist, I read and hear what I would regard as smear stories against Jack Lemley, which are clearly coming from somewhere, either from Government or are any of these stories about him coming from your office? I am not going to repeat them because I believe they are defamatory, but there was an article in Private Eye which is completely, as far as...

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 15 November 2006

Sir Roy, you said just now about being on track, but one of the most key elements of being on track is the budget. Mr Higgins, when you came to us in June, I said to you, and I quote, `In the next six to nine months there are likely to be problems. Will we have the same cooperation in flagging up any problems which occur; the possibility of any delays and, most importantly, the cost implications?' When you came to us you talked about everything being very good and I pointed out that I thought it was a honeymoon...

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

I just want to briefly return to this business of definitions, because some mathematicians have calculated that one of the reasons why there are so many variations in different countries about what is defined on the 60% median of people in poverty is because, quite simply, if you change your tax structure slightly, if in Britain the Government were simply to tax slightly more heavily those just above the poverty level, you could, at a stroke, to use an old phrase, remove half a million people from poverty. Now, even if we accept these definitions, and I appreciate, Kate (Kate...

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

Would you all support the idea, then, of removing from tax, the poor, as other countries are gradually doing? We should stop taking money away from the ones we are defining as poor, which leaves them poor, and creates dependency upon the state, while still worrying about the number of and the percentage of people in poverty. Surely, we should strip out their tax, get rid of their taxation, remove it. Many of them will then immediately not be poor. Surely we would all agree with that.

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

Do any of you know how our Structural Fund for Objective Two or Three, in London has been used to deal with things like poverty? Anything you could point to: that is a marvellous idea, or that is a very bad idea?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

Obviously you all know my opinions on the EU and Structural Funds. It is a very bureaucratic, arthritic way of getting back a tiny proportion of the money that we have to give to the EU. Would it not be nice to have all of that money here to be able to do the things we would like to do with poverty, with unemployment, and so on? It's not an ideal way, and are we not going to lose a lot of that in the next aspects of funding, because a lot of the accession countries are going to take...

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 14 June 2006

Of these 10 points, which do you think are at the greatest risk of possibly, not going wrong, but where there may be problems in the coming six to nine months, where you may have to take action?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 14 June 2006

Good morning. This is the honeymoon period, obviously, and the Chairman has asked us to be nice to you on your own this morning, not that we ever would not be of course. You have mentioned these 10 points over the coming year; you listed them fairly cleanly and clearly and I can understand them. The best laid plans of men go often awry; can you tell us, bearing in mind things like Wembley and what Bob (Neill) just mentioned about the Dome, when and if they go wrong or look like the are going to, will we have that...