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• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 13 January 2010

Harvey, can I bring you back to the beginning when you mentioned the LDA objectives and one of them being international promotion? It is interesting, over Christmas reading things like The Economist, it was suggesting that the developing countries have come out of the recession much better than anyone had expected and that this has profound consequences on the rest of the world, including London. Hearing that, I understand that we do not now have an office in Delhi or Bombay, one of the leading BRIC countries and one of the countries that we can expect to trade with in...

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 18 March 2009

Thank you, Chair. Just following on from Val [Shawcross] on the training programmes, the LDA have withdrawn the funding from King's Cross Construction Training Centre, and Camden Council has been forced to step in. Are you aware that the funding that Camden has been able to provide is less than that which was originally provided by the LDA? Secondly, how is possible to justify such cuts in skills training in an area of such acute economic deprivation, and given that King's Cross is a strategic site, why should it be just the people of Camden who fund the training centre...

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 25 April 2007

Finally, given that you have milestones and key milestones and a set date to achieve it, would it not have been better to have set up bonus payments rather than contingency sums, given that is going to be the name of the game - getting to key stages at key times at critical points? Clearly we would rather be giving them money for achieving that, rather than spending their time making those claims, which invariably half the building trade does.

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 25 April 2007

Sir Roy, if we accept the Government figures as the upper limits to the expenditure on the Olympics, I think the key thing is the management of the contingencies. I am worried that we find ourselves in contracts with contractors who then spend most of their time making claims for the contingencies. They are very generous; about 60% of the build costs. I have certainly had that experience of managing projects myself. What do you have lined up in the procurement arrangements with contractors which make sure they focus and achieve the milestones, rather than putting in the estimators to...

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 25 April 2007

You have mentioned the Cabinet Committees that are keeping an eye on this. Surely the building contract and the legality of that will supersede anything that they can decide about which contingency sums can be drawn from or not.