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• Question by: Stephen Knight
• Meeting date: 24 October 2012

Stephen Knight (AM): To pick you up on the point you have just made around the high property values in London, compared, I believe with most other developed countries, we have very few property and wealth taxes in this country; we predominantly focus on income and sales taxes. I just wondered to what extent you think the high cost of housing in London is partly driven by the fact that it is a tax free growth area for people, by which I mean it is a tax free investment and therefore that has partly driven the speculation that has driven...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 24 October 2012

Goodness me. I think this is a very worthwhile debate although it may seem a bit arid to some observers and we need to make sure we do not get too academic about it. Would you agree with me that around the world probably the single greatest source of income for city governments tends to be, in one shape or form, from properties? You have said a couple of times now that property taxes are so visible and so potent that virtually all political parties play 'chicken' with each other. Well, the opposite of 'chicken'; they are scared to look...

• Question by: Nicky Gavron
• Meeting date: 24 October 2012

Nicky Gavron (AM): While we are on land and talking about the planning system, currently the Assembly's Planning Committee is looking at the community infrastructure levy (CIL). That is, to a certain extent, a fixed charge, although there are lots of complications because it is set different in different boroughs and there is not necessarily a duty to cooperate and so on. On top of that is the Mayor's own CIL. I was wondering, this CIL is for Crossrail, but is the Commission going to look beyond that to the way CIL might be used by the Mayor in the...

• Question by: Nicky Gavron
• Meeting date: 24 October 2012

In the same spirit, how far are you going to frame for the Mayor any of the mechanisms he might be thinking about for the comprehensive spending review for London?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

Perhaps to address another part of your presentation, which links to this, you talked about the need for the LDA to have credibility with business, but are there not occasions when business has to have credibility with Londoners and the LDA needs to say that the employment, training and mentoring practices of the private sector in London are short-sighted, are disadvantaging London and, in the end, will disadvantage those businesses? I am being quite strident in pursuing that. Perhaps your Chair should answer that.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

Is that a priority for the LDA?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

Which other priority is a lesser priority as a consequence of that? What I am trying to get my head around is the extent to which" Obviously in life you have to pursue a lot of relatively easy targets and priorities, but you need to take some challenging ones on now. I think, and I think a lot of my colleagues and constituents believe, that that is a really vital one for London and we have not done enough on it yet.

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

My question is on joined-up government and all these relationships with the ODPM, the DCMS, the DTI, GOL and all the rest of it. Did anybody inform you of the Government's new scheme to move some 80,000 jobs out of London? In a sense, there is a contradiction between the long-term plan that London is going to increase, and the Government actually trying to cut down the increase by moving jobs out of London. Was there any consultation with the LDA on this?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

The thesis behind this question is that the Assembly has a statutory responsibility to hold the LDA to account, but you are not a creature of regional government; there are these multiple accountabilities. If we are to do our job in holding you to account effectively, we need to see how these conflicts are working, and we talked offline about the difficulty of, for example, making available publicly a Government Office for London quarterly assessment of you. I think we need to explore further how to see that relationship working better with government. Moving on to the second question relating...