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• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 15 February 2007

My question, and emphasis here, is actually that rather than focus on the quantity of jobs, we have also got to look at the quality of jobs, and what have you. My experience of working in the East End, certainly on the local employment in construction, was that actually that was not their preference. And I think the trick is to get them into employment into things that they want to do. I do not know how much of your emphasis on this front is solely on construction. Whilst I see the possibilities, and many of us may do, it...

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 15 February 2007

One of the areas which you have not touched on in terms of environmental commitments is the waterways, I mean the backbone of the Olympic site has both the River Lea and canals. I just want to be clear what your commitments are there, how much progress you have made and what we can expect in the near future, in terms of check-off points.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 15 February 2007

From what I understand of it, the environmental strategies are all pretty good stuff, and I am generally happy to support them and sign-up to them, but I am getting complaints from local residents that on the ground where works are already taking place, for example, test works or earth moving works, or works along the canal network, that the customer practice that has been developed by contractors does not seem to be consistent with those strategies; Roadways have been closed unnecessarily, trees which are mature, which would appear to have a life beyond the Olympics, have been torn down...

• Reference: 2007/0013-1
• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 15 February 2007

What are you doing to ensure the economic boost brought to the host boroughs and the rest of London will be sustained beyond 2012?

• 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...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

I think this is a fantastically important matter, and I suppose the problem I have with Dee Doocey's question is that it's very easy to try to put a number on this and say that £4 billion will solve the problem. I think we all know that out there there's a scepticism in the wider public that we are spending more on public services. I'd like more to be spent on my constituency in East London. People are asking whether we are getting sufficient value out of it, whether our services are sufficiently functional and so on, so clearly, there...