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• 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...

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

Certainly my perception is that the LSC has failed to encourage a breadth of skills training, and that's why we have this deficit in the building trade. Joiners, plumbers, they are all Europeans coming in and filling these jobs, and the indigenous population in young people leaving schools are not getting a chance because they do not have the skills and there is somehow no way that they can get the training. So, I am afraid, this is very true and I see this all the time in my constituencies. There is, actually, a wonderful life for people who have...

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

What I wanted to ask about is the skills shortage that there is in London, and, Mr Ross, you touched on that at the very start of this meeting. There are whole areas of skills in the building trade which we do not have any longer, and so, therefore, people from Europe are walking into jobs here instead of the indigenous population. What I was going to suggest to the Mayor, now he is in charge of the Learning and Skills Board and stuff, and the new strategy, why do we not think of going back to the apprenticeship scheme...

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

I would like to take a slightly less negative approach than the UK Independence Party (UKIP) on this issue. The ability of EU funds to transform other areas of Europe where there is experience of poverty has been quite significant, and, given that there are areas of considerable poverty within London, and you may not be able to answer this, but can you think of examples of good practice elsewhere and has, for example, the Child Poverty Action Group, looked at examples of good practice in other European states which could be echoed and mirrored and copied and stolen to...