Mr Mayor, can I raise the issue of sectarian tensions in London from the Middle East conflicts between Sunni and Shia? I welcome the comments you made to Andrew Boff AM that you do not want to see international disputes come to the streets of London. In the past 15 months I have seen a number of incidents which concern me. The first was raised by Lebanese businesses on the Edgware Road about Anjem Choudary’s [cleric] mob inciting clearly religious hatred aimed at Shias. It was dealt with as a public order offence but an opportunity was missed to deal...
That is very welcome. Will you actually write that into the contracts, and has it already been written into those contracts that have already been let?
Again, will there be independent monitoring, as I mentioned earlier with the sustainability issues, of contracts, compliance, and such like to ensure that it does happen, and it is actually delivered?
Is there a declared date for that to happen, or is this going to be a gradual process? We have already heard that the position over the land acquisition is not completely clear and is in a process of negotiation.
Would you not agree that we have five layers of bureaucracy already in this structure chart that we have seen? That is before some of these organisations come into being. There is also a tremendous amount of confusion ' certainly in our minds ' as to what these various different bodies are going to do. It therefore suggests that it is going to be difficult, if not impossible, for this Assembly to properly scrutinise this work. The suggestion is very clear that the attempt is being made to obscure the whole thing, so that if and when anything goes wrong...