Search questions

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Richard Tracey (AM): Tony, in your report you do talk to quite a great extent about Crossrail and we will all remember very much the length of the process to get funding, to get the whole process through. Now we are beginning to talk about Crossrail 2, which is very important in my constituency and in southwest London. To what extent do you believe the suggestions you have made would help to produce Crossrail 2 much sooner than is currently anticipated?

• Question by: Andrew Boff
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Andrew Boff (AM): I think, Professor Travers, when Assembly Member [Tom] Copley talks about a growing consensus on housing, he is talking about a growing consensus in the Labour Party on housing, and that, as you so rightly pointed out, there is a difference between a policy that subsidises houses irrespective of the needs of the people who live in them, and the policy that we favour of helping people when they need it. But that was not what I was going to ask. I really wondered whether or not you had reference to the European Charter of Local Self-Government...

• Question by: Andrew Boff
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Andrew Boff (AM): I do hate it, Professor Travers, when you come here because you answer all my questions before I have asked them. But do you think the Mayor is missing a trick in just lobbying for London when he should actually be lobbying for cities? It strikes me that the 'carrot crunchers' have their lobby groups and unfortunately the cities do not seem to have a cohesive one.

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Richard Tracey (AM): Tony, what makes you any more optimistic that the Government is going to accept these ideas you have put forward than they did in dealing with business rates? They first of all said that they were going to hand the whole of business rates over as I recollect and it finished up being 50%, so what is the prospect?

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 24 October 2012

Tony, you have already spelt out some of the complexities of trying to bring something like this in and you have discussed whether it would simply be London or whether it would apply to the rest of the country, but surely one of the other enormous unfairnesses of it would be at what level and percentage it came in and indeed who qualified. Liberal Democrat politicians have been talking about a mansion tax applying over £1 million or £2 million, which seems very unfair, but surely the really serious unfairness of this would be if young people trying to get...

• Question by: Andrew Boff
• Meeting date: 24 October 2012

Andrew Boff (AM): Professor Travers, do you think that the localisation of business rates might assist local authorities in dealing with the blight of empty shops and derelict land?