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• 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: Fiona Twycross
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Fiona Twycross (AM): I want to go back to the point about the borrowing cap on local government in relation to borrowing and at a recent meeting of the Assembly's Housing Committee we heard that, although there are only 10,000 new social housing properties currently in the pipeline, if the cap was removed there was scope for building 800,000. I just wondered, obviously that is down to the political decision-making issue as suggested, but how likely do you think it is for the Government to relax or remove the limits on borrowing?

• 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: Fiona Twycross
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Fiona Twycross (AM): I think you made some really interesting points on English devolution and in one sense localism represents a very basic form of devolution. Did the recommendations of the report represent radical localism? If so, what benefits could devolving revenue-raising powers bring to the rest of England?

• 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...