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• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

Not with the drilling down into these projects; that is just an overall process, we checked that. This is about the specific projects. There is no oversight, there are no proper outputs worked out; the thing is a bit of a shambles. Somebody has to do this. We should not be doing it. Now you are criticising us for trying to put it right.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

Right, so this is something that is absolutely in the lap of Greenwich Council and nothing to do with you? You have washed your hands of it?

• Reference: 2007/2664
• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

In the light of the London Assembly's report, does the Mayor consider that financial controls on the London Development Agency's expenditure on cultural events is adequate?

• Reference: 2007/2665
• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

In light of TfL figures released under FoI to the Association of British Drivers showing that the vast majority of Greenwich residents oppose any form of 'congestion charge' in the area, can the Mayor confirm that he will drop this option?

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

So it is a 3% levy on the business rate from 2010 to 2035, by which time it will have been absorbed into the general level of taxation and everyone will have forgotten what it was like in the first place because we do not last 25 years in business. Really it is a sort of extra tax in perpetuity on business.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

The point I am making is that 3% extra levy on the business rate is not just going to be for 7 years; it is going to go on for 25 years and do other things.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

Mr Mayor, are you satisfied and happy that this design is buildable? Zaha Hadid has produced these wonderful looking things but she has only had one building actually built and that was in the States. I am concerned that it might look wonderful on paper but is it practical to build it?

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

It is market. Whatever businesses are viable in particular locations are going to be viable and if you not have that then you are subsidising businesses which would not otherwise survive.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

In the Contract Journal there was something that caught my eye on 26 September; a comment like this, 'TfL are determined to frighten off other bidders. You may get a couple of financial bidders but will they be able to attract any contractors to do the work with such a hostile client in the mix?', the hostile client being TfL.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

Is TfL really trying to deter anybody else from bidding? Obviously your intention is to take those contracts back in-house. In a sense it is like a re-nationalisation. You are going to take them back into public ownership. You are determined to do that. Initial soundings from the Arbiter would suggest that there is some value in those contracts and that other people might be prepared to bid for them. I think you seem to be quite determined to deter those people from bidding.