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• Question by: Emma Best
• Meeting date: 12 October 2023

Emma Best AM: Thank you. Like many, I have been devastated this party conference season to see on show the growing transphobic rhetoric in all parties [represented] within this Assembly. I clearly acknowledge with sadness that the crescendo of that lies with my own party due to the seniority with which those comments come. LGBT and particularly trans Londoners are some of the most vulnerable in London. It is not just the cost of living but the political landscape which is having a long-term effect on mental health. Firstly, can I give a rare and genuine thank you for your...

• Question by: Emma Best
• Meeting date: 07 September 2023

Emma Best AM: I think so. Thanks, Chair. Yes, I was just trying to work out Deputy Mayor [Tom] Copley’s political neutrality, which seemed a lot stronger when he was talking to Assembly Member [Tony] Devenish than Assembly Member [Unmesh] Desai.

• Question by: Emma Best
• Meeting date: 18 May 2023

Emma Best AM: Thank you, Chair. Just quickly, Mr Mayor. 18% of the affordable housing starts last year [2022] were family homes - only 18% - and, clearly, that is not going to meet the need to support overcrowded homes. Will you look urgently into making sure that that percentage increases when we look at these stats next year [2024]?

• Question by: Emma Best
• Meeting date: 16 March 2023

Emma Best AM: Thank you, Chair, and good morning, both. Liz, we were just hearing from [Lord] Peter Hendy [CBE] then that Mayoral Development Corporations (MDCs) “get things done”. According to the [Sir Bob] Kerslake Review [ of GLA Group Housing Delivery ], the OPDC “has not delivered any housing directly”. Is this something that you think is now a position that has changed and you feel more confident about delivery?

• Question by: Emma Best
• Meeting date: 01 December 2022

Emma Best AM: Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to pick up on that point earlier about the language used, and that applies to parliamentary parties as well. The opposition particularly has to be really careful not to dehumanise the Government and politicians of the party in charge on the day. I and many of my colleagues receive death threats. We walk out of this building and do not have security surrounding us. That comes when opposition politicians call us ‘scum,’ and when they incite and praise violence. I stand with the Mayor. I see your Twitter and that is...

• Question by: Emma Best
• Meeting date: 01 December 2022

Emma Best AM: Thank you. Mr Mayor, to come back to the point I was making earlier - and I should have made this clearer at the time - I was speaking recently to someone and I had that conversation about professionals. I said: “Sometimes it is just easier to not say what you do.” They were a police officer and they said: “Yes, same for me.” It made me realise that it is that language problem, and police officers face that too, especially this new phrase coming in from America: ‘ACAB’. I hope I do not need to say...

• Question by: Emma Best
• Meeting date: 17 November 2022

Emma Best AM: Thank you. I was really brought in by Assembly Member Baker’s line of questioning there, and Assembly Member Unmesh Desai, actually, let Assembly Member Keith Prince finish earlier, so perhaps I will expand all that for her, though I had not planned to. That is the really important point, those lost journeys. A lot of the emails I get are about “I go and visit my Dad or my Mum/I do the shopping for my uncle every week, and I am not going to be able to afford to make that journey.” How are you measuring that...

• Question by: Emma Best
• Meeting date: 06 October 2022

Emma Best AM: Thank you, Chair. My colleague just briefly brought up the London Youth Games there and I wanted to quickly confirm, hopefully, from either Lyn or Jules whether, with young children being able to use the Olympic Stadium and facilities over the last ten years, that legacy will continue and they will continue to use those facilities over the next ten years and beyond.

• Question by: Emma Best
• Meeting date: 08 September 2022

Emma Best AM: Thank you, Chair. Good morning, Jules and Michelle. My questioning was going to be mainly around the targeting of the AEB and so I was quite pleased that in the questions from Assembly Member Sheikh you have already recognised the Mayor and his programme is failing to adequately support disabled Londoners and so we do not need to go back too deeply into that.

• Question by: Emma Best
• Meeting date: 09 June 2022

Emma Best AM: In 2017, TfL modelling suggested that 135,000 vehicles per day would use the expanded ULEZ and that was the justification for spending £130 million on the expansion. Fast-forward to today - or to November [2021] when we had the last stock of that - and you have 50,000 chargeable vehicles travelling within the expanded zone. That is a little over a third of where the estimated figure came in the forecast. Now, looking ahead to the London-wide expansion, TfL estimates that 87% of vehicles travelling within that zone will be compliant, leaving 13% that are not. There...