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• Reference: 2013/0009-1
• Question by: Stephen Knight
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Can you expand on the benefits of allowing local and regional government to make greater use of prudential borrowing to finance capital investment?

• Reference: 2013/0010-1
• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Given the legislative changes that would be required to devolve some of the more far-reaching revenue raising powers identified in the London Finance Commission's Raising the Capital report, what measures could be implemented more quickly and without recourse to Parliament?

• Reference: 2013/0011-1
• Question by: Gareth Bacon MP
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

What should the next steps be for taking forward the recommendations of the London Finance Commission's report?

• Reference: 2013/0012-1
• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Given the windfall gains that land and property owners benefit from when transport infrastructure is built, could a tax on those gains help pay for the infrastructure?

• Reference: 2013/0013-1
• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Darren Johnson (Chair): We then move to item 4, which is the question and answer session on the London Finance Commission (LFC) and we welcome Professor Tony Travers, the Chair of that Commission, to answer questions. Each group has a lead-off question, but we will begin with a brief opening statement from Professor Travers.

• Question by: Tom Copley
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Tom Copley (AM): The report outlines the need to shift from, in terms of housing, subsidising rents towards subsidising capital instead. Could you tell us how you anticipate this could be done, particularly in terms of timescales and also the necessary transitional measures, which are mentioned in the report?

• 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: 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: Kit Malthouse
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Kit Malthouse (AM): Professor, it is very interesting, what you have been saying this morning. Obviously the restrictions on borrowing by local authorities were loosened in 2003. I hesitate to be political about it, but the strict introductions that were introduced in the 1980s were in response to irresponsible borrowing by a number of local authorities, not least Liverpool and Hammersmith and Fulham, interestingly, and also I think the interest rate swap debacle where Hammersmith and Fulham lost the case on their treasury management and got into all sorts of trouble. The reason that the Government introduced those restrictions back...