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  • Incidence and Nature of Poverty in London (Supplementary) [14]

    • Question by: Damian Hockney
    • Meeting date: 19 July 2006
    I just want to briefly return to this business of definitions, because some mathematicians have calculated that one of the reasons why there are so many variations in different countries about what is defined on the 60% median of people in poverty is because, quite simply, if you change your tax structure slightly, if in Britain the Government were simply to tax slightly more heavily those just above the poverty level, you could, at a stroke, to use an old phrase, remove half a million people from poverty. Now, even if we accept these definitions, and I appreciate, Kate (Kate...

  • Incidence and Nature of Poverty in London (Supplementary) [16]

    • Question by: Damian Hockney
    • Meeting date: 19 July 2006
    Would you all support the idea, then, of removing from tax, the poor, as other countries are gradually doing? We should stop taking money away from the ones we are defining as poor, which leaves them poor, and creates dependency upon the state, while still worrying about the number of and the percentage of people in poverty. Surely, we should strip out their tax, get rid of their taxation, remove it. Many of them will then immediately not be poor. Surely we would all agree with that.

  • Role of Education, Training & Employment in Lifting People out of Poverty (Supplementary) [4]

    • Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
    • Meeting date: 19 July 2006
    Mr Faulkner and panel, going back to your opening remarks, I very much concur with what you said, because it squares with my own personal experience. The businesses are prepared to invest in training of their staff when things are prosperous; when things are not so prosperous they cut back, and training is one of the first things to go. At the moment we have a situation in London where unemployment is rising, where the closure of small businesses, according to the VAT figures, is actually more than those businesses which are opening, so, we seem to be in a...

  • Funding Poverty Alleviation, Including EU Structural Funds (Supplementary) [2]

    • Question by: Damian Hockney
    • Meeting date: 19 July 2006
    Do any of you know how our Structural Fund for Objective Two or Three, in London has been used to deal with things like poverty? Anything you could point to: that is a marvellous idea, or that is a very bad idea?

  • Funding Poverty Alleviation, Including EU Structural Funds (Supplementary) [3]

    • Question by: Damian Hockney
    • Meeting date: 19 July 2006
    Obviously you all know my opinions on the EU and Structural Funds. It is a very bureaucratic, arthritic way of getting back a tiny proportion of the money that we have to give to the EU. Would it not be nice to have all of that money here to be able to do the things we would like to do with poverty, with unemployment, and so on? It's not an ideal way, and are we not going to lose a lot of that in the next aspects of funding, because a lot of the accession countries are going to take...

  • Terms of the termination of your engagement to which TfL have agreed. (Supplementary) [3]

    • Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
    • Meeting date: 18 January 2006
    If I could dwell on examples, there has been some press speculation about the quota of business-class or first-class transatlantic flights that are afforded to you. There has been speculation about the catering bills; some cuttings from the Evening Standard suggest you are fed to a far higher standard than humble Assembly Members, for example. There has been other stuff like that, and I suppose it may be viewed as nosiness but I guess there is an aspect of public interest as to what perks there are around your employment and whether there is a transparency and understanding about those.

  • Provisions of Consultancy (Supplementary) [4]

    • Question by: Damian Hockney
    • Meeting date: 18 January 2006
    Can you let me know how many other individual consultants in your time have been paid more than £3,000 a day and on what sort of basis while you have been Commissioner?

  • Consultancy Benefits (Supplementary) [2]

    • Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
    • Meeting date: 18 January 2006
    You had a new roof, but obviously that has to be fixed. Nevertheless, £108,000 for external maintenance seems a huge sum even if you had a new roof and had it painted twice.

  • Consultancy Benefits (Supplementary) [3]

    • Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
    • Meeting date: 18 January 2006
    During the time that you have been resident at the house, there have been various expenditures on it. I believe the total, if my information is correct, comes to just over £138,000. Some of that has been external work and some of that has been internal work, but that does seem to be an inordinately large sum considering that when the house was purchased it was described as being restored and modernised to an exceptionally high standard.

  • Reasons for your leaving TfL (Supplementary) [3]

    • Question by: Damian Hockney
    • Meeting date: 18 January 2006
    I really want to pick up on what Roger Evans has just said. You mentioned the inevitability of disagreements between professionals; absolutely, that is par for the course. What I wanted to know was, apart from when your contract was renewed a year ago, were lawyers involved in the achievement of this recent settlement?