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• 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...

• 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.

• 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?

• 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...

• 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?

• 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?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 06 April 2005

On your own admission just now, you have made clear that the transport system is not ideal. We have a situation here where people are being asked to pay not only a 60% increase, but with the western extension, TfL's own economic impact assessment makes clear that there will be a reduction in lunch-time customers for restaurants, shift-workers such as cleaners will suffer, `retailers may close down', `retailers may relocate', and delivery costs will be passed to customers. Are you not at all concerned about the disastrous impact of the Congestion Charge and the western extension over the next few...

• Reference: 2005/0139-1
• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 06 April 2005

Do you think there is any scope to improve the accountability of TfL to Londoners and, if so, how would you suggest this can be achieved?