Search questions

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 16 March 2011

Yes, Chair. I am impressed the Mayor has created another functional body: Bacon for London! I have three areas of questioning - very briefly. The first is you are trying to clutch some sort of victory out of the jaws of defeat, I would suggest. The Government effectively abolished both the budgets and the entities of the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) last year, while accepting that City Hall is going to have some economic regeneration capacity. I pay tribute to you personally because I know you have been scrambling in the background to try to persuade it that it made...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 16 March 2011

Yes, Chair. I am impressed the Mayor has created another functional body: Bacon for London! I have three areas of questioning - very briefly. The first is you are trying to clutch some sort of victory out of the jaws of defeat, I would suggest. The Government effectively abolished both the budgets and the entities of the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) last year, while accepting that City Hall is going to have some economic regeneration capacity. I pay tribute to you personally because I know you have been scrambling in the background to try to persuade it that it made...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 16 March 2011

Thank you, Chair. Cruel fate has dictated that I lead on this as well! I am very grateful for your opening comments. Can you tell us what progress you have made in your discussions with the boroughs in particular on how they might be affected, particularly on the planning powers?

• Reference: 2006/0208-1
• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

How is the LDA responding to the review of the Mayor's powers?

• Reference: 2006/0209-1
• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

What evidence has been drawn so far of the economic development benefits of the Agency's childcare projects?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 January 2006

Sally Hamwee (Chair): I explained when I wrote to you ' I think it was before Christmas ' that we would ask about the financial details because it is a very particular, very unusual position that you are in, very much one of public interest. John Biggs (AM): The question was to ask you for a list of the contractual benefits to which you are entitled up to 31 January. Could you tell us how many crates of claret, how many rooms at the Savoy, how many transatlantic flights, how many gold-plated telephones you get as part of your contract?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 January 2006

I was a little uneasy about this question, but I was allocated a lead role on it. Perhaps some of my less pleasant colleagues would like to follow it through. It seems to me that we have a perfect right under the Access to Information legislation to ask formal questions of TfL and the Mayor to which we get formal answers. I suppose underlying this is a concern that down the years that TfL has not been the most transparent organisation in the world. I guess that the contract of its Chief Executive could be seen as the apex of...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 January 2006

I do not want to rake over answers you have given already, but at the last Mayor's Question Time, the Mayor described that it was asserted ' I think it was an Evening Standard story ' that there had been a bust-up between you and him about the fate or future or proposals of Jay Walder (Managing Director, Finance and Planning, TfL). He described that as being rubbish and piffle. Would you use similar words to describe that or was the Mayor being less than open with us on that matter?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 January 2006

Is there a fundamental disagreement between yourself and Mr Walder on an aspect of strategy which was instrumental in your decision to hang up your boots?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 January 2006

I have one other question about your management style. Perhaps you can put the record straight on this, because the press can be very wounding. There have been allegations on the one hand that you are a dreadful control freak and that nothing has happened in TfL without you blocking it or running it over your desk; on the other hand, there have been various scurrilous allegations that in fact you have been almost negligent in your role and are barely in the office, that you have a cardboard cut-out there, for example, and nothing really happens. Can you clarify...