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• Question by: Florence Eshalomi MP
• Meeting date: 07 December 2016

Florence Eshalomi AM: It is great to see you here as a London Member of Parliament (MP) for Croydon, not too far from my constituency in Lambeth and Southwark. One of the main issues that has been on your agenda and I am sure in your inbox as well has been the issue around Southern Rail. In the run-up to the mayoral election, quite a number of the candidates committed to looking at further rail devolution in London and it is right to say that it is something that has worked quite well with London Overground. Given that there is...

• Question by: Tom Copley
• Meeting date: 07 December 2016

Tom Copley AM: Good morning, Minister. Thank you for being here today. I listened with interest to your exchange with Assembly Member Devenish. It feels to me like your predecessor in the previous Government seemed to put all his eggs in the Starter Homes basket and in the affordable homeownership basket. What you seem to have said by saying that there is no silver bullet is perhaps that that was not the right approach. Do you and the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) support a full range of tenures and affordable tenures for London and does that include...

• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 07 December 2016

Len Duvall AM: I would like to return to the issue about rail privatisation and the issues around that. Can I thank you for your earlier statement in saying that you would come back before us? We are very grateful. We know that you do not have to and we look forward to further opportunities to pose questions to you on topical issues. In terms of the transport announcements made yesterday and the links with the wider issues around economic performance, would you agree that the issues in Kent and London coincide? We all want the best for the rail...

• Question by: Nicky Gavron
• Meeting date: 07 December 2016

Nicky Gavron AM: Minister, good morning. I wanted to ask you a question about permitted development rights, which allow a change of use from offices and other workspaces now to residential without going through the planning system. Everyone around this horseshoe agrees that we need more affordable housing and we need more housing generally, but we also desperately need affordable workspace. Change of use is offering a windfall in terms of upping value to property owners and to developers. What we are seeing in London is that rents are going up and, in many cases, land prices are going up...

• Question by: Andrew Dismore
• Meeting date: 07 December 2016

Andrew Dismore AM: Could I go back to rail devolution? In the Evening Standard today there is a letter from Chris Grayling [MP, Secretary of State for Transport] to Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson wrote to Mr Grayling supporting the idea of rail devolution. The letter says this: “Thank you for your letter of 17 April about the possibility of TfL taking on responsibility for a number [of] rail services in the London area, but outside the Greater London boundary. While I am generally a great supporter of what you are doing in London, I would not be in favour of...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

Absolutely. I am aware of the Canary Wharf initiative, and I laud it. It is absolutely fantastic, and it is the kind of thing we want. We work very closely in north London with The College of North West London to try to look at the skills that will be needed in that area. Therefore, through the LSC and the further education colleges, it is absolutely essential that we work out the skills that are needed. That is what happened in Canary Wharf. They worked out the skills that were needed, and then were able to provide the training for...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 08 September 2005

I think it would be very helpful if that were done, but also, if something which is accessible to local businesses who are not politicians like us ' who understand all these convoluted politician-speak reports ' something which they could understand and could understand how they could have access to tendering and contracts and get some of the benefits which they have been promised out of the Olympics. I hope that is possible, as well. The second question, then, is about employment training in the construction industry. My understanding is that there has already been quite a bit of work...

• Reference: 2004/0196-1
• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

How are you going to ensure that those living in Thames Gateway will have the necessary skills to access more of the new jobs created there? .

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

Perhaps I should declare that I was at that partnership board as well, and I welcome the work that you are doing on this. But my constituents in east London can, I think, be forgiven for being a bit cynical about regeneration in the area, because it is all very well to get investment bankers there, but very few local kids become investment bankers and the arrival of investment bankers very often, by driving up the land values, forces out SMEs in traditional old workshops, which have been a classic leg-up for people in east London in the past. They...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

Business start-ups and SMEs set up, particularly by minority ethnic communities in east London, have been pretty fundamental in the last 20 years or so, and yet, if I look through East Ham, West Ham and Tower Hamlets, the sort of premises they used to occupy have disappeared. The ones that are now available are unaffordable. How are the LDA and the other partnerships going to intervene in that?