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• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

I was just wondering what the impact of the minimum wage has been in London in reducing relative poverty. Clearly, it affects those in employment, rather than those outside it, but I would like some idea of what the experts feel has been the impact.

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

I understand that there should be a London rate, and I think there has been work done on that, on the living wage. Coming back to Kate (Green)'s point that tax credits are more significant, one of the experiences I have come across is that the bureaucracy of targeted financial programmes can be such that it actually puts off a lot of people from sitting down and putting in the applications that they are perfectly entitled to make. I don't know if you have got any thoughts on that, and how that can be cleared up so that it's a...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

I think this is a fantastically important matter, and I suppose the problem I have with Dee Doocey's question is that it's very easy to try to put a number on this and say that £4 billion will solve the problem. I think we all know that out there there's a scepticism in the wider public that we are spending more on public services. I'd like more to be spent on my constituency in East London. People are asking whether we are getting sufficient value out of it, whether our services are sufficiently functional and so on, so clearly, there...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 19 July 2006

I would like to take a slightly less negative approach than the UK Independence Party (UKIP) on this issue. The ability of EU funds to transform other areas of Europe where there is experience of poverty has been quite significant, and, given that there are areas of considerable poverty within London, and you may not be able to answer this, but can you think of examples of good practice elsewhere and has, for example, the Child Poverty Action Group, looked at examples of good practice in other European states which could be echoed and mirrored and copied and stolen to...