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• Reference: 2013/0011-1
• Question by: Gareth Bacon MP
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

What should the next steps be for taking forward the recommendations of the London Finance Commission's report?

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Richard Tracey (AM): Tony, in your report you do talk to quite a great extent about Crossrail and we will all remember very much the length of the process to get funding, to get the whole process through. Now we are beginning to talk about Crossrail 2, which is very important in my constituency and in southwest London. To what extent do you believe the suggestions you have made would help to produce Crossrail 2 much sooner than is currently anticipated?

• Question by: Andrew Boff
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Andrew Boff (AM): I think, Professor Travers, when Assembly Member [Tom] Copley talks about a growing consensus on housing, he is talking about a growing consensus in the Labour Party on housing, and that, as you so rightly pointed out, there is a difference between a policy that subsidises houses irrespective of the needs of the people who live in them, and the policy that we favour of helping people when they need it. But that was not what I was going to ask. I really wondered whether or not you had reference to the European Charter of Local Self-Government...

• Question by: Kit Malthouse
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Kit Malthouse (AM): Professor, it is very interesting, what you have been saying this morning. Obviously the restrictions on borrowing by local authorities were loosened in 2003. I hesitate to be political about it, but the strict introductions that were introduced in the 1980s were in response to irresponsible borrowing by a number of local authorities, not least Liverpool and Hammersmith and Fulham, interestingly, and also I think the interest rate swap debacle where Hammersmith and Fulham lost the case on their treasury management and got into all sorts of trouble. The reason that the Government introduced those restrictions back...

• Question by: Andrew Boff
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Andrew Boff (AM): I do hate it, Professor Travers, when you come here because you answer all my questions before I have asked them. But do you think the Mayor is missing a trick in just lobbying for London when he should actually be lobbying for cities? It strikes me that the 'carrot crunchers' have their lobby groups and unfortunately the cities do not seem to have a cohesive one.

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 05 June 2013

Richard Tracey (AM): Tony, what makes you any more optimistic that the Government is going to accept these ideas you have put forward than they did in dealing with business rates? They first of all said that they were going to hand the whole of business rates over as I recollect and it finished up being 50%, so what is the prospect?

• Reference: 2012/0221-1
• Question by: Gareth Bacon MP
• Meeting date: 24 October 2012

Stamp Duty and Income tax have both been mooted as potential candidates for tax devolution from Whitehall to London. How would you see the devolution of these taxes working, in practice? Which do you see as a more attractive option?

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 24 October 2012

Tony, you have already spelt out some of the complexities of trying to bring something like this in and you have discussed whether it would simply be London or whether it would apply to the rest of the country, but surely one of the other enormous unfairnesses of it would be at what level and percentage it came in and indeed who qualified. Liberal Democrat politicians have been talking about a mansion tax applying over £1 million or £2 million, which seems very unfair, but surely the really serious unfairness of this would be if young people trying to get...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 24 October 2012

Roger Evans (AM): I too spent a pleasant lunch some years ago being lobbied on this matter by Dave Wetzel [President of the Labour Land Campaign]. Professor Tony Travers (Chair, London Finance Commission): It is always fun. Roger Evans (AM): Yes, and he made the point that Jenny [Jones] does that it would encourage better use of land in London. Does that not mean that if you are using a piece of land for residential purposes it will encourage you to put a block of flats on it, the higher the better, rather than just ordinary houses?

• Question by: Andrew Boff
• Meeting date: 24 October 2012

Andrew Boff (AM): Professor Travers, do you think that the localisation of business rates might assist local authorities in dealing with the blight of empty shops and derelict land?