Adam Bienkov noted this afternoon the jaw dropping claim by a Tory member of the London Assembly that most Londoners don’t use public transport.

Bienkov reports:

Speaking at a City Hall debate on Boris Johnson’s budget, Tony Arbour claimed that:

“It is a fact is it not that relatively few Londoners use London transport in any way. Most people don’t use London transport with any sense of regularity.”

He went on to tell the Mayor that it was a “principal of conservatism” that “those [people] who receive a service are those who should pay for it.”

Boris Johnson replied that he would “need to get the figures” Arbour was referring to.

As both Bienkov and Mark Ferguson at LabourList have pointed out, Arbour is hopelessly wrong. With 1.1 billion tube journeys a year, 8.4 million combined daily trips on rail, underground, DLR, bus, tram and taxis, and all methods of transport except car drivers and motorcyclists increasing in the last ten years, it is not a fact that “few Londoners use London transport in any way”.

While his facts need a thorough going over, we at Left Foot Forward are always happy to see politicians staking out their principles, so Arbour’s ‘principle of conservatism’ that ‘those [people] who receive a service are those who should pay for it’, while wrong, could mark him out as a better type of politician.

Except when it comes to his own interests, he’s quite happy to treat principles with the same reckless abandon as facts.

In November 2009, the GLA reported that:

Tony Arbour has welcomed yesterday’s definitive assurance from the Mayor of London that the 24-hour Freedom Pass shall remain.

Commenting after Mayor Questions at City Hall during which Boris Johnson gave an assurance that the Pass would continue, Mr Arbour, the Assembly Member for South West London said:

“Boris delivered his promise for a round the clock Freedom Pass; who can doubt his commitment to keep it?”

And in January 2010, they wrote:

Tony Arbour, Richmond and Kingston’s GLA Member has called on the Royal Parks Agency to concentrate on repairing Richmond Park’s roads rather than attempting to turn its car parks into revenue-raising machines.

Tony said:

“Much of Richmond Park’s perimeter road is in a terrible state. The new aggregate used to resurface the road during the summer has dislodged and is now lying in the road. This has left patches of exposed tar that is being flicked up by passing cars and bikes getting only bodywork, clothes and skin, which is proving very difficult to clean off.

“I call on the Parks agency to deal with this serious problem as a matter of urgency instead of focusing on imposing car parking charges on Park visitors.”

Arbour may have raised the flag of conservative principles in City Hall, but in the end he’s just chasing re-election.

See also:

• Fact Check fact checked: London’s fares CAN be cut – Tom Copley, January 25th 2012

• The environment trumps the debate between a tunnel or a bridge – Darren Johnson AM, January 21st 2012

• Boris’s electric vehicle boasts are an inverted pyramid of piffle – Darren Johnson AM, January 10th 2012

• Boris fiddles as London prepares for transport chaos – Alex Hern, October 19th 2011

• Boris’s backward steps for London on pollution and traffic congestion – Eleanor Besley, June 3rd 2011

Three months out from May’s Mayoral elections, Ken Livingstone today unveiled his “policing pledge for London”.

The two key planks of the Labour candidate’s promise are to reverse present Mayor Boris Johnson’s cuts to 1,700 police officers in the Met, and to reinstate sergeants to all 600 Safer Neighbourhood Teams, more of which will be beefed up to a minimum of nine officers, reversing the Tory incumbent’s cut to 300 sergeants in 2011.

Figures from the Metropolitan Police show violent crimes such as robbery, residential burglary and rape have all risen while police numbers have been cut, with knife crime rising every year under Johnson.

Police officer numbers peaked in 2010 at 33,260 officers; there are currently now just 31,657 officers in London. Last month, having earlier tried to spin otherwise, Boris finally admitted cutting 1,700 police officers.

Livingstone today said:

“Boris Johnson has admitted cutting 1,700 police officers. If I am elected, I will reverse his cuts. And I will reinstate sergeants to all 600 Safer Neighbourhood Teams, more of which will be beefed up to a minimum of nine officers.

“At a time when violent crimes including robbery, knife crime and rape are all rising in London it’s time to reverse the Tory Mayor’s cuts to the police and make the streets safer.”

With Labour’s Joanne McCartney AM, who called Boris “completely out of touch”, adding:

“Londoners across the capital have been appalled by Boris Johnson’s police cuts. It’s essential that there is a visible policing presence on our streets.

“Boris Johnson’s decision to cut 1700 police officers, including 300 experienced local police team sergeants shows why he is increasingly known as a Mayor who is completely out of touch.”

Labour say Ken will bring in new money to fund his pledge by ensuring Transport for London pays the full cost of the Safer Transport teams; reducing spending on bureaucracy at the new Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPC); standing up against the national government’s cuts; and deploying new technology to ensure smarter working and increase detection rates.

The election takes place on Thursday, May 3rd.

See also:

• Boris Johnson’s use of statistics are designed to mislead the public – Len Duvall AM, January 25th 2012

• Ken pulls ahead of “increasingly out of touch” Boris – Shamik Das, January 19th 2012

• Boris’s retreat from accountability over the Met should worry us all – Joanne McCartney AM, January 16th 2012

• Anger with police sparked the riots – Ben Mitchell, December 4th 2011

• Boris is turning back the clock for women in London – Shelly Asquith, November 14th 2011

• Ken v Boris: Six months out, Livingstone steps up the pressure on transport and crime – Shelly Asquith, November 8th 2011

• The stats show the Tories make you worse off and less safe – Michael Burke, July 24th 2011

Len Duvall AM is the leader of the Labour group on the London Assembly

The opinion polls this week have clearly got London’s Tory Mayor spooked. Yesterday’s under-reported press release from Boris Johnson is the sign of a desperate man seeking to mislead the public about his record and smear our candidate Ken Livingstone. While we may not expect probity from the man who described the chair of the UK Statistics Authority as a ‘Labour stooge’, his relationship with the truth has clearly reached a new low.

The first dodgy claim is on police numbers.

It is distinctly odd for Boris’s team to claim he has increased the number of police by 1,000 on the day the Mayor himself admitted he had cut the number of police officers by more than 1,700 (in fact by 1,782).

Just in case you have any doubt on this figure, you can look on the Metropolitan Police Authority’s own website. In March 2010 there were 33,260 police officers in London, and the most recent monthly figures show the total at 31,478.

His team’s attempt to deny reality is simply staggering.

His second claim is that crime has come down more than 10% during his time as Mayor. Instead of using the traditional and well established statistical method of comparing the base year of, say, 2008, with his record in 2010/11, Boris Johnson’s team have decided to attempt to add all the recorded crimes together for 44 months of each Mayoral term.

This is misleading as it overestimates the crime levels that Boris inherited and ignores the real fall in crime that took place between 2004 and 2008.

As the Metropolitan Police Authority’s figures for recorded crime show, in 2007/8 there were 862,866 recorded crimes in London. By 2010/11 this had fallen to 822,478, a 4.7% fall in the total level of crime that is not disputed. But this is a fall of less than half the 10.6% that Boris Johnson claimed.

Crime has also fallen less quickly under the current Mayor than it did in the previous mayoral term.

In 2003/4, there were 1,060,927 recorded crimes in London and this fell to 862,866 recorded crimes in 2007/8. Overall this was a fall of 198,061 crimes, a total fall of 18.7%. Even allowing for the fact this was over three years rather than four, Boris Johnson would have to reduce the number of crimes this year by more than 120,000 or 14.7% just to match Ken’s record.

If we take the recorded crime figures for the last full year of each of the candidates, the picture is even starker.

In Ken’s last year as Mayor, the number of recorded crimes fell by 6.3% – more than during Boris Johnson’s entire time in office. By contrast, a comparison of Boris Johnson’s last year shows crime is only falling by 1.5% – more than four times as slowly. This also does not tell the story of the significant rises that are being seen in burglary, robbery, rape and knife crime.

The third, and perhaps most dishonest claim has been made about Ken’s record as Mayor.

Those with faint memories of the last general election might remember the criticism Chris Grayling received as shadow home secretary for using sets of crime statistics that you simply cannot compare. Boris Johnson has sought to deliberately mislead the public in the same way, comparing pre 2002 statistics with figures after the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) was implemented nationally.

As House of Commons Library research shows, the NCRS figures are estimated to have pushed up recorded crime levels by 10% overall, and the levels of violent crime by 20%.

The dodgy use of statistics is the desperate refuge of a campaign that is on the run. It seems Boris is becoming increasingly aware he has a poor record to defend, prompting him to inflate his own achievements and smear those of his rival. But the public are not fools, and Boris Johnson’s attempt to mislead them can only backfire.

See also:

• Fact Check fact checked: London’s fares CAN be cut – Tom Copley, January 25th 2012

• Ken stays ahead as Boris doubles-down on blaming young people for youth unemployment – Alex Hern, January 23rd 2012

• Boris Johnson’s words show he doesn’t care about young people – Val Shawcross AM, January 20th 2012

• Ken pulls ahead of “increasingly out of touch” Boris – Shamik Das, January 19th 2012

• Boris, the bankers’ mayor, backs his chums over small businesses – Jenny Jones AM, January 17th 2012

Channel Four Fact Check assessed Ken Livingstone’s fare deal policy earlier today. Tom Copley sets out how Ken’s policy to cut the fares can be implemented without cutting investment.

Fact Check say:

There is no separate budget for investment projects.

The fact is:

There are two separate budgets at TfL, the operating and capital budgets. Fare cuts only affect the former. The capital budget is treated entirely separately.

Including Crossrail, 95.5 per cent of the investment budget is expected to be sourced from grants, Crossrail contributors, borrowing, asset sales and 3^rd party contributors over the period  2012/11 to 2014/15.

Source: TfL business plan, table 11, p.73 - pdf

Fact Check say:

Mr Livingstone is wrong to claim there’s a £729m surplus.

The fact is:

On 29^th June 2011 TfL reported it had an operating surplus of £727 million in the financial year 2010/11.

This was later revised upwards to £729 million. It is not simply an “underspend”, which implies it will later be spent. There are two sources of the surplus.

The first is that fare revenues continue to be much higher than budgeted for reflecting the effects of persistent above-inflation fares increases. In the last FY this surplus from revenues was £275 million, as shown in the accounts cited below.

The other source was much lower operating expenditure, £453 million lower than forecast. It is important to note that this is operational expenditure, not capital expenditure. Once it is underspent, it remains underspent.

TfL does not use the money to pay more in wages or buy more energy or fuel (or other items), which together form the overwhelming bulk of its operating budget.

Source: TfL board report, p.18, appendix two financial summary - pdf

Fact Check say:

TfL told us that any surplus at the moment is projected, but it would be “ploughed back into investment projects”.

The fact is:

TfL are using some of the operating surplus to pay down debt.

In an organisation the size of TfL it is possible to allocate unexpected surpluses in a number of ways if they are neither used to lower fares nor increase investment. Generally, the surplus could be allocated to cash balances, reserves, or used to pay down debt.

However, under political pressure from Ken’s campaign for lower fare, TfL has clearly been instructed to make a one-off debt repayment as the option, which is wholly unnecessary.

It was even suggested by Boris Johnson’s supporters (which of course includes Daniel Moylan at TfL, a Kensington & Chelsea Tory councillor and deputy chair of TfL) that the position of TfL was comparable to that of the government’s efforts to reduce debt and the deficit, neglecting entirely the fact that the government had a deficit, TfL is generating surpluses.

A separate file on the decision to pay down debt can be found here.

This is not a one-off.

Over the three years of the current mayor’s term the average annual operating surplus at TfL has been £301 million. The policy of two per cent above RPI fare increases while bearing down on operating costs means this surplus will automatically and unnecessarily rise.

This will become more pronounced following the announced fare increases for next year of seven per cent. As TfL continues to bear down on operating costs, the operating surplus will automatically rise and increase further in future years under this policy.

The policy of fares cuts merely prevents the wholly unnecessary ballooning of these surpluses.

It is implied, separately, that that the surplus is used to fund the capital budget. Tony Travers makes the point that the surplus could be used for fares, but that he favours using it for investment. This difference with Ken’s fare policy is an entirely legitimate difference of policy regarding the potential uses of the surplus. But it is clear from his comments that either is possible.

However, under Boris Johnson TfL has neither cut fares nor increased investment.

The £729 million surplus of FY 2010/11 did not lead to increased investment in the current FY. In the TfL business plan for FY 2011/12 the total capital expenditure was set at £1,949 million (p. 73, pdf). On the same comparable capital expenditure basis (that is, excluding Crossrail) TfL now forecasts that capital expenditure will be £1,708 million (p. 19, pdf).

That is, projected capital spending has fallen following a £729 million surplus, not risen to incorporate it.

There is already an unused surplus on the capital budget, as the same board minutes show. There was also an unused surplus on the capital budget, amounting to £273 million including Crossrail, £207 million excluding Crossrail (pdf).

This is under a regime sanctioned by the Mayor where a host of key improvements in the network have been delayed in a wholly misguided attempt to save money. This has led to delayed improvements on the Piccadilly Line and greatly prolonged disruption to refurbishment work at key interchanges such as Victoria Station .

The policy of cutting fares does not in any way dip into TfL reserves. It simply curbs the growth of operating surpluses.

It is nothing short of a scandal that the mayor is not even ensuring the timely application of the capital budget to the necessary improvements in the network. At the same time, the pretence that a fares cut will harm investment is entirely spurious, and serves as a distraction from his own failure to deliver improvements in the network for ordinary Londoners.

See also:

• Ken stays ahead as Boris doubles-down on blaming young people for youth unemployment – Alex Hern, January 23rd 2012

• Biggs: ‘Boris Tunnel’ is four years late and “doesn’t appear to have any funding” – Shamik Das, January 12th 2012

• Boris’s electric vehicle boasts are an inverted pyramid of piffle – Darren Johnson AM, January 10th 2012

• Boris fiddles as London prepares for transport chaos – Alex Hern, October 19th 2011

• Boris’s transport boasts are pure piffle – Rob Jenks, March 31st 2011

A new poll, released today, shows Ken Livingstone maintaining a two per cent lead against the incumbent mayor Boris Johnson.

The ComRes online poll finds that Livingstone gains 46 per cent of the first preferences to Johnson’s 44 per cent, and that after all second preferences have been re-allocated, the predicted result is 51-49.

Despite this, Boris is still the candidate most Londoners expect to win; 46 per cent think he’ll be the eventual victor, compared to 24 per cent for Ken, and eight per cent for Brian Paddick, the Lib Dem candidate who is also running again, making the election a three-way repeat of 2008.

Counter-intuitively, this latter statistic should be concerning for the Boris camp; complacency for his team and their campaigners would be damaging in what is likely to be an extremely hard-fought election.

There is strong evidence for an ‘underdog effect’, where the candidate who begins behind gains a larger share of the vote through campaigning than the one who begins ahead, and if Ken can maintain that boost even while actually being ahead, things could look bad indeed for the Conservatives.

Already, there are slightly dodgy tactics being used in a race which is shaping up to be one of the dirtier British campaigns of recent years.

Last week, Political Scrapbook reported that a TfL advertising campaign – taxpayer funded, and supposedly politically neutral – has been launched just in time for the election, highlighting all the improvements made in the last three years.

As Scrapbook notes:

The 2009-2012 timeframe given by the Every Journey Matters campaign provides for a time lapse allowing Boris’ transport programme to come on stream, and runs up to this year’s mayoral contest.

With the mayoral election just 114 days away and an introduction written and signed by the Mayor, this looks strikingly like campaign literature.

The mayor hasn’t been sitting on his laurels, however, with a column in the Telegraph that doubles down on his Friday claim that young people were to blame for their own massive levels of unemployment.

This week, he’s decided that the problem lies in the fact that:

There aren’t enough young people who have the skills and self-esteem to take what jobs there are – and there are too many young people who lack both.

Apparently having skills and self-esteem is all it takes to turn seven unemployed people for every job vacancy into a utopia of full employment. Thanks Boris!

See also:

• Boris Johnson’s words show he doesn’t care about young people - Val Shawcross AM, January 20th 2012

• Ken pulls ahead of “increasingly out of touch” Boris - Shamik Das, January 19th 2012

• Boris’s retreat from accountability over the Met should worry us all - January 16th 2012, Joanne McCartney AM

• It’s official: the 50p tax rate raises revenue - Alex Hern, January 9th 2012

• What costs £1.3 million a pop and, Boris hopes, will get him reelected? - Val Shawcross AM, December 16th 2011

Darren Johnson AM represents the Green Party in the London Assembly

From the media coverage of the Mayor of London’s proposed new Thames crossing at Silvertown, you will have been left with the impression that the choice is between a Boris tunnel, or a Ken bridge. The reality is that Londoners have a choice between a big new road and solving our chronic air pollution problems.

The current mayor wants to build a two lane tunnel next door to the Blackwall Tunnel. It is an old fashioned road building scheme that increases capacity and allows a lot more cars and lorries to travel through the same area. I will just list a few of the more obvious flaws in this idea.

London’s traffic is declining and has been for the last decade. People are switching to public transport as their preferred way of getting around. As the mayor himself says, if Londoners hadn’t made such a switch in the last eleven years there would be an extra million vehicle trips per day. So why are we building a new road to cope with less car trips?

The Silvertown tunnel was actually the second scheme in the queue, when Ken Livingstone was mayor.

The package of three river crossings put forward in his first term of office, included the Thames Gateway Bridge at Gallions Reach and the DLR extension.

It is worth considering that we now have the DLR extension to Lewisham, a cable car starting up in May, plus the east London extension has come south of the river and will soon be completing London’s orbital railway.

Crossrail will further increase that eastward penetration of public transport. Londoners’ ability to cross the river east of Tower Bridge have increased considerably, only you have to leave your cars at home.

Air pollution is already well over the European limits for NO2 throughout the area covered by the Blackwall Tunnel and its various feeder roads.

The previous mayor lost the support of the Inspector at the public inquiry (pdf) into the Thames Gateway Bridge partly because of the environmental arguments. The evidence about the health impacts of air pollution has grown even stronger in recent years and the failure of the Government to reduce pollution has become ever clearer.

Even if we accept the argument that the Blackwall Tunnel is a localised problem of too much demand and too little supply, then will a new tunnel, or bridge, do the trick?

Both the previous Mayor and the current one argue that there is suppressed demand from individuals and businesses in east London for more roads across the Thames.

TfL may well be able to argue that the jams at the Blackwall Tunnel are untouched by the seven per cent decline in London wide traffic since 2000, which could well be (on current trends) 15-20 per cent by the time the bridge is built.

However, there is a lot of research to suggest that if you build roads to relieve traffic jams, then after a few years they just clog up again and make bigger traffic jams. Is it worth spending £700 million to test that theory?

Where the money is coming from is of course the big question mark. The previous mayor was planning to toll (pdf) the Thames Gateway Bridge in order to provide most of the £450 million cost. Will the current mayor suggest doing the same for the £700 million Silvertown Tunnel?

The problem with tolling the new tunnel is that most people would simply avoid it and use the old one – as long as it was fairly free moving.

The only way of guaranteeing regular, substantial toll revenue is to toll the Blackwall Tunnel as well. That idea was quickly shelved when TfL suggested it as a way of paying for the TGB and I suspect that it won’t be one of the options mentioned in the forthcoming consultation.

The other ways of paying for the road, is either through the government giving London the extra cash, or TfL borrowing and paying it back out of general income, i.e. fares. I assume in these cash strapped times that the government won’t be paying for it all.

But if TfL is paying for it, then why a new road, instead of doing things like making the tube system accessible? £700m is more than double what this mayor has spent on cycling in the last four years. So, does the mayor want to annoy motorists with tolls, or hard pressed public transport users with fare increases paying for a new road? Tricky.

See also:

• Exposed: Boris Johnson’s efforts to evade air pollution rules – Darren Johnson AM, October 4th 2011

• Boris can take the lead on entry-level jobs for the young unemployed – Darren Johnson AM, July 14th 2011

• It’s time pay inequality became a priority – Darren Johnson AM, February 16th 2011

• Firefighters’ strikes: Tory Brian Coleman “addicted to conflict” – Darren Johnson AM, January 12th 2011

• A ratio cap of 20:1 won’t make pay fairer – Darren Johnson AM, December 3rd 2010

Val Shawcross AM is the Labour assembly member for Lambeth and Southwark

Boris Johnson follows in the footsteps of Norman Tebbit and Iain Duncan Smith by blaming those looking for work for London’s unemployment. It’s the oldest trick in the Tory book.

Last time a Tory government pushed unemployment into the millions, Tebbit said people should get on their bikes to look for work that didn’t exist. Iain Duncan Smith said they should get on a bus.

And now – when there are 234,000 Londoners fighting for just 33,000 jobs – the Tory Mayor blames their lack of “energy and appetite for work”.

Johnson says in the Sun:

“the jobs are there and people need to have the energy to go out and get them”.

In case you missed the point, he goes on:

“There are large numbers of job vacancies. Why are young people not taking up those jobs? … Let’s talk about the work ethic”.

I’ve visited colleges. I’ve spoken to young people in my south London constituency and across the city and I know there is no problem with their “work ethic”.

What I do see and hear is a generation of young Londoners who are having their dreams and ambitions blocked by a government who sees them as surplus to requirements. There is a very real feeling that they’re being disregarded and sidelined.

Either Boris Johnson knows this but doesn’t care or he doesn’t have a clue about what is happening in the city he is supposed to govern.

There are more than seven people chasing every job vacancy in the capital. In some boroughs the ratio is just frightening. In Haringey, where last summer’s riots began, there are almost 30 people going for each vacancy. In Lewisham there are just 500 jobs for over 9,000 job-seekers.

That Boris Johnson has nothing to say about the circumstances that have led us to this dire situation is a tragedy for London.

Instead of bending over backwards to get people back to work and fighting for our young people’s future – by opposing EMA cuts or unaffordable university fees – the Tory Mayor blames them for their plight. He is blaming the victims of this government’s cruelty for the bleak future it has created.

Nothing better illustrates how out of touch the Mayor is than the way he compares an out of work graduate forced to work at Poundland for her benefits to his first job at The Times newspaper.

Johnson accuses 22-year-old Cait Reilly of “sneering” because she objected to working at the discount shop for nothing. And he implies that she is out of work, again, because she is lazy, saying:

“I couldn’t believe having left university that it really did mean getting up that early and working that long … It’s not forced labour – she’ll learn from it”.

As a new book about the Tory Mayor reveals, when he left Oxford “he had astonishing access to the drawing rooms of power and his dynastic tentacles went further than almost any young graduate of his age. Armed with these connections and many more … he was swiftly taken on by The Times”.

Unfortunately for Cait and the million other young people out of work, not everyone is lucky enough to have the Mayor’s connections or open doors. Boris Johnson and his colleagues in government are closing the doors of opportunity and blaming the young people they’re shutting out.

See also:

• 2012: The year ahead for young people – Alex Hern, January 7th 2012

• Cameron is pricing the young out of education and consigning them to the dole queue– Sally Hunt, December 14th 2011

• Unpaid internships are wrong: We need action, not words, from Clegg and Miliband –Ben Lyons, November 30th 2011

• Million young unemployed figure highlights enormity of the situation hitting our youth– Rory Weal, November 16th 2011

• Cameron and Osborne want the unemployed to work for £1.78 an hour – Alex Hern, November 10th 2011

Ken Livingstone has turned round an eight-point lead in the last seven months to lead Boris Johnson by two points in the latest YouGov London Mayor poll (pdf). Taking account of sampling error, the race, which had been Johnson’s to lose, is now “too close to call”, according to YouGov president Peter Kellner.

Last June, Boris led 54%-46%; now, Ken leads 51%-49%.

Kellner writes:

“Our poll suggests two factors have been at work: one has dented Boris’s appeal, while the other has burnished Ken’s.

“Boris’s new year problem is that he is seen as increasingly out of touch. As in our poll last June, we listed eight characteristics and asked people to say which applied to the two candidates. As a rule of thumb, with this kind of question - where we ask people to pick from a list rather than judge each characteristic separately – anything over 30 is a good score, and anything under 15 a bad score.

“The proportion saying Boris is ‘in touch with the concerns of ordinary people’ has tumbled since June from 20% to 13%. A bearable score has become a terrible one. Meanwhile Ken, who was already ahead with 37%, has seen his ‘in touch’ score climb to 40%. He was in front; he is now out of sight.”

Adding of Livingstone:

“As for Ken, it looks as his promise to cut fares on buses and the tube has made an impact. Among all Londoners, transport vies with crime as their top concern. But among Ken’s supporters, transport is clearly ahead.”

Encouraging news, then, for Team Ken, but there’s still plenty to do; as Dave Hill, of the Guardian’s “London Blog”, says:

“One poll, of course, is precisely that – just one poll. The Livingstone camp is stressing that it is far from complacent.

“A couple of points caught my eye in the detail. One is that Ken’s honesty rating remains lower than Boris’s: 18% compared with 24%. The other is that Ken scored much higher than Boris when the sample was asked which had achieved more as mayor: 40% thought Ken had done better compared with 30% for Boris.

“The highest profile achievements of Boris’s term – such as his cycle hire scheme and his new bus – have been of little benefit to most Londoners, so there isn’t all that much for him boast about. It’s been noticeable that Ken-hating media friends of the Tory mayor barely mention Boris’s record, preferring to denigrate the personality of his Labour rival.

“The findings of the new poll don’t seem to give the anti-Ken campaign in its various forms any reason to divert from a path of relentless negativity. That said, has that approach really helped Boris so far?”

Exactly fifteen weeks today London goes to the polls, with the race blown open and all to play for.

See also:

• Boris, the bankers’ mayor, backs his chums over small businesses – Jenny Jones AM, January 17th 2012

• Boris’s retreat from accountability over the Met should worry us all – Joanne McCartney AM, January 16th 2012

• Biggs: ‘Boris Tunnel’ is four years late and “doesn’t appear to have any funding” – Shamik Das, January 12th 2012

• Boris’s electric vehicle boasts are an inverted pyramid of piffle – Darren Johnson AM, January 10th 2012

• Livingstone pledges London Living Rent, saying Boris has “completely failed” on housing – Shamik Das, December 13th 2011

By Jenny Jones AM, leader of the Green Party on the London Assembly and Green Party Mayoral candidate for 2012

Like many people, I often spend January watching my purse after spending too much on presents for my loved ones at Christmas and picking up a few too many bargains in the January sales. As a result, I’m looking forward to the end of the month when I can treat myself again without feeling too guilty about the consequences on my bank balance.

The first place that I will be looking to spend my hard earned money will be the independent shops on my local high street. The internet may bring the world’s retail to your living room, but shopkeepers can bring expertise, advice and a sociability that can ensure shopping trips truly satisfy the need for that long sought after luxury.

However, the ongoing misery provided by the economic crisis has meant that like other small businesses, shops are struggling to survive.

Although many ended a relentlessly tough year with better Christmas sales figures than expected, much of the 2.2 per cent rise reported by the British Retail Consortium last week was due to significant deals and discounts which drive down earnings in the long run.

Christmas has done little to restore consumer confidence after another year of financial uncertainty. The Confederation of British Industry said in December that confidence among the capital’s businesses had plummeted in the second half of last year, with only 13 per cent of respondents to their survey feeling optimistic about the economy over the next 6 months compared to 43 per cent in June.

It is of course precisely at this time of difficulty that the nation is looking to small businesses to drag us all out of the current economic quagmire. Although their trade may be increasingly internationally and electronically orientated, the fate of small businesses is fundamentally linked to the fate of the communities that surround them.

Such businesses provide jobs, and these are by definition more likely to be among local communities. The money they spend and make is more likely to be circulated locally too, and the quality and value of their services have a very direct effect on that community’s standards of living.

When I have spoken to small business owners and their representatives, it is clear that one of the major difficulties currently facing such enterprises is the tremendous difficulty they have had in obtaining credit.

As was reported last summer, the five biggest banks failed to meet the £76 billion target for loaning to businesses agreed with the government under Project Merlin, and the Bank of England’s latest quarterly trends show that lending to small businesses actually fell by 5.1 per cent in August.

As members of the Federation of Small Businesses told me at their London Mayoral hustings late last year, the banks’ unwillingness to loan has created money problems and missed growth opportunities for many.

The attitude of the banks towards supporting small businesses is shocking. If it was in part their recklessness with credit that helped create the economic crisis, it is their reluctance to invest reasonably in helping small businesses trade and develop that will help prolong it.

The government at all levels must do more to encourage banks to lend, as well as tailor business support to help small businesses access money sources besides banks, such as venture capital, business angels, public funds, research councils and crowd funding services.

We can start in London, where the current mayor has so consistently proven loyal to both the banks and the financial sector that funded 50 per cent of his 2008 election campaign.

Although great fanfare was made of the £25million in sponsorship for cycle superhighways and the central London Cycle Hire scheme from Barclays, in the first three years of Johnson’s term as Mayor, Transport for London paid out over £27m in bank charges to the same bank. That really isn’t good value or good business for a Mayor who ought to be business savvy.

In addition, Johnson has gone to great lengths to attack the growing demand for a ‘Robin Hood’ tax on financial transactions that could stabilise a financial system, which lead to the economic crisis we find our selves in. Reports by the European Commission have showed that the ‘downside’ of a Robin Hood tax would be much less than the impact caused by the coalitions cuts.

Simply put, City Hall should lead by example.

As Mayor I would try to ensure that no bank worked with any member of the Greater London Authority group—including City Hall, Transport for London, or the Met Police—unless they could demonstrate that they were lending the capital’s small businesses and helping to build our recovery.

If current economic forecasts are to be believed, we are going to rely on small businesses to reduce prices, keep us supplied and create jobs for a long time to come. Because of the immense amount of business provided to banks during the governance of Europe’s biggest conurbation, the Mayor’s office can work towards ensuring the banks pull their not inconsiderable weight too.

Hundreds of Green Party activists have today been handing out £250k notes from the Bank of Boris at over 50 different tube stations across London. I joined them at Highbury and Islington station to help highlight the Mayor’s relationship with the City of London which comes at the expense of ordinary Londoners.

Last month I closed my two accounts with a big bank and moved all my transactions over to the Co-op Bank, which can be relied on to lend to small businesses. My move may not send a shudder through the money markets, but I feel so much better.

To find out more about Jenny’s campaign for Mayor, visit www.jennyforlondon.org

See also:

• Boris’s leadership is getting beyond a joke – Jenny Jones AM, October 6th 2011

• Boris’s call for Euro break-up would be disastrous for the UK – Ben Fox, July 29th 2011

• Boris’s scaremongering over ‘banker bashing’ not backed up by evidence – Dominic Browne, March 21st 2011

• Boris: The bankers’ best friend – Shamik Das, February 18th 2011

• Boris’s relish for cuts means London is losing its capacity to grow – John Biggs AM, February 10th 2011

By Joanne McCartney AM (Labour, Enfield and Haringey)

As anyone who’s seen Baltimore crime series The Wire will know there are very real dangers with politicising the police. The last thing we want is our senior officers putting the short term electoral concerns of politicians ahead of the long term interests of the public.

As the Mayor seizes more control of the Metropolitan Police and police authorities are scrapped these concerns are brought to the fore. This retreat from accountability is something we should all be worried about.

The Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) has been replaced by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPC), the Mayor will hand over day-to-day running of the Met to Tory Assembly Member Kit Malthouse.

These changes are part of the government’s controversial plans to introduce directly elected police commissioners.

The dangers of directly elected commissioners are well documented and were raised during the debates in Parliament that saw these changes being forced through.

The arrangements for the new ‘MOPC’ are still unclear. Whereas the MPA met every month in public where it questioned senior officers, the MOPC can meet behind closed doors and make decisions in private, out of public sight. Many of the improvements in the Metropolitan Police that were achieved after the introduction of the MPA in 2000 were due to increased transparency and effective scrutiny of the Met.

Worrying changes have also been made to the handling of complaints against senior officers. While the MPA had the power and duty to investigate complaints against senior officers, disciplinary matters now fall solely to the Met Commissioner.

These changes are a retreat from accountability which is deeply concerning and does little to increase transparency. Effective oversight of key decisions, spending and policing priorities is essential to increasing public confidence and driving up performance.

To counter these concerns it is vital the London Assembly’s new police and crime committee has teeth and deals with the issues that go to the heart of policing and crime in London. The London Assembly’s new police and crime committee will assume responsibility for scrutinising the Mayor’s new policing body. We will conduct in-depth investigations into issues that are important for Londoners, including gangs in London, stop and search and the response to the riots, as well as monitoring crime rates and other performance issues.

It is incumbent on us as members of the London Assembly and the police and crime committee to hold the Mayor, his deputy for policing and the police to account on behalf of the public. As we have seen in recent years the issues at stake are far too important to be taken lightly.

It is essential the MOPC and the police are transparent and forthcoming towards investigations run by the new scrutiny committee; anything less is unacceptable. Otherwise there is a great danger trust will be lost and trust of the public in its police service is vital. For the public to trust these new arrangements and the police we must continue holding the Met and Mayor to account.

See also:

• Resources, powers and accountability – the three big issues facing the police in 2012 – Kevin Meagher, January 5th 2012

• Boris’s policies are making London less safe – Andrew Dismore, October 6th 2011

• Things will only get worse for the police as May’s cuts begin to bite – Kevin Meagher, July 25th 2011

• Burglaries, robberies, muggings on the rise… is the downturn to blame? – Shamik Das, June 29th 2011

• Cooper: Tory “reputation” on law and order “was only ever rhetoric” – Tom Rouse, May 22nd 2011