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WARWICK'S MESSAGE
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Warwick Lightfoot |
A Message from Warwick Lightfoot
I want London to be a dynamic, and exciting place to live, visit and work. We need a Mayor to champion London and its world-class financial markets, with the vision to ensure that they are matched by world-class public services and opportunities for everyone. London is a great city, but there are clear big problems from crime to low rates of employment in some communities that need to be gripped. I want a London where people can find well-paid work, and where there are plenty of opportunities for everyone. I want a London that is a pleasant, attractive and greener place. A better London to live in and to bring up a family, with the homes and good quality schools that families' need. I want a London that is a safer and more secure place to live, where there is less crime and vandalism. I want a London where there are more police on our streets and where more criminals get caught and punished. We need a Mayor with imagination, vision and a radical agenda of fundamental reform to improve London's public services.
MY DREAM: A PROSPEROUS, VITAL METROPOLIS FOR EVERYONE
London is one of the world's greatest cities. London is a series of villages and discrete communities that combine into a unique footprint: as a capital city, world financial centre and a city where the work of the arts, cultural institutions and media and creative industries lead the world. London is the world's megalopolis. Today London has the world's most successful and innovative financial markets and the most lively and dynamic arts and creative industries. London is not just a world leader in finance and the arts, but also in the sciences and medical research, with one of the greatest concentrations of scientific research and scholarship in any city on the planet.
People want to work and live in London, because it is a thriving, prosperous and exciting place to be. I want to make London a pleasanter and greener place to live and work and an easier place for people to move around. London should be a friendlier place to lead a family life and to bring up children. We need more homes for families, more parks and more trees. We need less waste, better quality air to breath and an integrated approach to regeneration which recognises that, on their own, bricks and mortar do not make a community.
My vision of London is the vision of a great city that is truly exciting in its cultural vitality and diverse communities, with a dynamic economy that generates wealth and jobs for everybody. My dream is an electric, vital city where no community or individual is left behind.
LONDON'S ECONOMY
London dominates the British economy and generates wealth out of proportion to the people who live and work here. The London economy generates £181 billion and supports 4.4 million jobs. Greater London accounts for 19 per cent of the UK's GDP and 15 per cent of total employment. This reflects the skills, education and productivity of the people who work in London. Gross value added per job in London is 27 per cent higher than the national average. London and its financial markets have become a magnet for talent and money from all over the world. The financial markets of the City of London have lead the way in creating a truly post-industrial economy for the 21 century. They earn billions of pounds for the UK as a whole and employ tens of thousands of people in highly paid jobs that are the catalyst for the service industries in London that millions of people depend on for their employment.
It is these international markets that directly and indirectly provide the tax base in London that generates the tax revenue that pays for so many of the public services throughout Britain. London contributes £71 billion or 17 per cent of UK Government tax revenues, while only accounting for 12.5 per cent of the population. Public spending per person employed in London is 7 per cent lower than the national average. Without London, Gordon Brown would not be able to tax and spend as he does; and without London's money the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not be able to subsidise the rest of the country in the way that he does.
PROMOTING LONDON AND LONDON'S FINANCIAL MARKETS TO THE WORLD
We need a Mayor that understands London's financial markets and their importance to London's economy, who will help to promote London to the international business community. We need a Mayor who will champion London at home and abroad. London is plainly rated as the best city to locate a business whether financial or otherwise. But London does not just compete within Europe, hampered as it is with high taxes and a straight jacket of regulation. London competes head to head with New York and there is a real chance that London could overtake New York as a financial centre.
We need a Mayor who will champion London's financial markets. London needs a Mayor that will explain the case for a lightly regulated and taxed economy, if it is going to continue to compete for business internationally. London has increased its share of financial market transactions and there has been a striking growth in business services such as law, accountancy, advertising and computing. But we need a Mayor that understands that there is nothing automatic about London remaining the home to the world's financial markets that generate so much of our wealth and jobs. In the 1960s New York looked as if Wall Street enjoyed an unassailable position, but lost it in a few short years and has never recovered from its mistaken tax and regulatory policies forty years ago. We need a Mayor who will spell out the recipe for a strong and dynamic economy that competes and creates wealth and jobs: light regulation, low taxes and a flexible jobs market.
LONDON'S JOBS CHALLENGE
While the London economy and its financial markets have been dynamic and successful in recent years, the metropolis faces a serious employment challenge. London's share of employment is falling. The number of jobs has grown in London, but they have grown slower than in the rest of the country. In 2001 London accounted for over 16½ per cent of the jobs in Great Britain. This has now fallen to less than 15½ per cent. The proportion of Londoners in work is relatively low compared to the rest of the country. Growth in employment in London has been slower than anywhere else in the country, apart from Northern Ireland. Of the 20 local authorities with the lowest rates of employment in the country 10 are London boroughs. Boroughs in inner and outer London dominate the list of places that would need to have the greatest rate of job growth to ensure that the rate of employment is comparable to the UK average. These boroughs include Newham, Barking and Dagenham, Waltham Forest, Kensington and Chelsea Islington and Westminster. The problem is not a lack of jobs, rather it is that Londoners do not get local jobs. London tends to have around 1 job per head of the working age population but only around 70 per cent of London residents are in those jobs – the rest are taken up by commuters from outside Greater London. We need to equip Londoners with the skills to get the jobs that are available for them in their city.
MAKING SURE NO ONE IS LEFT BEHIND
London needs a Mayor who will work to ensure that all parts of London and all communities in Greater London share in London's economic dynamism and prosperity. Too many communities that amount to cities in themselves have failed to share fully in London's economic and employment. We need a Mayor who understands how people and communities can find themselves shut out of work through barriers that prevent them from working even when they are surrounded by prosperity and wealth. London needs a Mayor who appreciates how difficult it is for single parents, young people leaving school with few qualifications and people living on isolated estates to find work that pays or which covers the cost of childcare. We need a Mayor with practical ideas about how to help, who understands the challenges of education and training. Over the last eight years as London has got richer these problems have got worse. London needs a Mayor determined to tackle them. We need to equip people with the skills that are in demand so that people are trained for jobs the new jobs that become available.
CLEANER, GREENER, COOLER LONDON
Where we live and work is important to all of us. Much of our personal happiness turns on the quality of life around us. Clean streets, attractive and interesting buildings, along with plenty of parks and trees transform the urban environment. We need a greener metropolis. We need more parks and we need more trees. A greener environment can transform cities Trees, parks, squares and gardens are important for all of us. We need more trees throughout Greater London. It is a paradox that some of the greenest parts of London with the most trees and garden squares are in the centre of London, in the most densely populated boroughs. We need a Mayor who will work to plant more trees and encourage the development of more garden squares throughout the whole of London. More parks and trees will make a contribution to cooling the climate, giving us shade when it is hot and making London more beautiful.
A GREENER HEALTHIER LONDON
Trees, parks and playgrounds play a critical part in leisure whether it is going for a walk or engaging in sport. We all need to be more active in our every day lives. Whether it is walking to the shops or going to gym or a swimming pool we all need to be more active. The lasting legacy of London's Olympic Games in 2012 should be a more active community. This should be the Mayor's greatest contribution to public health. Promoting, more active life styles for the pleasure that it gives people and the good effects that it has in helping us to control our weight, limiting the expansion of our waistlines and helping to ward off nasty diseases like diabetes, should be part of the Mayor's public health agenda. For most people none of this will happen without pleasant places to walk, decent parks to visit and well run leisure centres and swimming pools. The Mayor should work with the London boroughs and the government to make sure that we prepare the legacy of the London Olympics for Londoners by creating the parks, gardens and sports centres and swimming pools that people would like and need. More active life styles and good health go together.
ENVIRONMENT
We need London to become more aware of the energy that the waste and the waste that we generate. I will encourage the London Boroughs to do more to promote recycling and composting and to use their procurement weight to support more sustainable goods and services. I will seek to encourage businesses to cut packaging, reduce water consumption and improve the energy-efficiency of buildings through good design. Once waste has been minimised and re-usable materials have been recycled, we should dispose of it in the most environmentally friendly way. I will support initiatives to improve the quality of London's air.
There is also an opportunity to improve the appearance and attractiveness of many of our shopping parades across London. I will encourage the development of more starter homes above shops and around railways stations to regenerate unattractive corners of the city.
There is a place for tall buildings in London – especially for commercial use. However they are best when grouped in particular locations where they do not damage the scale and beauty of existing street patterns and architecture. Evidence has shown that they are less successful as an environment for bringing up children. I will encourage the development of more mixed communities with a variety of housing units for rent and for sale. We must move away from the construction of large estates with no supporting infrastructure.
MAYOR'S RECORD: TREBLING THE BUDGET WITHOUT GETTING VALUE FOR MONEY
The total budget of the Mayor has roughly trebled from £3.7 billion to £9.6 billion since 2001. The cost of the Mayor's budgets on the London council tax has gone up from a ‘precept' on a band D Council Tax from £140 to £288.61p. But Londoners are not getting enough to show as a result of this extra spending. London needs more government grant to spend on modernising and improving its public services. London needs to receive a fairer share of taxes it pays to national government. So far massive the recent massive increase in spending by Ken Livingstone has not resulted in value for money for the London taxpayer.
Too much money has been wasted on expensive local government officers working in City Hall. There are now 667 local authority officers. In terms of local government pay scales they are expensive, with 109 earning over £50,000 a year. Many of them duplicate the work of the London boroughs. They produce strategy papers for things that the 32 London boroughs have responsibility for such as day care services for elderly people. The expansion of employees on the Mayor's payroll has made it more expensive and difficult for the London boroughs to recruit and retain the staff they need to deliver public services. To get value for money we need reform of London's public services and we need a zero base budget to cut out waste in City Hall.
REFORMING LONDON'S PUBLIC SERVICES
London's public services need fundamental reform if spending and investment in them is to yield the benefits that London needs. London's public services need to be run in modern, professional and competent manner. The management of Transport for London needs to become more competent and professional in the manner that it approaches employee relations. As Mayor, I would urge the Government to look again at the legal framework for employee relations in essential public services. The Metropolitan Police need to be made politically accountable to Londoners in an effective way and to do more to respond to public concerns about vandalism, graffiti and anti-social behaviour. There needs to be a fundamental review of police recruitment, training, promotion, management and incentives. This review must include an examination of the Police Act and whether it hinders the effective management of the Police. Too many police officers do not really know the boroughs and communities they work in. They have an incentive ‘to move out, to move up'. I want successful police officers to have real career and promotion opportunities by remaining in one place for a much longer time.
LONDON MUST BECOME A SAFER CITY WITH LESS CRIME
- London needs More Police;
- London needs a Higher Proportion of Police Out on the Beat;
- London Needs a Higher Detection Rate;
- Detection rate of 18 per cent is too low;
- For effective Policing, London needs fundamental Police Reform.
LONDON NEEDS BETTER MANAGED TUBE AND BUS SERVICES
Huge amounts of Londoners' money are being poured into the tube. Given the amount of money, there is little to show for it in terms of improvement. We need to ensure that Londoners and taxpayers get better value for money from the investment in the London underground. There are too many strikes and threatened stoppages of work on the underground. In the context of this huge public investment there must be better and more effective employee relations. This may require a review of the framework of law governing employee relations and strikes in essential public services.
MANAGING EMPLOYEE RELATIONS BETTER MAY NEED A REVIEW OF THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK
The subsidy given by the London taxpayer to bus operators has risen from £50 million to over £550 million since 2001. There are more buses, but the quality of service does not match the increase in spending. We need conductors on buses. We need better-trained drivers who drive more safely and with consideration for their passengers. And there needs to be proper ventilation on buses.
HOLDING DOWN THE TAX BILLS LONDONERS PAY
The Mayor's ‘precept' on the London Council Tax has more than doubled from £140 to £288.61. Millions are wasted on the Mayor's City Hall bureaucracy. The total budget of the Greater London Authority has risen since 2001 from £3.7 billion to £9.7 billion. This rough trebling of spending has not been matched by value for money and improved public services that match the increased spending.
We need Mayor who will cut Ken Livingstone's bureaucracy and spending on City Hall management, I would:
- cut waste by starting with a zero base budget for City Hall;
- stop replicating and duplicating what the London Boroughs already do;
- get a fairer deal for London. Londoners need to keep more of the taxes they pay to central government;
- ensure that there is greater understanding of fact that London has social and economic problems and the government does not allow Londoners to keep enough of their own money to tackle them.
WORKING TOGETHER FOR LONDON
We need a Mayor who will work with everyone to make London a better city.
We need a Mayor who can champion London's financial markets, who understands London's economy and will work with the City to present London to the world.We need a mayor who brings everyone involved in governing London together, not someone who is merely a spanner in the works.
We need a Mayor who will work with the London boroughs rather than against them.
We need a Mayor who will bring the leaders of the London boroughs together to consult them formally in regular London summits or an advisory senate to see how the Greater London Authority can work to together with the boroughs in the interests of the whole of the metropolis.
We need a Mayor who concentrates on the strategic role given to the Mayor and Greater London Authority, not a City Hall where the Mayor tries to interfere with the boroughs and take powers away from them.
A MAYOR WHO WORKS FOR LONDON
We need a Mayor who will champion London and its financial markets on the world stage and a Mayor that understands the basis for the success of London's financial services industry.
We need a mayor that concentrates on the job of sorting out London's problems and challenges.
The Mayor should not get distracted into wider national and international political debates that are remote from how do we get more work for Londoners, detect more crimes in London, get more police on the beat, achieve better value for money on the Tube modernisation and ensure a more affordable council tax for Londoners.
A MAYOR FOR GREATER LONDON
We need a mayor with policies that work for the whole of Greater London, not just a Mayor that spends money on and concentrates on the specific challenges of inner London.
Greater London has communities that could almost be cities themselves like Harrow, Uxbridge and Croydon. These are vital and dynamic centres where people come to work, shop and play. We need a Mayor who will work to support them.
We need buses not in just in central London, but on orbital routes in outer London to serve communities that should have a distinct economic vitality of their own. We need to make better use of suburban stations. In recent years some of these distinct and important communities have lost out in relation to London's prosperity and have not developed to their full potential. Moreover some of these communities have lost out in terms of London's public spending and public sector investment.