Video: Boris Johnson - Conservative Party

10:19am Friday 4th April 2008

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NEWS Shopper spoke to Tory candidate Boris Johnson when he visited Beckenham.

Do you have any plans to bring a congestion charge into any broough in south east London?

Absolutely not. I will not be extending the congestion charge. All I want to do is make it easier so that we won't raise the fee of £8 but I do want people to pay it on account at the end of the month, rather than be clobbered with all these fines.

What do you think are the main crime issues in south east London?

You've got to look at what's going on particularly in the spaces which the mayor is responsible. Why are the buses so rowdy? And the mayor can do something about it and I will.

I'm going to take away the privilege of free travel from the kids who are abusing it and we will allow them to earn it back with a scheme called Pay Back London.

So you think there is a link between anti-social behaviour and free travel?

There certainly is and I want kids to have the free travel but I want them to realise there is a connection between rights and responsibilities.

If you're going to have the right to free travel, they've got a responsibility to behave. And they can earn it back with Pay Back London.

What are you going to do about gangs, guns, knife crime, particularly in south east London?

It's a real problem. It's a growing problem. What you can't do is just throw up your hands in the air and say 'this is nothing to do with us'.

The job of the mayor is to lead the struggle to find the solutions and that means more police on the beat. It means giving the police the tools to detect the guns and the knives and I propose handheld scanners. I think it would be a good way forward.

We could have live CCTV on the buses to see what's going on when violence breaks out in real time so at least we can get to the scene.

What you've got to do is look at the real causes. And the real causes are kids growing up without boundaries, without respect, nothing to give them excitement or a sense of achievement except these gangs.

So a huge part of the job of the mayor is to champion the voluntary sector across London, thus making a difference to the lives of the kids who are getting sucked into the gangs.

And I'm going to have a mayor's fund for London which will be a way of raising money to help support the problems. You've got to have a holistic pan approach and the mayor has got to be involved.

Why should our readers vote for you?

I hope readers in Bromley, Beckenham will want to vote for me because, above all, we're better value for money. The precept has gone up by 153 per cent since this mayor came in. People are paying huge sums of money for Livingstone's rip-off. I'm going to end it.

I'm going to work as hard for the outer boroughs of London as I do for the inner London. I'm going to work as hard on the transport problems in outer London as inner London.

But what would you then do about the housing problem. Obviously there are a lot of people coming into London. Lots of strain for new houses, how is that going to fit in?

There is huge amounts of extra housing we can build on land already owned by the mayoral bodies, Transport for London, London Development Agency, on brownfield sites across London and we will make sure we do that.

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