We devoted last week’s issue to a review of Ken Livingstone’s tenure as Mayor. This is his response:
For decades, Time Out magazine has been London’s pulse. Last week it carried a special review of my seven years as Mayor. My vision for London is simple. It must continue to be the world’s most international, diverse, and dynamic city. One in which every Londoner has the greatest range of choice open to them of anyone on the planet. This will place London on the cutting-edge of international creativity and business. Within that framework the challenge is to ensure every Londoner shares in that success. And to ensure that success is sustainable in the long run – dealing with climate change and the environment.
Seven years ago, when I was first elected Mayor, London was short of everything – houses, police, transport, offices and environmental protection. Correcting 20 years of neglect was a mammoth task. Today, I believe London has gone a significant way down the road it needs to fulfill all that potential.
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London has consolidated its place as the world’s leading business city, it has won the Olympic Games, it has strengthened its position as the world’s leading city for creative industries, it has lowered ethnic tensions still further, it has been asked to chair the organisation of the world’s 40 largest cities fighting climate change, and its vibrant and diverse cultural life is literally the envy of the world.
When I came into office, London’s transport system was hopelessly run down. The quickest fix was massive investment in buses. Two million more passengers every day are now carried on a network that has been expanded by 1,000 buses. After a huge battle, upgrades to the tube have begun and by the time of the 2012 Games we will have renovated and extended the East London Line. The transport scheme that gives me the greatest satisfaction is the decision to spend £16 billion on the Crossrail scheme, which will add 10 per cent to London’s public transport capacity.
One of my first decisions was to instruct that 50 per cent of all new housing in London must be affordable. House building has increased from the miserable 17,000 a year I inherited to 27,000 a year and still rising. One of the most disastrous proposals of my Tory opponent in the Mayoral race is to call for this requirement for 50 per cent of new housing to be affordable to be scrapped. This would price houses out of the reach of many Londoners.
Overall crime started to fall in 2002 and has now fallen by 20 per cent to 19 per cent below the level when I came to office. Good policing is expensive, and worth it, and proposals by opponents to cut the police budget are dangerous.
The public sector has a major role to highlight the importance of culture. That is why I am determined the cultural Olympiad will be a vital part of the Olympic Games, why the transformation of Trafalgar Square from a traffic island to a key cultural platform has been such a success, why I have supported centres such as Rich Mix and the Battersea Arts Centre. I have sought to win major international sporting events, such as the Grand Depart of the Tour de France, and staged a range of events on Trafalgar Square.
There is much to do. The vision I set out to develop London as the world’s most international, diverse, tolerant and creative city, still has much further to go. But in the last seven years, London has been going down the right path and I would like to take it further on it.
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