Serious Boris

Londoners must get value for money, says the new Mayor.

Boris Johnson

ANDREW MARR: Boris Johnson welcome.

Is it going to be important for people watching to see how a future Conservative government under David Cameron might be how you run London. Is there a connection?

BORIS JOHNSON: I understand what you're driving at.

And I think people always want to see some sort of you know weed across whatever happens to, in London to the wider national scene.

But actually the solutions we're going to be bringing to London are going to be London specific.

It's not some kind of Petri dish, some laboratory test tube for the development of, of Tory policy. We are going to do some wonderful things. Whether or not that amounts to civic conservatism I leave to superior analysts such as yourself.

ANDREW MARR: You've brought in quite a lot of high profile black and Asian advisors. You're grappling with issues like knife crime which is certainly a national issue.

I mean it's, it's probably one of the most serious and immediate issues you face. And therefore the tone of the administration that you run in London is going to matter isn't it?

BORIS JOHNSON: One of the reasons I became so determined to become mayor - I suppose about ten months ago I really sort of started to get psyched up about it was talking to Ray Lewis and, who's the Deputy Mayor for, for Youth.

And he just inspired me with a belief that there was a real opportunity being missed by the then administration, by the then government in London and that if we really got our act together we could have not just two or three respect schools of the kind that Ray has been running across - we could have a hundred. And I thought it would make a fantastic difference.

ANDREW MARR: This is what the papers have called boot camps.

BORIS JOHNSON: Yeah.

ANDREW MARR: Just tell us a bit about what they'll really be like.

BORIS JOHNSON: Well you know we'll, there'll, there won't be one model across London. There'll be different types and I hope they'll be sensitive to local need. But one of the ..

ANDREW MARR: Boot camps sort of suggest semi military training.

BORIS JOHNSON: Well ..

ANDREW MARR: That's not what you're talking about?

BORIS JOHNSON: There is an aspect, well in some of them there's clearly an aspect of discipline and competition and little kids lining up in rows according to height. And everybody saluting you and saying "Sir" and that kind of thing.

And doubtless for some you know deeply conservative spirits that's very inspiring and reassuring. But for me it just offers something that I think we can support and I think make a huge difference to lots of kids who are going wrong. It doesn't just have ..

ANDREW MARR: ... who'll go there?

BORIS JOHNSON: It doesn't just have to be boot camps. Well for instance it will be kids who have been excluded from school. If you put them in a PRU it costs about sixteen thousand pounds a year.

If you send them to a, a boxing academy where they can not just learn to box but to do maths and English GCSE costs about ten thousand pounds a year. You're saving money. You're doing a fantastic amount of good for the kids.

ANDREW MARR: And this is something you can actually do? You have the money and the ability to do this? And you can set up these camps ..

BORIS JOHNSON: Yeah.

ANDREW MARR: .. and we'll see them happening?

BORIS JOHNSON: It's something that we can support not just through the LDA, through the London Development Agency which we're trying to clean up and sort out but also through this Mayor's Fund for London which I hope all philanthropists watching will feel moved to support.

Because it will be a wonderful way of getting money from the wealth creating sector. And it's still creating tons of wealth in London to the voluntary sector.

ANDREW MARR: Now I mentioned knife crime earlier on. More stabbings across Britain over the last few days. Still a lot of it around. What in concrete terms are you now going to do?

BORIS JOHNSON: We've already as you, as you know done a programme called Blunt Two lifting - with the Metropolitan Police have launched a programme to lift m... far more knives off the street. We've got far more scanners around.

There have been lots of arrests, lots of weapons lifting. You've got to have the policing side of things. You've got to make sure that you get the police out there. But ultimately you're not going to solve the problem of knife crime unless you deal with the root cause.

I mean that's why the whole Ray Lewis agenda and what we're trying to do with the respect schools is so important. You've got to do, you've got to, you've got to deal with the symptoms and the causes. And the symptoms for instance, on the buses, I'm very pleased to say that we have doubled the size of the Safer Transport teams already.

And by the time we've finished there will be more uniformed people on buses than any time in the last twenty five years. And when you think how some of these gangs use buses to move around that's an important element in the fight back.

ANDREW MARR: Do you think that any sixteen year old caught with a knife, penknife, classed by whatever, should be prosecuted?

BORIS JOHNSON: Well that is, that is now the dispensation in London. And I think ..

ANDREW MARR: That's what will happen in London ..

BORIS JOHNSON: I ..

ANDREW MARR: .. to anybody caught with a knife ..

BORIS JOHNSON: I ..

ANDREW MARR: .. will be prosecuted?

BORIS JOHNSON: I do think you know, I do think ..

ANDREW MARR: So ... I mean that, I mean if you're caught with a knife in London you will now be prosecuted?

BORIS JOHNSON: As far as I know that is, that is the current rule.

ANDREW MARR: Right.

BORIS JOHNSON: It, I mean it, I think it already applies in London. The prime minister the other day said that he wanted to extend that across the country but I think we, we already make sure that's the way it works in this city.

But you can't you know just, as I say you can't just use the deterrents of banging them away. You can't just use the knife arches and all the rest of it. You've got also to use the grass roots solutions.

ANDREW MARR: You mentioned, you mentioned buses. Are you going to genuinely ..

BORIS JOHNSON: I ...

ANDREW MARR: .. get rid of the bendy buses? And are you going to bring back Route Masters like you said you were?

BORIS JOHNSON: Andrew, I never said I was going to bring back Route Masters. I said something far more imaginative and exciting than that. We are going to introduce a new generation Route Master of the kind that you're ..

ANDREW MARR: When?

BORIS JOHNSON: Well there's going to be an announcement in the next couple of weeks about the competition to design this fantastic machine. When I, you know, when I say "fantastic" I don't mean it is going to be "of fantasy". It is going to exist and it is going to be ..

ANDREW MARR: But, but we will see these double decker things that I would call a Route Master, the traditional buses, looking a bit like that at any rate, we'll see them back on the streets and we'll see an end to these bendy buses?

BORIS JOHNSON: The plan is as I said repeatedly throughout the election campaign to phase out the bendy bus and the Artic as you can call it if you want to sound more professional and to introduce the new generation Route Master.

And I think Londoners will love it. And it will be a wonderful addition to the streets of our city.

ANDREW MARR: You, you've spent half a million pounds on advisors so far Is that money well spent? I mean you had quite a go at Ken Livingstone during the run up and the campaign itself about the amount of money he was spending on ... advice.

BORIS JOHNSON: I don't think we've spent half a million so far. I think that may be the total of their annual salaries, something like that. I mean I'm not sure, I'm not sure that we've spent half a million so far. I'm going to have to go and check that. Doubtless your researchers have, have ..

ANDREW MARR: Well that's what I'm told. Well I mean whether it's over the course of the year, but half a million pounds ...

BORIS JOHNSON: And we've only been in for a month.

ANDREW MARR: Seems a lot.

BORIS JOHNSON: I mean we've only, we've only been in for a month. I do think there is a massive job to be done in making sure that Londoners get value for money. And that's one of the reasons we've instituted the Forensic Audit Panel with Patience Wheatcroft and we are finding economies all over the place.

ANDREW MARR: And is it the case that you're going to summon your predecessor Ken Livingstone to answer questions about the way money was spent at ....

BORIS JOHNSON: Look, we don't have to summon him. We don't have to summon my predecessor. He is there.

He's constantly in the building like Van...'s ghost. We'll have no difficulty at all summoning him. He seems to be want to, want to be present at almost every function.

ANDREW MARR: One of the stories that was in the papers was about all this cache of fantastically good looking wine that you discovered in the office. Are you suggesting that this was his Chateauneuf du Pape or ..?

BORIS JOHNSON: I don't know whose Chateauneuf du Pape it was. I don't know whether, whose Chateauneuf it was. But it was you know jolly handsome looking bottle of wine. You know probably just a you know a day's consumption by BBC standards. But it was, you know it was a good, a good hoard there.

ANDREW MARR: A good hoard, right. What about the Olympics. Because that's in many ways going to be the thing that defines your time as much as anything I suspect. Lots of worry already about this project running over budget. What are you going to do as London Mayor to ensure that this is effective ... For instance would you consider putting a business man or business people in charge?

BORIS JOHNSON: Well to some extent we've already done that because I've put David Ross who's a brilliant guy, you know Carphone Warehouse and all the rest of it, Sport England, fantastic interest in sport, brilliant business man. He's going to be my man on, on Locog which is the delivery authority. But he's also going to have a you know brief across the whole Olympic piste.

And he is going to be reporting this week on his initial findings about where we're spending the money, where he thinks we need to watch out. And obviously you know, you've read the papers, there are anxieties about some of the huge great things we're building and whether or not they'll still be wonderful and valuable in twenty years time.

ANDREW MARR: Can you save money on, on the, on the Beijing Olympics in terms of all the people going out there? I mean you, how radical are you going to be in saving money because ..?

BORIS JOHNSON: We are. We're, you know we don't, I don't want to be, I don't want to be a total � I don't want to be a complete misery guts. But we are you know, there will be economies in the size of the London delegation to Beijing. I mean there's no particular reason for hundreds of us to go there. And I've got to go. I've got to go and, and pick up a flag or catch a flag ..

ANDREW MARR: Rough. It's rough.

BORIS JOHNSON: I know. It's going to be fantastic. But there won't be a huge operation there. There was a bus that was meant to chunter all the way from London via Ulan Bator to, to Beijing at considerable expense and I think we've decided that on the whole you know, since nobody's going to be there in Ulan Bator to watch this bus go through, there's no particular point in sending it. So we're going to save some money. We're saving money on all sorts of things.

ANDREW MARR: For instance, I mean there's been lots of discussion about job creation and money going into different, different organisations, ethnic diversity organisations. That's all going or lots of it are going?

BORIS JOHNSON: No. I mean some of the things that the London Development Agency funded were fantastic. But some of them were completely bonkers. And some of them there was absolutely no financial control whatever. There was a, the police have just been called in again about some Caribbean festival taking place in Hyde Park where you know there was obviously a lot of, well I'd better prejudice ..

ANDREW MARR: A lot of what?

BORIS JOHNSON: Better not prej... I'd better not prejudice what it was. Anyway the police had been called in. And that is the kind of thing that we're going to have to sort out. People in London are you know facing huge increases in the cost of petrol, cost of bread. Everything is going up. They are going to be looking to their administration in City Hall to deliver value and that's what we're going to do.

ANDREW MARR: Huge grants have gone through in the past that are not going to be agreed in the future. Yes?

BORIS JOHNSON: They certainly won't be agreed on the same basis. There will be far more scrutiny and far more accountability. That doesn't mean that we you know won't be supporting wonderful events, wonderful things for the benefit of Londoners.

ANDREW MARR: Are you sort of surrounded by a semicircle of Cameron advisors trying to control you?

BORIS JOHNSON: Well I, I don't know whether they, they would think it very sort of fruitful use of their time. But they're not there. And I'm surrounded by some brilliant advisors by the way. And I'm ..

ANDREW MARR: But they're not, but they're not, they're not sort of central office people who've been put in to kind of ..

BORIS JOHNSON: Why? Do you think I sound like increasingly like a central office dalek?

ANDREW MARR: I'm worried about, I'm worried about the hair you see. It's the central office hair these days Boris.

BORIS JOHNSON: What's wrong with the hair? I think you're trivialising, you're trivialising this debate. There is no, there is no, there is no, I mean you know I, obviously I have good relations with the Conservative Party but we have good relations with the government too.

ANDREW MARR: Yeah. And you'd like to do two terms if you could. Is that right?

BORIS JOHNSON: Well ..

ANDREW MARR: It's early days I know. Early days.

BORIS JOHNSON: ... come on I've just been elected. Let's, let's get this thing right first. We're going to be judged at the end of four years on whether we've made a serious impact on crime, on knife crime, everything that's going wrong, whether the transport's safer, whether we've done the business and delivered the, you know the Ray Lewis agenda across London.

We're going to be judged on the Olympics whether that's going, whether that's, you know we have a successful Olympics in 2012. I'd like to think that we'll have forged a blazing, you know blazed a trail on all sorts of brilliant transport solutions.

I think we should have a national debate about Heathrow and another airport and all the rest of it. And I think of course we'll be judged on whether we've done it in a way that is conscious of taxpayer value.

ANDREW MARR: Would you like one day to return to the House of Commons?

BORIS JOHNSON: In the immortal words of predecessor in Henley, Michael Heseltine "I cannot foresee the circumstances under which I would return to the House of Commons". How about that?

ANDREW MARR: Well he, he, he didn't foresee the circumstances in which he would try to become Conservative Party Leader and then did so we'll take that as a yes.

BORIS JOHNSON: I can't foresee any such circumstances.

ANDREW MARR: All right. Boris Johnson for now - I'll remember the comment about the dalek but thank you very much indeed for now.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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