Our recommendation that our voters cast their second vote for Ken Livingstone is for an insurance vote to stop the Tory candidate Boris Johnson whose anti-social and anti-environment views and policies we believe would be a disaster for London.

But the elections on May 1 are about more than just the Mayor. There are 25 Assembly seats available and the Green party hopes to gain at least 4 of these. In the last term our 2 seats have allowed us to drive a hard bargain over Ken Livingstone’s budget every year, where he needs our votes. Therefore, we have been able to seriously influence policy in London. For instance we introduced measures to provide free insulation for the most vulnerable in our city that will cut fuel bills and save residents money, tripled the budget for walking and cycling from 21m to 63m, and created the London Living Wage Unit that campaigns for the all employees in London to be paid a minimum wage of £7.20.

It was a very strange ‘debate’ which I don’t think Jeremy Paxman handled very well at all. Beforehand, we saw Tim Yeo (Tory head of the Environmental Audit Committee in Parliament) talking about ‘personal carbon quotas’, which are a Green Party policy we believe are the only way to tackle climate change in a socially just way. But then later, when I mentioned this policy in the debate, Paxman reacted like I’d suggested flying all our carbon emissions to the moon. Very odd, and Ken Clarke and Stephen Hale weren’t much help in keeping the debate to the subject in hand either. I thought I said only coherent and sensible things, but the debate as a whole was a bit of a shambles to be honest.

Apart from the fact that most of the Mayor’s initiatives need to be expanded (for example I’d triple the cycling budget), the main policy sticking point between the Greens and Ken Livingstone is that he still wants to build an enormous motorway bridge over the Thames Gateway. This is a policy remaining from his first term in office (before he needed our Green votes in the Assembly to pass his budget) and it would be disastrous for both Londoners and the environment. There will be a huge increase in noise and traffic pollution in east London, and is not the way to solve the transport infrastructure problems facing Londoners.

I’d spend the money on new train and tram services instead and reduce the need for car travel, rather than build more roads, which has never been shown to improve traffic problems.

My plan to close the airport at the end of its lease and replace it with affordable homes and a green industries park would bring much wider benefits to the people of London than more tarmac and low flying aircraft. 

City Airport wants to expand by 50% onto GLA-owned land, and I have pledged not to allow this if I were Mayor.  The increase in pollution, noise and congestion would cause more misery for Londoners in the local area, and the further increase in carbon emissions would spell disaster for the environment.

The majority of City Airport customers are on short-haul flights, which could be replaced by other forms of transport such as trains. The new Eurostar facility from St. Pancras means travelers can be in Paris or Brussels faster than if would if they flew.

The woman leader I most admire would be the Green London AM Jenny Jones, who has done wonderful work on the London Assembly for the past  years, implementing many important changes to Mayor Livingstone's budget.

I grew up under Margaret Thatcher, and I believe that with her policies based on the notion that 'there's no such thing as society', she betrayed the British people by destroying social cooperation and community cohesion and introducing an age of naked competitive exchange.

By cutting spending on social welfare, she oversaw a massive redistribution of wealth from bottom to top that took away millions of jobs and led to an increased economically and socially polarised country.

We are still picking up the pieces from the damage she did to Britain's culture, economy, society and reputation. The18 years of Conservative rule, and a further 11 years of conservative rule by the Labour government that followed, have marked a fundamental shift to the right in British politics, which we are barely starting to undo in London.

What I actually said was that because of recent cuts in Government grant many councils are struggling to fund important public services like Trading Standards Officers, and this means that those who remain are hard pressed to help tackle under- age drinking. What I offer is experience in actually dealing with these problems and working with ALL agencies who can help to deliver solutions. One, underfunded, service on its own can’t be expected to solve the problem.

Simple answer “No.” Due to the ways votes are counted at this election, people have two choices. They can vote first for who they think will run London best, and then they can vote second for their Party loyality. I expect a lot of people to be voting for me first. Oh and can I also urge people not to forget about the elections to the London Assembly. There too people should vote Liberal Democrat so that either I end up with a strong team of people to support me while Mayor, or there will be people, beholden to no one person, who can hold another Mayor firmly to account.

I have asked those who claim to this to be the case, what is the difference in the way I propose the Tube be run from what already happens with our successful bus system, the award winning Docklands Light Rail and the East London Line currently undergoing renewal? They can’t answer me. All I am suggesting is running the tube along the same lines as Livingstone runs the other public transport systems in London.

It was not me but a Liberal Democrat peer who made that claim. I have already made the commitment that I would serve no more than two terms. As to whether there are any exceptions – Kim Il Jong anyone?

There is absolutely no indication that introducing ID cards would make any difference to crime levels in London. There are much more effective ways of tackling crime, getting the guns and knives off our streets and dealing with low level crime. Would an ID card tackle this? No.

Fighting against racism and the right wing agenda of the press and the government is essential, followed by restoring funding to ESOL courses. I would also abolish the citizenship test, language tests and swearing allegiance to the Queen. Can you imagine if the hoards of Brits on the coast of Spain faced Spanish language tests and had to take an exam on Spanish history and culture?

Since the Conservative Party privatised the railways, travelling by train has become more expensive and more miserable. If we were in government, the Greens would renationalise the railways and get them providing real public transport again, at affordable prices.

In London, an integrated and affordable public transport system is vital for commuters and everyone who lives in London. In this election, I’ve pledged to cut fares, organise buses better, and build more tram lines. I’ll also link up existing lines to create a full orbital rail ring around London, so that outer boroughs are better linked together, and so that not all people travelling through London by train have to come into the centre and catch the tube between the mainline stations. This will do a lot to help congestion on commuter routes and on the tube during rush hour.

We’re also keen to bring many of the mainline rail franchises serving commuters under the control of Transport for London. We now have ‘London Overground’ providing more services and getting better stations thanks to this process, and we’ll build on this to create a much bigger and better overground system as fast as we can.

The key problem for most Londoners is the incredibly high cost of living, which is why my policies are all designed to save people money, while many will also save carbon as an added bonus. With things like lower transport fares, free insulation available to everyone, more affordable housing, a living wage of £7.20 paid by every employer, and a wider range of local shops and markets providing cheap, healthy food, I’ll improve everyone’s quality of life and cut living costs at the same time.

This is a further intrusion of civil liberties, and will inevitably lead to discrimination of minorities by police. Like the spectre of identity cards, it's a further example of the government's distrust and contempt of the people of Britain.

I love the diversity - of people, lifestyles, culture and above all food. I love that within a few minutes of my home I can choose from, among other things, excellent Brazilian, Ethiopian or Phillipino food for dinner.

As public transport is my only way of getting around London, I know what you mean. The problem is that the Tube and rail services were underfunded so massively by successive Tory and Labour governments that our chickens are coming home to roost in the amount of repair work now needed to be done. The failure, as Liberal Democrats predicted, of the Tube PPP hasn’t helped either.

But what I fail to understand is why the consultation between transport operators about which routes close when, and what alternative solution to offer people whose journeys will be disrupted, is so bad. Surely it’s not rocket science for all the operators to sit round one table and plan when the work will take place, and as importantly ensure that passengers can get to what they need to go as quickly as possible.

Sian Berry

The current programme of work on the tube is long overdue, but completely necessary, even if it is costing us all a fortune under a PPP we didn’t want. And, unfortunately, the fact is weekends are the best time to do this because they are the least busy days. If I’m Mayor, I’ll make it a priority to keep the works on time, so that London gets the better tube system it needs without delay, and without having to have extra weekends of closures. I will also work on getting trains to run through the night at weekends to make getting home safer.

E."Where do you stand on the suggestion from the recent Government Report that students should be encouraged to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen and Country?"

My views on education are focused on important issues such as reducing classroom sizes and making higher education available to all by abolishing fees and bringing back a proper grants system. I and the Greens do not believe children should be indoctrinated into any ideology; and this includes religion and Monarchy, so no oaths under a Green government.

There is a danger that this election is turning into a personality contest, a sort of “London Mayor Idol” if you like, rather than a proper debate about policies that could deliver better services in the capital over the next four years. Instead you have a candidate running on their old record, a candidate who has never run anything and avoids all discussion of policy where possible, and someone like me who wants a proper debate about how we take London forward. I am serious about the job, and I don’t promise anything I cannot deliver. See my Contract for London for further details.

Sian Berry

There do seem to be a lot of policies in this election that are made up in the back of taxis on the way to the press conference. My favourites of these are both from Boris Johnson. He said he will plant just 10,000 trees, when we are already half way through a programme of planting a million trees in London, so he clearly knew nothing about this and just made his number up. The other classic was when he said he’d put bus conductors back on every bus – a great idea, but he underestimated the cost by more than £100 million.

Because the London Greens have worked on the budget for the past four years (since Ken Livingstone has had to rely on our votes to get his budget through since 2004) our policies are much better thought through. We do know what our policies cost and how we’ll pay for them, unlike some other parties’ candidates.

It strikes me as a fairly meaningless gesture.