LONDON-WIDE Labour Assembly Members have vowed to fight the new mayor and give the body the bite to hold him to account

Katie Davies

LONDON-WIDE Labour Assembly Members have vowed to fight the new mayor and give the body the bite to hold him to account.

Former Deputy Mayor Nicky Gavron, who also ran in Barnet and Camden, was selected through the list as was Westminster's Murad Qureshi who ran in West Central.

They will join constituency-elected Assembly Members from the party.

Mr Qureshi said: "The role for us, the greens and hopefully the Lib Dems is to hold the mayor to account. All the promises he made in his manifesto and the hustings we will be watching whether he delivers. Starting from next week I will be asking him when the bendy buses are going, for example, or when the routemasters are coming back.

"As an Assembly we have got to take ourselves seriously. I am now doing this as a full-time job and I think that should be the case for other Assembly members.

"We may have lost the battle but we haven't lost the war and to some extent he has to stay in the parameters of the mayoralty set out by Ken in his first two terms."

Other candidates elected through the London list were Conservatives Andrew Boff, Victoria Borwick and Gareth Bacon after their party received 34.05 per cent of the vote.

Liberal Democrats had a drop in their percentage of the vote with three candidates Michael Tuffrey, Dee Doocey and Caroline Pidgeon being selected - a drop in two seats from the last Assembly.

Highgate resident Noel Lynch narrowly missed out on becoming the third Green candidate on the Assembly.

They won 8.29 per cent and two seats, which went to incumbents Jenny Jones and Darren Johnson.

The BNP won one seat, with 5.33 per cent of the vote, and UKIP won no seats - two down from the previous election. The Labour party won 27.12 per cent of the vote.

Nicky Gavron backed Mr Qureshi's vow to hold Boris to account. She said: "I am pleased to be re-elected but it is obviously a different assembly for us now without a Labour mayor.

"There are many things in the process of being delivered and very important policies to be implemented. The Assembly has a scrutiny role as well as a policy development role and an investigative one - to explore issues important to London, and clearly these are all going to be important.

"The question is whether people are going to get the local service provision - on transport, affordable housing and youth provision."

katie.davies@hamhigh.co.uk