When Alistair Darling gives his Budget speech on Wednesday, Londoners will be interested to know what we are getting. London is the motor of the British economy. We make an estimated £17.8 billion net contribution to the Exchequer.

And what do we get in exchange, from this Scottish Chancellor and his Scottish Prime Minister? We get ripped off. We have four of the poorest boroughs in the UK. We have appalling rates of child poverty. We have a Tube system which is bursting at the seams, and we have first-time buyers facing an average charge of £7,843 in stamp duty alone.

We are expected to live in the second most expensive city on earth - with Tube fares three times the European average - and yet we simply do not get the funding we need from central government.

This year, 29 of the 32 London councils received settlements from the Government that were below inflation. Which in turn means that those boroughs will have to spend less, in real terms, than they did last year - meaning cuts in everything from mental health provision to preserving our green spaces to paying for more police support officers.

Londoners are getting a raw deal, and the real disgrace is that it has been left to the boroughs to make this point to Gordon Brown.

Where is the Labour Mayor, Mr Livingstone? Have you heard him utter a peep of protest about the extra financial burden on London's taxpayers, and the scandalous underfunding of London's services? Me neither.

He does nothing to champion London's councils. On the contrary, he ratchets up the pain endured by London's taxpayers and commuters. Not content with taking £330 million from Londoners last year for the privilege of driving through their capital, he now proposes a new £25 super-charge on family cars.

This is a man who has already nearly tripled his share of your council tax bill, taking £311 from every Band D household, while simultaneously wasting millions in the slo-mo disaster of the London Development Agency, and testily refusing either to accept any fault or to explain to Londoners where the money has gone.

We simply cannot go on like this. We are not getting value from either the Labour Government or the Labour Mayor.

It is time to cut the waste and the sleaze in City Hall.

I will scrap The Londoner, the Mayor's ludicrous Pyongyang-style newspaper. I will curtail the Mayor's embassies and other vainglorious foreign policy ventures. I will introduce rigorous financial accountability for both the Olympics and the LDA. I will make sure that police budgets are properly spent to get more operatives out on the street, giving reassurance and security. I will bring forward housing measures to help Londoners cope with the cost of living here.

Above all, I will end the cosy conspiracy of silence between the Labour Mayor and the Labour Government - whereby the underfunding of London's councils seems to meet the tacit approval of City Hall.

It is time to speak out for a fair deal for London.

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