I have been campaigning for more crossings across the River Thames ever since I was elected to the London Assembly.

Many of you will know that East London only has the Blackwall and Rotherhithe tunnels and Dartford Crossings, while central and West London have 16 crossings between Tower Bridge and the M25. This all means that traffic from North to South are pushed into one of these two crossings with the expected traffic jams and delays as a result.

This has a knock on effect on the employment prospects of people in East London and the amount of businesses that choose to locate here.

We did think that we may have solved the situation when the proposed Thames Gateway Bridge received planning permission in December 2004. Unfortunately, weeks after being elected in May 2008 Boris Johnson decided to cancel the £500m scheme.

Instead he has proposed a cable car scheme between the O2 and Excel Centres, which will be a great tourist attraction, but will do nothing to deal with the congestion at Blackwall & Dartford. He has acknowledged the need for one or two road crossings, one of which will be a version of the Thames Gateway Bridge he cancelled, but no real work has been done on these.

I will continue to campaign for more river crossings in East London.