• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 16 July 2008

Could I just be clear then; do you expect to use less consultants here, at the LDA and TfL than in the previous four or eight years?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 16 July 2008

Could you write to us outside this meeting identifying the material proportion of the consultancies which were not value for money? Would you not accept that, for example, if you are going to build a bridge costing £500 million, as is proposed, you might have to spend several tens of millions of pounds on design consultancies, engineering consultancies, hydrological consultancies, planning consultancies and whatever other transport consultancies in order to get it through and it would be inefficient in the extreme of the Authority to employ all those people rather than to employ professional consultants who know what they are...

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 16 July 2008

Obviously upstairs you have a transition team in place and one could label them as short term consultants in effect, getting you started up. We know that is likely to cost up to £500,000. Could you send us - I think this has been promised before - the costs of each of those individuals upstairs? I believe some of them have been loaned by Conservative headquarters and Francis Maude's [MP for Horsham] office as well. Is that correct?

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 16 July 2008

I was going to make the same point. I understand you made a categorical promise during your campaign and I was going to ask are you now going to make sure that that -

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 16 July 2008

Can I just say, Mr Mayor, as someone who represents the largest Kurdish community in London, I absolutely agree with you. Were you aware that they received an outstanding promise from the previous Mayor that there would be Newroz in Trafalgar Square in 2009 and will you follow that up? You do not have to answer now.

• Question by: Kit Malthouse
• Meeting date: 16 July 2008

Just a small technical point. Can we assume that when this scheme comes in the payment system will be 'Oysterized'?

• Question by: Caroline Pidgeon
• Meeting date: 16 July 2008

Could I ask, Mr Mayor, on this point whether you have looked particularly at the Barcelona scheme which actually would have some sort of Oyster card technology and would make sure that everyone has to be registered with TfL and pay an annual subscription? Is that something you will support as part of this scheme?

• Question by: Richard Tracey
• Meeting date: 16 July 2008

Mr Mayor, I hope that you are going to continue to campaign vigorously against the closure of post offices but you may be aware and you may like to ask your office to investigate that where councils such as the Borough of Wandsworth are coming up with alternative locations for some of these post offices, the Post Office itself is not making it at all easy to negotiate new agreements. It does strike me that that is obstructing the will of local people when indeed solutions can be found, so will you pursue that point?

• Question by: Caroline Pidgeon
• Meeting date: 16 July 2008

I am surprised to hear from you that you have been assured by TfL that there has been a marked improvement because we have been made aware of a vulnerable elderly woman who had been left waiting in the rain for over an hour because of errors in the central computerised system. Also of Dial-a-Ride drivers being mortified because they cannot provide the quality of service that they want to. Can you personally really look into this - not just have an adviser get an assurance come through from TfL - and make sure that standards for the Dial-a-Ride service...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 16 July 2008

Whilst I fully agree with you about tackling the problem of binge drinking and tackling the problem of underage drinking is it realistic to expect that no 19 or 20 year old should ever buy alcohol?