• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

I think it is very important. Londoners see people every day evading fares on bendy buses at a rate not far short of 10% on your calculations and there seems to be no proper programme to drive it down and no figures available. The first thing you need in order to try to manage a situation is to know how much money you are losing.

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

But you put a lot more staff in there and you have not done that with the bendy buses.

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Now on the congestion charge we certainly supported you on the central zone and you also took up our idea of giving people an extra day to pay. What we are saying now is that the western extension does not work and if you go down to Portobello Road - which I did last week - I found that well over half of the traders have lost at least 20% of their business, some half their business, schools are closing and shops have already closed. Will you go down to Portobello Road to see the effect of the western extension...

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

The question is why does it take you so long? For example, in 2001 we submitted the Social Cycling Plan to make cycles available at 50 locations in London. That was seven years ago. So there is a big difference. You are seven years behind.

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

No, but with the idea of pedestrianising Oxford Street which we proposed in 2004 you said it could not be done and that included a proposal for a tram. But now you have changed again and now you are saying we are going to do it but it is going to take 14 years. There is a big time differential here isn't there?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

On the low emission zone here again many of these small traders in markets rely on older vehicles and they are being hit by the Low Emission Zone so not everything about the LEZ is rosy.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

I am surprised to hear that information because one of the bids to the Home Office was for the dedicated security posts, 300 posts, included in that 1,000 you have just referred to and the Police Authority was informed at the beginning of February that we are not getting the 300 posts, we are only getting 97 posts. So there is already a shortfall of 200 in the 1,000 additional officers that you are suggesting your budget will provide.

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

Can we be clear? Is that a commitment next year if you are re-elected?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

This is a somewhat rhetorical question but I am sure you would like to answer it, Ken, do you really think that the voters of London will need to balance up a sort of accounting question or whether they will want to evaluate whether it was a question of political leadership from the Mayor's Office which has led to the record increases in police numbers in London? Do you think also that they will want to reflect on the fact that some of the parties around this table - i n particular the one that was just heckling, the Bray...

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 12 March 2008

I agree taking them out of management structures is a move in the right direction; the trouble is that move is actually reducing the total number of officers. It is not moving them to do something else; it is reducing the total number. Mr Mayor, we are going to sit here and argue about figures all morning. I suggest we do not. I think the reality is that the 1,000 you are claiming and you were so certain of you put in the masthead of The Londoner is actually turning out to be a fiction and is now what you...