• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

I sympathise with that, that you do not want to be the target for failure but, in your Municipal Waste Management Strategy you said that you will put in place, 'A number of policies and proposals that I believe London waste authorities will need to implement'. From what you are saying you are happy to give them advice but not happy to give them any kind of practical help?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

Given that you are clearly in favour of exhortation rather than doing something substantial to assist the boroughs, would you care to offer a view on the attitude of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames which now says that people who live outside the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames cannot take their refuse to what used to be the GLC tip there which means that some Londoners who hitherto may only have had to travel a mile to take stuff to the Kingston tip now have to travel in excess of five miles to get to their nearest...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

A lot of people travel without paying. The point I am trying to make to you is that to quote a figure if you are including effectively free travel in that does not represent the experience that the travelling public are actually having. That is why it is so incredible.

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

What do they include in that figure, though? Are they including all the people who get free travel? Is that how they get it that low?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

What about you and I? We get free travel. Are we included in that?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

What about the Freedom Pass?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

So how do you calculate that 53p figure? How do you get to that?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

Council Tax payers always notice the increase when you take something over, Mr Mayor; it is a fact of history! Isn't it strange that you mentioned travel cards almost as a postscript to this great triumphal vision that you have and yet a very large number of people use travel cards in London; they are going to have an increase, and is it not misleading for you to trumpet this as some sort of great achievement and great benefit for passengers when many of them, particularly regular commuters and people from outer London, will not benefit at all?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

Mr Pope did raise with you another point before which you did not answer; that was around the interesting pattern that has developed here of three years of huge fare rises and one year of reductions or freezes which also seems to coincide with the year of the election as well. Is that a coincidence or is it a cynical election stunt?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 14 November 2007

I have a judgment here from the Advertising Standards Authority which says that a complaint against an advert you put out recently about the freeze in bus fares was upheld because it breached their clauses on, 'substantiation and on truthfulness'. That seems to be an official recognition that you misled the public as opposed to an opinion.