• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

No, frankly, there is a lot of truth there and I have asked would you agree with me? I have asked my Safer Neighbourhood Teams last week, 'All right, there are all these gangs in Wandsworth, which of these are in my ward?' and they said, 'Well, actually you do not have any in your ward, but you have a lot of youngsters who belong to gangs and leave their homes across the borough to another gang in Battersea, sometimes in Lambeth.' They are moving around and you are not going to tell me that their parents give them loads...

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

You do realise that the real way to test this is to look at the home addresses and compare those with the courts where these youngsters are charged. I can tell you certainly that the people who are committing crime in Kingston are principally people who live nowhere near Kingston, but have come in on your buses. You are entirely wrong to think that it is just those people who have been arrested on the buses who cause crime; the crime is committed after the people have arrived at their new destination. For you to suggest that it goes back...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

I can't quite see why requiring a democratic vote of the membership is in any way punishing the union. I think most members of the public would simply understand it to be the right way to proceed. Let us not forget that it was about 25% of the total membership that actually voted for this strike. Bearing in mind that whatever the trade union in general has done with Bob Crow, he still remains resolutely popular within the RMT and the leader of that particular union, I am looking ahead to the Olympics. Isn't it something which he will be...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

You have just made the comparison between the RMT's turnout for strike ballots and our turnout for an election, and that is a comparison that Bob Crow made when he appeared before the Assembly's Transport Committee a couple of years ago to explain this. Of course, on a low turnout for an election the worst thing that can happen is that you or I can be elected, which might upset people a little bit when they see the result, but in the case of a strike ballot it is far worse because it disrupts the lives of people for days...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

Well that is something which might cheer up Londoners to hear anyway. You told us that the bus network did, in your words, 'a great job'. My experience of the buses over those two days was they were extremely crowded. Were extra buses provided to ameliorate the situation?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

Tim O'Toole said yesterday that in fact it had taken him eight and a half hours to explain to the RMT executive the meaning of the words on the paper. Is it acceptable to you that members of your staff effectively put Londoners through two days of hell for no reason at all like that?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

Why did you not personally intervene at that stage?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

Well that was the press release, but the news is that this was the most damaging strike on the Underground that London has suffered for ten years. What concessions did you make to the RMT to get them back?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

Well I suppose as Chairman for Transport for London they work for you, you see? There was another threat that Bob Crow made when he came back to work; he said, 'If Transport for London keep being disrespectful to me I will give them another strike next week.' That does not seem to me like an adequate reason for disrupting the whole of the transport system in London again. Again, is that acceptable to you?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

How about perhaps more constructive legislation to require a majority of the total membership of that branch of the union to vote for strike action, rather than just a number of people who happen to turn out on the day? We all know that the turnout for these strike ballots is historically low and to do something like that would encourage democracy within the union and free it up from the sort of protection racket that you just described.