• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

You don't blame Gordon Brown [Prime Minister]) for foisting it on us?

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

The biggest problem in all this is the cost overruns and the estimates go up to £2 billion now, don't they? We heard yesterday that we are losing £17 million a week, or TfL is paying the administrators £17 million a week. Does this not give the lie to your claims that you would not be paying a penny more to the Metronet contracts?

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

Yes, that's fair but overall this has been a failure, hasn't it?

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

Introducing a seventh car on the Jubilee Line was a great success for London Underground, but then when the Waterloo and City Line does not work that is Metronet's fault. In the future if not all of the work is being provided by London Underground, will this not be unfair to Tube Lines when the annual report is produced? How are you going to get a sensible balance on performance measures?

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

Will you commit to going out to open competitive tender for much, if not all, of the upgrade work?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

Ultimately we have to get approval. London Underground has to provide the information to Government to propose to the European Commission. Has that all been done?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

Before we get over carried away in an orgy of `I told you so', I thought first of all I would say that I am very happy to defend every comment I made seven years ago about the PPP. Secondly, I would remind colleagues and the Mayor that one of the PPP contractors is performing apparently to specification and is not going bust. Also, the shareholders in the Metronet consortium have lost millions upon millions of pounds as part of this so they have not exactly walked away laughing all the way to the bank, although there is obviously a...

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

What about our real Government in Brussels? Tim O'Toole did suggest that European Union rules might possibly be delaying the process because there are the state aid rules and if TfL were to take over the assets there is a chance that that might be opposed. Maybe a small chance, but it nonetheless means you have to provide all the information and get approval. Where are we with that?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

Following up on that point, do you think that there is a case for Londoners, possibly through the GLA - I would think that is the most obvious route - undertaking an examination of whether the conflicts of interest between the management of the PPP contract and the shareholders in it and the levels of charging were such that we might look to ways of getting some of that money back?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

I remember you sitting here seven years ago saying that you wanted the maintenance to be kept in-house, and obviously then you got total opposition from Government, total resistance. Are you encountering any resistance from Government now for the idea of TfL getting these contracts back in-house?