• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

Very finally, because you have mentioned it twice, I am sure you are welcoming the announcement by the Government that there is going to be an additional £1 billion for investment in affordable housing in London over the next three year period and there could be more, depending on the performance of other regions in the UK.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

I had another supplementary which is perhaps a more difficult question to answer and it is about the suburbs. If you look at the figures for London housing completions in London, you will find that in the inner London boroughs - more or less regardless of who controls them, but not completely the case - you have higher levels of affordable housing being built, and in the outer London boroughs you have very low percentages; in many cases below 20%, 15%, 12%. What that says to me is there is a real battle to be won. There is a very...

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

You have quoted the report I was going to paraphrase from as well; Value Added by the Assembly's Transport Committee, where it suggested the persistent problem with deregulation of the bus service outside London has been a failure to develop the competitive markets that we have here. This clearly puts blue water between yourself and Mr Johnson on transport policy, given that he has not supported Crossrail and he seems oblivious to the success of the bus service with the quality incentive contracts. I wonder whether there are other areas of differences between your opponent and yourself.

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

What about the availability of wheelchair ramps which was also addressed in that report and which I am told by my pensioner friends and your pensioner friends who I met on Monday is a problem again.

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

I am very pleased that the Mayor chose to quote the Transport Committee's findings and I wish he would do so more often. Having studied that report in detail no doubt, Mr Mayor, you will recall there was a recommendation that driving standards be included as an element of the contracts in order to improve them. Is that now being done?

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

Would you expect Mr Johnson to be supporting the Local Transport Bill which will hopefully improve the quality of the bus services in the rest of the country on the back of London, if he bothers to turn up?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

The fundamental flaw within this regulatory regime, or any other regulatory regime which you might like to impose, is that the contracts are badly constructed because they reward the operators for the number of kilometre miles that they run regardless of how many people are on the bus or whether the bus is empty, rather than making sure that the operators are rewarded for the number of bottoms they can attract to sit upon the seats. Until you get that right you will never get value for money.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

If there was a deregulated bus environment in London, do you think it would be possible for us to enforce factors such as wheelchair ramp operation, accessibility of buses and driver training standards? Do you think we would have problems with the recruitment and retention of drivers which is what we inherited when we took on and created TfL in the year 2000? Do you think, in other words, that a deregulated environment is one that we should aspire to in London or is it the fact that other cities in the UK aspire to a London-type system?

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

No, I understand that, but will that be rolled over?

• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 17 October 2007

Sorry, just to be absolutely clear; if the LDA is funding for three years, at the end of the three years does that equal £60 million?