• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

They are trying to impress you, Mr Mayor! The stations that you have just listed as being from stable communities, many of them are within my own constituency. I can accept that the number of daily sales are quite low, however Wembley Stadium is on the Metropolitan route and at times that is extremely busy. People use these outlying stations to park at and then to travel into Wembley Stadium which makes them busy stations. What are you doing to accommodate those peaks of activity?

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 12 September 2007

I just wanted to emphasise the point which I think you touched on, Mayor; the importance of newsagents now in the sales of our tickets. Do you have actual figures to show that that is where Londoners prefer to go to buy their daily travel tickets, whether they be bus or Tube tickets? It strikes me that it is infinitely more convenient for many people to buy their tickets when they are getting their newspaper and light groceries.

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

It is not a question of can the Tories be trusted but can you, Mr Mayor, be trusted to take things seriously. I am not here to have a political knock-about with you. This is a very serious issue and you have quite clearly not woken up to it. Did you not read The Evening Standard on 24 August naming the gangs of London? Quite a frightener; I thought it was quite startling, quite frightening and I am on the MPA (Metropolitan Police Authority). It is about time the Mayor did something to get under this criminality because in fact...

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

I am sorry, but I never thought I would hear the Mayor of London being so naïve. These are extremely young people. You are talking about 18 year olds but I am talking about 12 year olds, 11 year olds, 13 year olds, and they are still often on the buses. Obviously you get tucked up in bed with your young family ' well good on you ' but some of the rest of us are actually travelling around London at that time of night visiting various constituencies in our capacity as Assembly Members. You will not appreciate that there...

• 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?