• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

So you will guarantee they will come back with an improved plan then?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

It is a pity because if you had spoken to some of the bus drivers they might have told you the same experience as I had from one of the drivers on the 161, who says that unfortunately, whatever the intentions behind the free travel for under 18s, there is an increasing problem of disorder, not just when schools come out, but with groups of young people using the buses as a mobile meeting place late at night. He was quoting that he had been spat at, for the fourth time since this came in, by people whom he had...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

Can we move on to the CCTV situation which you discussed briefly with Ms Shawcross? The figure is somewhere between 3% and 4% of CCTV not functioning on London buses, which sounds good until you realise at any one time that is up to 300 buses which could have CCTV that is malfunctioning. It may also be an underestimate, because we have come across cases where criminals have tampered with the lighting on buses, for example, so that the CCTV is not effective for prosecution even though it is working well. Do you include those figures, and is there anything...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

Thank you for turning our buses into mobile youth centres which is what you seem to have done. Nobody could accuse you of cutting the council tax year by year. Has it struck you that what you are actually doing is putting London's public servants, the drivers of the buses, in some significant peril, and that, as Steve Pound admitted in the debate in the House of Commons, there has been an increase in violence and disorder on buses in South East London. Has it just struck you that it might be a good idea to cut the scheme maybe...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

It is interesting that you have suddenly found an interest in security on the suburban transport networks, something which, of course, the Conservative group on the Assembly was advocating in its alternative budgets for many years before you cottoned on to the idea! Do you accept that one consequence of the scheme is, regrettably I am sure, to increase the burden upon policing in outer London?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

Now we have established that, let us move back to the policing question which we were on before we shifted. Could you just say again how many of those 378 extra police officers will be there to control the unregulated travel scheme?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

What I will do is gather them up and send them to you

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

It is all a bit creative, isn't it really?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

No doubt something very nasty happened in about 1900 as far as the drivers of the horse drawn omnibuses as well.

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

I do think that is an idiotic thing to say. I was a mature student. I struggled to pay for a card so I cycled, which was much better for me and better for London. So please do not extend this any more. It is bad enough as it is.