• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

What about the point about the disproportionate nature of what happens here? If you are looking at people living inside the Congestion Charge zone, the residents who normally get a discount, you are effectively saying that if you are just 1g over your arbitrary cut off point, you go from 80 pence a day to £25 a day. Would you not agree that by any stretch of the imagination, that has to be seen as disproportionate?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

I asked the Mayor about the situation with Malden Rushett, and I was joined in that by my colleague Bob Neill who says that he has similar problems in his constituency, where the LEZ (Low Emission Zone) does not actually follow the Greater London boundary. We have farmers who have farms split by the Low Emission Zone. The Mayor was asked whether he would look at that and alter the boundary. The Mayor said he would not. Would you care to advise the Mayor, when you next see him, that it would be sensible to do that?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

Then surely you add yet more cars? If you work out even on your own figures, any outcome is going to make no difference to CO2 levels, etc. in London. It is only going to be tiny. The whole life impact is expected to be minimal. You are not really changing the environment; that is grandstanding, surely, on a major scale.

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

Surely that itself is deeply unfair because that means people who have bought them and did not know, residents, are now facing having to pay what really amounts to penal taxation. It is; it is heavy taxation at the most extraordinary level for something like this and it also encourages them, surely, to change cars, to add yet more cars possibly to their stable?

• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

I noted from the report on it that the short term impact on air quality, I quote, 'is expected to be small and the whole life impact is expected to be minimal.' That is what has been said about it by your own officials. Is that not simply the case that this is what it is about? It is about revenue raising and nothing to do with the environment at all?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

I think most Londoners will understand that there is a problem and that you need to get on top of it. A little more information, a little more quickly would be helpful. I have one particular instance though, which is Aldgate East station where the eastern ticket office and access has been closed, I think now for a couple of months longer than it was meant to be, under the refurbishment. If you do not have the answer here today, can you write to me perhaps, explaining when that is going to re-open? It increases the time for people trying...

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

I listened to your comments about the requirement to do the Metropolitan Line, which runs right the way through my constituency. Obviously one of the concerns that most people have is that, in some way, shape or form, the various different station upgrades and improvements to the line are going to be delayed or even worse, postponed. Can you give us a guarantee now about when the work will be carried out, or whether that will be included within this Metronet review?

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

One of the considerations that I would like you to take away, and I do not expect an answer now, is about the timings on the Metropolitan Line trains on the signboards that seem to have disappeared because no one can rely on them. The fact that trains are due to appear is listed now, but without the actual time delay and it appears because of frequent breakdowns and problems that we have got on the rolling stock, that that is what is happening and a lot of commuters are concerned about that.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

Absolutely, so it is going to go ahead? This idea that it had been abandoned is not true?

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

In the spring. Is that the spring of next year or 2009 or later?