• Question by: Dee Doocey
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

I do hope that part of this customer focus will end up in having much better response times to telephone calls. The Liberal Democrats on the Assembly have just done a survey and we phoned every police station in London, all 141 of them. I know that you will be as concerned as I am to find that only 50% of them answered the phone, and the other 50% did not. So I have a real concern about this. In two of the boroughs; Hammersmith and Fulham and Merton, we did not get through to one single police station. Are...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

It would take a few months.

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

You will know that the BBC has dubbed this whole thing `Ken-Air' and has shown the extent of the increase. I know you take a lot of advice from Jenny [Jones] on a whole range of matters. Can I impress upon you her suggestion that next time you want to go to Beijing, you should take the train! Can I suggest you take John Ross with you, and as you go across Siberia you can reflect on the days before the global capitalists took over how much better it was when the local Soviet would arm the people's militia I...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

From our side we want you and London to have proper engagement. Why is it that the cost of individual trips is going up? Two years ago the average cost per trip was £500, last year it was £1,000, in the first three quarters of this year it is £2,000. Is it not the truth that you are taking more and more people on these trips?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

It does not just make me happy, it makes the tax payers of London happy, because two years ago you were spending about £30,000 a year on this, last year it went up to £100,000, this current year it will be £300,000. That is a huge increase over two or three years, which is not reflected in any kind of strategic change in London's role in the world economy. Is it not the fact that you have lost control in this area and you and your staff are now taking off on these trips without a proper plan?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

Thank you. You will know we had an entertaining, although perhaps not totally enlightening, session with Simon [Fletcher] and John [Ross] last week. I wanted to ask the question to check that there was indeed a strategy, because is it not true that until we started asking questions you and your staff did not actually know the extent of spending that was going on on overseas visits and international relations generally?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

It is equivalent to about Euros 150 I think, yes. What are you doing to increase the penalty fare so it is a real deterrent?

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

That is good, because I was promised that by David Brown last week and it still has not arrived, so it will be a timely reminder. I would imagine you base it on an average fare?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

Good. One of the problems on articulated buses is that at least 40% of passengers have some kind of ticket which does not need to use the Oyster reader. Would it not be better to move to a system where everyone has to wave their pass or ticket at a reader?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 21 March 2007

So what do you now say is the total revenue loss on the whole bus service per year?