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

Would you appreciate why they would feel concerned that this would, in many ways, be a complete turnaround on the principle that they felt they had established with the Mayor that there should be a discount for all residents with cars in the western extension?

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

Curiously, I travelled in on the Tube today with the Leader of Kensington & Chelsea Council and we were talking about this very subject. You will be aware that Kensington & Chelsea has actually remained entirely neutral about the issue of how much you want to charge large vehicles and large engines, but they are not at all neutral about the issue of the loss of the principle of the discount for residents. Are you prepared to do battle with Kensington & Chelsea over this?

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

If you do believe in this system, what proposals have you made regarding these inconsistencies about the type of car that will qualify or not? Have you made proposals to the Mayor on that to make it fairer?

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

And what referendum did they have?

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

Peter, I can pretty much assure you that no doubt the Dutch Government would do it as a matter of course, having not long been re-elected. If they had a referendum, they would not do it, just like in Edinburgh when it was put to a referendum. In spite of every single body, every single organisation going for it, they voted substantially against. It is the same with many other situations and that will happen more as a result of you bringing in this type of swingeing taxation. That will happen more in places like New York and in California...

• Question by: Nicky Gavron
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

I wonder, Peter Hendy, whether you were aware of, or indeed were using in making the case for emission-based charging, the fact that earlier this year, I think it was around February, the University of Southern California came out with its research, which really gives the evidence for what we knew anecdotally, which is that if you live close to a very traffic-blighted road with high vehicle emissions, then if you are growing and your lungs are growing, and you are any age from 0 to 18, it does not just exacerbate asthma, the particulates and the various toxic emissions...

• 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?