• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

Your betting would be that the re-tendering will proceed on that timescale?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

Turning to the Metronet administration; TfL of course did have to guarantee £900 million to the administrators. How much of that money has been used so far? Do you know?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

Have you got any financial estimates of what the impact is going to be over the next few years in terms of additional costs? Are you working on any broad brush figures?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

Will any of these costs ever be repaid, or are they all going to fall to Transport for London - both the money to the administrators and the money in reconfiguring the work?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

Is that a fixed rate of interest, which would carry less risk?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

Just looking first then at Crossrail, which is good news, it does seem that initially the intention is to use floating interest rates in order to take the loan out before the fare box comes in, in order to repay the loan. Have you had any success with the Government in order to be allowed to consider a fixed rate of interest for the loan?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

There have been press reports recently that because of the Metronet collapse the programme to introduce cooling of the Tube, and also some of the accessible station work, has been put on hold. Is there any truth in that?

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

The overall financial deal which we have now, which allows for £16 billion in total, compares with a figure which was just under £10 billion less than a year ago. Now, I understand that outturn prices and contingency have contributed much to that increase but has there been a further increase which means that there is a larger cost to pay than we were thinking a year ago?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

But it is all relative, isn't it?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

This is quite a depressing tale. Will you be putting fares up to pay for the collapse in Metronet?