• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

I do not understand why you are so soft on Thames Water. You have been trying to understand their predicament for too long. Here is a company making £350 million profit, a 30% increase. Why are you putting £100,000 worth of public money into subsidising their advertising campaign?

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

A third of Thames Water's purified water is leaked out of their pipes. They are applying for a drought order, a non-essential use order. Will you be making representation with regards to the application of that order?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Let me suggest some things that you do have some powers over. First they claim that they could not replace any more pipes because of the disruption and now they magically discover they can. The fact remains that still about a third of the water will never, even after the end of this plan in 2010, actually get to householders. Is TfL actively working with Thames Water to plan how to do a massive increase in pipe replacement, so the buses can keep running? Are you actually working constructively on this?

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

With regards to the advertising campaign, and using iconic images such as Battersea Power Station and this building here, when we have forcibly been criticising them: do you think it is not somewhat hypocritical of them to claim the amount of water they are saving every day when in actual fact they are losing a third of it?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Can I ask that there be not a penny more of public money from your budgets going to Thames Water until they have actually set and met targets that are reasonable?

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Nobody is suggesting that we should lower the standard of our drinking water. Thames Water have invested £6 billion since 1989, you are quite right, in raising the standard of our water. We now have chemical coagulation, sand filtration, activated granulated carbon filtration, chlorination and what have you, but we have now achieved that standard. There is no need to go back. We should maintain it. The point I am making is that up to 2010 Thames Water say they are going to invest £3 billion in water and sewage treatment, but £1 billion in leaking pipes. My point is...

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Okay, so you don't think that they can actually do much more than that?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

I would rather the LDA trained up Londoners who are unemployed to do the work as well.

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Another one of their excuses is there are not enough plumbers, and there is a skills shortage. The London Development Agency (LDA) is under your direct responsibility, so have you instructed the LDA to sit down with Thames Water to tackle the high unemployment in London, to train people to dig up the road and relay the pipes?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

It is not either or. They should be doing that and you and we Londoners should not be paying for it.