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

I do not particularly want to pursue that one too far, Mr Mayor.

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Right. It is just you told us in the past that that was into double figures, so perhaps you have been overestimating? In November TfL told London TravelWatch that arrangements were being finalised to put a scheme in place whereby cards could be withdrawn. It appears to have taken from November to June this year to actually get that into place, despite the fact people were told it was being finalised in November. Why has there been such a huge delay?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

I think the policy of our party, if you read the articles rather than just the headlines, Mr Mayor, is that we should seek to understand the majority of young people who are often the victims of crime rather than the perpetrators, and to do that you need to deal with the people who are the perpetrators who make their lives a misery; TfL have self-evidently not being doing that for the past nine months. You also told us in September that you felt - you used the words `I suspect' - that people who vandalise the Docklands Light Railway...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

In the autumn, TfL ran a poster advertising campaign, copies of which I have brought with me. One of them shows a young lady lighting a cigarette on a bus, with the strap-line `do it and you could lose your free travel'. Another one shows a group of youths appearing to open a can of beer on the bus, saying `do it and you could lose your free travel'. It looks like for nine months they have been able to do it without any penalty whatsoever despite TfL's public claims. Would it not have been better to wait until you...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

What a shame you are not being serious this time either, Mr Mayor.

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Well that is self-evident; what we want to know why it took longer than you thought.

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

At the time that you brought this scheme in and following your statement in September, which you seem to now be quite keen to disassociate yourself from, I said this scheme was clearly full of holes and had not been thought through properly, despite the fact that it had been a Labour Manifesto commitment since the days of good old Frank Dobson (MP), who some of us can still remember. Was I not right that this scheme was full of holes and was badly thought through?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Thank you, Mr Mayor. We have been asking you this question for a number of months and it is encouraging to see the trend improving. Did I hear you say that four had been withdrawn for anti-social behaviour?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

You told us in September, and if I may quote you Mr Mayor, `it will be a virtually instantaneous penalty that TfL can apply'. It appears to have been virtual rather than instantaneous.

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 12 July 2006

Nine months.