• Question by: Damian Hockney
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

I think the challenge to ultimately unsustainable policies like the Congestion Charge comes from within. You made a challenge recently when you said, `If anybody does want to get rid of it, then I challenge you. Let us have a month without it and go back to the way we were before.' Therefore, we would challenge you for this August to suspend it for that time, because the number of tourist industries, the number of small shops, small and medium-sized enterprises that are complaining about the impact of the Congestion Charge is growing all the time. These people feel they...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

Of course, Westminster is one of the leading boroughs in terms of LEZs, so I do not think they need to take any lessons from you on that. Of course, your Congestion Charge is not tax-neutral, is it? It is an extra imposition on top of what people are already paying for their costs to motor. Is it not true that until such time as you get control, which the Treasury now enjoys, of things like fuel tax, it will always remain extra to other motoring taxes and therefore is unlikely ever to be tax-neutral?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

However, let me move on and ask you whether or not you would accept the description actually made of your Congestion Charge scheme by John Dawson of the Automobile Association (AA), who I think is a fairly senior expert on traffic matters, that what you are actually doing with your Congestion Charge is not road-user pricing, it is actually a permit system whereby you simply pay a flat rate to go into a particularly designated part of London and then regardless of how many times you go in and out, regardless of which roads you use, regardless of which roads...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

It is a shame that there is so little in the way of revenue compared to what was predicted that it really is a bit meaningless, I suspect.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

Would you anticipate a refreshing new line of thinking on the Low Emission Zone (LEZ)?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

I am just as happy to get this on the record, so you would accept that while we as a party have never been opposed to road-user pricing policies and are interested in looking at them, your Congestion Charge system does not actually meet that particular description and therefore it is quite wrong to paint us as somehow opposing or doing a u-turn on our traditionally Conservative principles.

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

Can I just ask how the offer of cheap oil for London fits in with your energy strategy, which rightly takes a very strong stance on tackling fuel poverty, which is crucially important, but sees the means of achieving that through energy efficiency and the rapid promotion of renewables rather than cheap oil?

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

Unfortunately, that is my role in life.

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

Nevertheless, in speech after speech you have said that we need to kick the fossil fuel habit and wean ourselves off this addiction. Cheap oil is not going to wean us off it, is it, it is just going to continue our addiction?

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

I must admit, Mayor, the last 15 minutes have been somewhat surreal. Have you seen a doctor recently?