• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

I think the good result you have had in central London perhaps represents the fact that you have concentrated your attention there very much, and this argument is often made bearing central London in mind. Taxi touting is a serious problem in busy, commercial centres outside the central zone of London, for instance Ilford and Romford, which are extremely busy town centres in the evenings and at the weekends. There is a particular problem at Gants Hill and Wanstead. Certainly when we carried out the last operation there, we found far more than illegal taxicabs; we found immigration fraud, benefit...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

That is good news. Less good news was that when you reported TOCU activity to us some months ago, you pointed out that Redbridge only received 1% of the TOCU activity in enforcing minicabs. Has that figure improved since then?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

Can I suggest that perhaps one of the reasons why you do not want to release your results before the election is because it might show up just how much hostility there is to the plan? In addition, you would be seen as a Mayor stubbornly insisting on proceeding with something which the vast majority of Londoners said they did not want. Perhaps I could ask you, since Mr Blair, your Labour leader, has now come out in favour of referendums, would you be prepared to consider a referendum in the area most directly affected on this proposal?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

I have the toolkit here; it is absolutely huge and very expensively produced. There are some very interesting points that are worth picking up about how to consult. I understand that your consultation with 3.3 million Londoners has yielded about a 3% response rate, which is pathetic, because you did not follow the guidelines in your toolkit. I, on the other hand, did, and having consulted 4,000 Londoners using all the best tips that this toolkit provides, I actually achieved a 15% response to mine. 43% said they did not receive their consultation pack, and perhaps more crucially, 84% said...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

I have obviously been deeply disappointed by your record in a number of areas, but I have always warmly congratulated you on the success of Congestion Charging. Do you not think it was a mistake to concentrate purely on the expansion to the west and not also look to the east? Why should only west London get the benefits of quieter streets, less polluted streets and less traffic? Why should not east Londoners get those wonderful benefits as well?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

There was a statutory duty to consult with the Assembly on the westward extension. We alerted you to concerns over the timing, in as much as we did not think one year's figures were enough to give a real economic, business and financial impact. There were concerns about making it the same zone, so that it would destabilise the first zone, and about the boundary, and that two thirds of this area is residential and does not have the same logic as the first zone. Furthermore, there was concern about the £100 million cost of putting it in at a...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

Is that a serious answer?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

This was 22 to 900. Consultation? Why the London need?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

What faith can my constituents in the London Borough of Bexley, particularly those who live in New Road in Abbey Wood, have in this toolkit, when their experience of consultation has been to find that the B11 bus is re-routed down their road without any prior notice or warning, increasing emissions, which appears to be in breach of your own environmental strategy? Furthermore, they find that when, belatedly, TfL did undertake a consultation, 918 responses opposed the re-routing, only 26 supported it, but nonetheless the re-routing remains. Is that not a farce, a sham of a consultation? What value is...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

No, it is beyond Earl's Court.