• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

You have not told me yet when these 89 police officers will actually be deployed.

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

Okay, so there are going to be more BTP, and I thank you for responding to the Liberal Democrat proposals for 272 extra such police last January, but your response was for 89, which we do not believe is enough. Can you tell us what is actually going to happen in terms of their deployment? Do we know where and when?

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

I have been working with two of my local secondary schools in Enfield and the problem that they have is that many of their schoolchildren are victims of muggings, especially on the top of double-decker buses that serve those schools. One of the problems appears to be that children do not know, for example, that the driver has a form that he can hand out and they can report that and it can be taken up. Should there be plans that TfL perhaps goes and talks to schools and tells children about the risk and also what they should do...

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

I agree with you on that, so what are you going to do to press them to take that responsibility seriously?

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

It seems that there is a small ' select is not the right word ' but self-selecting group of criminals who target people leaving transport interchanges, and that is a particular issue. The second part of my question was that if following the events of 7 July last year and other events we are working harder and harder to make our transport system more secure, do we not run the risk that we are going to direct potential threats to softer targets such as shopping centres or whatever? I know this is not directly related to your question, but do...

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

I think that is the point though. I have had experience of the heads telling me that children have been mugged on buses and have come downstairs and the bus driver has not done anything. If that was recorded at the time, that CCTV camera, presumably, could have been taken and further action done about it?

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

I quite agree. I think the lines of communication would be a lot better, and also the lines of accountability.

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

I was going to ask something about the TOCs, but the Mayor has covered that. There are some discussions about whether the BTP should be broken down and absorbed. Have you thought about the possible advantages to Londoners of absorbing the BTP London operations within the MPS?

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

I think Nicky Gavron (AM, Deputy Mayor) in the run-up to the last election made a very powerful series of statements about the whole journey and the fact that we may make people safer on buses and Tubes but quite often they are most vulnerable in the last mile back to their home or wherever. I am reminded of this particularly because in my constituency last week a young woman was raped when she got off the bus at the bus station, left the vicinity and was attacked by somebody. What work are we doing at TfL and with boroughs...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 17 April 2006

Is the withdrawal of those cards an effective sanction because in quite a lot of cases if you look under 16 the bus driver does not even ask to have a look at your card, so you will have had it withdrawn and it is not going to make the slightest difference?