• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

The Chair is anxious because we have spent over 20 minutes/half an hour on this and I am not sure that we are any the wiser as to how we are going to get action on Metronet. Your strategy seems to be that you are left to beat up the parent companies. My question is, since you have said legally you cannot do anything, and financially you cannot do anything, so the parent companies' shareholders do not mind, the only two of the parent companies that have consumer brands that could have their bottom line damaged are EDF Energy and...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

As you say, the PPP Arbiter's report was absolutely scathing. How bad would things need to get before you sought to withdraw from the contract?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

So what are you going to do to make sure that Metronet does get its act together, and have you issued them with any final warnings that you would take steps to try and end this contract if things carry on as they are?

• Question by: Geoff Pope
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

And you have not reached that point yet?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

Would you agree with me that the Tube Lines' contracts seems to demonstrate that the PPP, while not maybe your preferred option, can be made to work, but with the Metronet contract it clearly is not? One could easily go for a hit on this which says PPP is totally flawed. The evidence suggests it is a bit more mixed than that.

• Question by: Peter Hulme Cross
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

You mentioned in the first part of your answer to Darren [Johnson] that the PPP was commercially advantageous to Metronet. If that is an unfair contract, does that not put TfL in a powerful position to renegotiate the contract?

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

To summarise what you have said about Metronet, we could say that the performance is bad but not bad enough. Here we have a contract which relies upon a mutual partnership, effectively, but it all seems to be one way traffic. The thing we want to hear is what you are going to do about getting continuous performance improvements from Metronet?

• Question by: Bob Blackman
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

We have the contract which many people said in the beginning was not going to work and did not have teeth. Would it be fair, from your perspective, to say that those people that said all those things were right in the first place?

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 06 December 2006

Through you can we make a demand for instant compensation for these people who were absolutely kept like cattle in some of these stations?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 15 November 2006

I think that you will have to appreciate our concern about the way the goalposts keep changing. You talked about the cost of the actual buildings being reasonably on track but of course there were no designs costed out, so that suggests to us that the designs are going to cost more than the original costings. There was no VAT, you have quite rightly pointed out. You also keep talking about a revised Masterplan. I think you will agree we can be forgiven for thinking that this is a very, very flexible costing system. Given that you have already told...