• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

Perhaps to address another part of your presentation, which links to this, you talked about the need for the LDA to have credibility with business, but are there not occasions when business has to have credibility with Londoners and the LDA needs to say that the employment, training and mentoring practices of the private sector in London are short-sighted, are disadvantaging London and, in the end, will disadvantage those businesses? I am being quite strident in pursuing that. Perhaps your Chair should answer that.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

Can you point to an initiative where you have actually made a difference in that?

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

Can I just go back to the area of questioning that my colleague touched on about the LDA's support of London's black and minority ethnic communities? Firstly, would you agree with me that sometimes the LDA can be seen to be defensive about the support of this key community? I would like to say to you that there is absolutely no need to be defensive, because it is, if you like, linked to your answer to the last question. These are communities finding themselves in need, but at the same time, they have the skills and the city has the...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 March 2004

If I could pick on one of those areas and make your life a little harder, then: graduate unemployment levels in minority ethnic communities. Much has been said about this and yet the levels of unemployment remain massively higher than in the white communities, for example. What examples of success can you give in that area, and to what extent is it a priority that you can address? Alternately, is it an issue which you, in the end, accept that you cannot make a difference on and that you should withdraw from?

• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 14 January 2004

• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 14 January 2004

It does seem a very complicated perk. What astonished me when I asked the original question was when I was told that this perk apparently goes back to the 1930s, which makes it quite a modern kind of embellishment to being employed by the Underground. We issue over 109,000 free passes at a cost of £168 million, and 85% of those passes, that is 93,000 passes at a cost of £143 million, are to people who are not employed by TfL, some could be retired, some could be partners, what you will. It does seem to me, that in the...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 14 January 2004

Do you not think it is normal that in most places around the world you have more bridges at the source of a river, where a river is small, than towards the estuary? That is a fact of life.

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 14 January 2004

Why is TfL a better arbiter of deciding where bus stops should be than London boroughs?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 14 January 2004

Why did you not do it with the Thames Gateway Bridge?

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 14 January 2004

It is the consultation on bus stops; it is a matter I have raised before, and Bob Kiley said he thought you could have too much consultation. But right across London residents in London boroughs are irritated by the fact that their only locus in the matter of locating bus stops is their right to be consulted. Boroughs do not have a veto on this. In the light of the disturbance which new bus stops can have on existing residents, will you suggest to TfL that they accept that the views of London boroughs and of local residents should actually...