• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 16 November 2005

You have no idea. You are Chair of this organisation and you have no idea. This is your flagship policy and you have no idea.

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 16 November 2005

I take it that rant means you do not have a proper answer to my question or to the headmaster or my constituents?

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 16 November 2005

Oh dear, I am coming in on the same issue. Can I say I think that hundreds of thousands of families have benefited from this. It is incredibly welcome across London and I am very grateful to TfL who have been very responsive in aligning local bus timetables to the closing hours of schools, which has helped the problem. However, over the years I have been watching my bus casework change ' actually diminish. To begin with, five years ago the pressure was about not enough buses, unreliability and inaccessibility. Then there was a phase when a lot of complaints...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 16 November 2005

Oh, for God's sake! Are you totally paranoid?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 16 November 2005

hould London fare-payers be subsidising people from outside London to have these passes? Yes or no?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 16 November 2005

I took this on as a challenge and in fact it is not Chipping Sodbury ' it is Barcelona. Do you not think there is something wrong with your validation system if people not only from outside London but outside the country are able to get these passes? It is a shambles, is it not?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 16 November 2005

The headmaster who you so airily dismissed is the head of one of the most successful schools in my constituency, the London Borough of Bromley, and he wrote that letter in response to a complaint from a constituent. He took the trouble to go and monitor the behaviour of pupils from the school at the bus stop outside where the constituent lived. He agreed with her that there was a problem and said the constituent was very astute in pointing out that these problems have arisen in the wake of public transport being made freely available for all young people...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 16 November 2005

You may make what judgement you like of his character but is the criticism he is making here a fair one?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 16 November 2005

Finally, when we last discussed this we talked about people applying for tickets from outside London. You did say to me that you thought if I did a lot of work I might unearth someone from Chipping Sodbury who had wrongfully got a ticket.

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 16 November 2005

I think the point I was making, apart from punitive approaches which I think are difficult and expensive, is that there must be more we can do just in a positive, educative way. Young people getting Oyster cards could also get a behaviour charter or an agreement to sign up to for their behaviour. There could be much more publicity on the buses about what is the correct way to behave. We do of course get a lot of foreign visitors in London who do not necessarily know what the norms or standards of behaviour are. What can be done...