• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 15 December 2004

I think this follows very neatly from the previous question from Jennette Arnold, because I think Londoners expect there to be more serious sanctions against people who misbehave publicly, and as we found with the TOCU, people who avoid their fares very often will be the same sorts of people who do not have a sense of good behaviour on public transport and possibly cause problems elsewhere in the public realm, so people expect greater enforcement, but clearly, we are not going to employ thousands and thousands of additional inspectors. The fear or the risk of being caught and of...

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 15 December 2004

Well, there are a lot of low-income people who do evade fares or cannot pay for them, but unfortunately, I sometimes have to sit on a TfL court ' which I hate ' and your prosecutor charges £120 fine plus £50, so for evasion of a £2 fare, which they cannot pay, they walk out of court with £170. Then the court has to chase after them. I think it is iniquitous what TfL impose.

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 15 December 2004

The trouble is, if they cannot pay on the spot, they end up in courts, and as you say, sometimes, they have mistaken their route.

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 15 December 2004

My key concern is about the mismatch ' I think everybody shares this ' between the improving safety standards we now have on the buses and the Underground and the appalling situation on the overground system. The Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) came to see me recently, and they are briefing against the Rail White Paper. In particular, they are briefing against the proposal that London should have more responsibility for franchising overground rail in London. They seem completely unaware of the inadequate customer services on the issue of safety that many train operators and stations are operating in...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 15 December 2004

Do you think it is possible that the long battle for adequate funding the BTP have fought to get sufficient money out of the train operators could have something to do with the fact that, essentially, the train operators have a conflict of interest? One of the BTP's tasks is to investigate and pursue actions in the case of major incidents and accidents, and they may well end up investigating and pursuing action against their funders. Do you think there is a potential conflict of interest there for the train operating companies in the fact that they are required to...

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 15 December 2004

I wonder if you would consider cross-cutting indicative policing numbers for overground rail companies, so you could guide them into what you would expect, if TfL were the franchising body in this respect.

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 15 December 2004

To ensure better coordination of the policing of TfL services, would you support the transfer of the BTP officers assigned to Croydon Tramlink for their funding to the London Underground division?

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 15 December 2004

In the answer to the question to Joanne McCartney, if we could refer her to the Department for Transport of September 2004, they have actually already done a review of BTP, and maybe if we had joined up government between yourselves, the Members opposite, and the Government, we could actually save some money and stop doing extra reviews. Why do we not just look at this one and adopt that, rather than go through planted questions with the other side, so you can expand your empire?

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 15 December 2004

In the light of the failure of CCTV cameras at Wood Street station ( a station in my constituency where there was the recent fatal stabbing ) will you join me in pressing for every possible step to be taken to ensure that where CCTV is in place, it is fully operational?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 15 December 2004

One of the concerns about Train Operating Companies (TOCs) funding a policing initiative is that they run services which travel, in some instances, quite a long way outside the boundaries of London. How would you make sure ' in this contract proposal which sounds good on the face of it ' that the money that they provided would be used for policing stations in London, and the resources would not be going further afield?