• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

Fare evasion on the buses is costing £40 million a year to London and £45 million a year on the Tube. It would seem that the £10 penalty fine is not sufficient to motivate actual prosecution. There are a number of difficulties we will not go into now. You are very quick to raise fares for the ordinary travelling public, and to then say you will do it for another three years, breaking inflation and all of that. Would it not be more sensible to raise the penalty rate for fare dodging and to have it on the same par...

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

They are not catching a huge amount. I am glad if the rate has gone down, but there are 132,000 people every day who still are dodging their fares, and I do not think that is effective. With the introduction of bendy buses, they are becoming a sort of public scandal. They are known as a free bus, and I want to know what percentage of the fare box income has dropped on those routes where you have substituted bendy buses for the Routemasters, for example.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

That would be in their interest, too.

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

With the introduction of the bendy buses, you have now got an additional problem coming along the track.

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

I wonder, have you or your officers drawn the provisions of the London Plan, (your analysis of which I agree) to the attention of the Post Office?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

You will be aware ' or maybe you will not be ' that there are equally proposals to close eight post offices in my own borough of Lambeth, all of them will disproportionately affect disadvantaged community groups. Can I invite you to put on record your support for the cross-party campaign against that, and can I also invite you to examine Val Shawcross's current workload. I say this ' because Val (Shawcross) has chosen, in her next question to personalise matters ' just to draw your attention to her reply to a request from local campaigners that she support the...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

I accept your commitment to me, but will you therefore, perhaps, do that now and invite the leaders of the other groups to come with you?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

You have not done it.

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

Given the importance of these post offices to Londoners, I am just a bit surprised that you are not clear whether your officers have already sought an urgent meeting with the Post Office to emphasise to them the conflict with the London Plan. Have you, yourself, sought a meeting with the chief executive of the Post Office to impress upon him the serious conflict that there is with the London Plan and to make it clear that the GLA has powers that it might use to try to frustrate their'

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 17 November 2004

I would like to press as to exactly what campaigning you have done. You were good enough to write supporting the campaign against the closure of Hayes Village Post Office in, I think, the autumn of this year, and you will recall that I wrote to you in September raising general concerns about the effect of post office closures in London, and you wrote to the Government, and I think copied a reply back to me. I would like to know what steps you have taken - or officers, obviously, on your behalf have taken - specifically to provide support...