• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 15 September 2004

You are absolutely right that the boroughs are the waste collection authorities. You put your finger on it: there needs to be the recycling facilities. We cannot have 33 recycling facilities for batteries. There is the need for some leadership in this area. This is a very specific thing. You have taken action on other aspects of waste. You aspire to a greater role for waste disposal, yet on this, five years in " not the new kid on the block " there is no action. That is the charge.

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 15 September 2004

Plastics are welcome, but they are harder to collect whereas batteries, because they are small and portable, can be collected much more easily. Can I ask you a specific question? When the infrastructure is in place, will you use your powers, where you do have powers, for example in TfL, to allow the setting up of collection points so that people can simply deposit the little batteries in some sort of receptacle that is security proof?

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 15 September 2004

Thank you for supplying the printed figures. We have all supported the transport policing initiative and I think that the news you have given us is very encouraging. You are half right to say that the police do not track the outcome of offences; they do belatedly keep criminal records. They do, though, keep a record of judicial disposals. I think that knowing what the judicial disposals are is more relevant to judging performance than simply the number of arrests, which is all we have been able to get up to now. Will you give us an undertaking that in...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 15 September 2004

The fact is that crime on the Underground is going up. Last year violent crime went up by 1%; it went up by 22% on the Underground. Therefore, do you stand by your pledge that you made on 20 January 2004 that over four years you would cut London's crime rate in half?

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 15 September 2004

Thank you. Not surprisingly, your answer dwelt mainly on the London Underground, where you do have responsibility, but we debate frequently in this chamber the concerns that people have when they are travelling on over?ground rail where, if you are a victim, the crime is just as real. What are you going to do to track and preferably reduce the growing number of offences on over?ground rail?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 15 September 2004

Are you trying to move the goal posts on the 50% reduction then?

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 15 September 2004

We share the view about the train operating companies, but they argue that their passengers' top priority and therefore their top priority is running the services. One of your top priorities is to reduce crime in London. Much of that crime, and it is growing, is happening on the over?ground rail. What are you going to do to impress your priority on the, maybe reluctant, train operating companies?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 15 September 2004

So, you stick by the 50% reduction then?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 15 September 2004

So, because the Government has not given you enough, you are having to put the fares up?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 15 September 2004

Your Government's Spending Review 2004 in the section 'Implementation Plans for Efficiency Gains' states this: 'It [the Government's Spending Review] aims to deliver £125 million of efficiencies as a result of TfL's own efficiency plans.' In other words, Government is seeking to count £125 million of TfL's efficiencies against Government's own efficiencies. I imagine that TfL intended to use those efficiencies for some service improvement. What service improvements are going to be cut as a result of the Government's decision to purloin that £125 million for itself?