• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 15 September 2004

The painful decisions might be about your wish list, you very long wish list, which we might all very well wish for London transport projects, and your ability to budget within reality, rather than simply going into Londoners' pockets when you are in crisis. It seems that you are in crisis because you have called an emergency crisis budget meeting next Wednesday. Are you prepared to tell Assembly Members what that is about?

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

The Mayor is quite right. We should be building upon the major investments that the Government is putting through the GLA and TfL. Could you outline to me what the proposed cuts of £20 million that the Liberal Democrats suggested last year to the TfL budget would have meant to fares on the bus, tube and Docklands Light Railway (DLR)? Also, what would Oliver Letwin's proposal of £279 million cuts to the GLA budget have meant to fares in our public transport system?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 15 September 2004

Answer by * Andrew PellingAngie BrayBob BlackmanBob NeillBrian ColemanDamian HockneyDarren JohnsonDavid LammyDee DooceyDiana JohnsonElizabeth HowlettEric OllerenshawGraham TopeJennette ArnoldJenny JonesJoanne McCartneyJohn BiggsKen LivingstoneLen DuvallIt is not that. It is just that every time there is a funding shortfall you turn to Londoners to stump up in one way or another. Do you not think that it makes a nonsense of John Biggs's question later on, which says that 'Given the Liberal Democrats' repeated predictions of massive bus fare crises''? He has accused us of scare?mongering. Would you not agree that it was not scare?mongering in light of what you are about...

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 15 September 2004

It is all great, except that it does question your ability to budget.

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 15 September 2004

): Could I just go back to the fares for a moment? Are you likely to double the fares to £2, do you think?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 15 September 2004

That is the reason you have given for not appearing at the Liberal Democrat conference.

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

When can we expect to see these fare increases and is there going to be an increase in the congestion charge?

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

Thank you, what a pity that in your brief they did not also give you the figures for those wards that neighbour Safer Neighbourhoods schemes that actually showed a displacement of crime and an increase in the neighbouring wards. However, you mention in your report that you welcome the £50 million Neighbourhood Policing Fund and the recruitment of 20,000 additional Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs). You welcome those as though they were new money. The Safer Neighbourhoods fund actually finishes this year, so London will lose some £14 million. We have money in the SR2004 for PCSOs, but there is...

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

How are you going to give all these extra police officers the radios to actually make them work efficiently?

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

One would also hope that there would be an increase in the detection of crime if they have less to do or less crimes to actually detect. Are you going to insist that the MPA sticks to your original structure of one police sergeant, two PCs and a number of PCSOs in each ward, or are you going to start changing that?