• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

You say you are not wedded to a particular boundary at this stage, so why are you only looking westwards? Why not eastwards?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

But you always argued that you could not do it on a single issue, and the reason people voted Labour was that they could not vote against the PPP (Public-Private Partnership) through the election. So you use arguments whichever way, do you not?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

I have concerns about not every household getting a copy of your broad sweep consultation.

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

When you say you are doing a broad consultation, one of the problems that usually jumps up and actually hits you in the face more than anything else is that you take a view when the public have not expected the consultation to be out. If you transfer that to what you did with the West London Tram, you used the results to swing it in a particular direction. I think that is an issue for London. You may say that it is a broad sweep across the whole of London, but if London is broadly supportive of the extension...

• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

Without wanting to appear a damp squib, I just find it an incredible cheek of you to arrive here and announce to us the `good news' that you have been allowed to borrow £400 million from your Labour Government. If I remember rightly, you used to go round giving great speeches about the glories of the Greater London Council and how it never borrowed but made it all from revenue. Over the last few weeks you have pushed through a budget in low single figures, lower than you have ever done, by raiding the reserves, raiding the underspend and not...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

I suppose it would be churlish if we did not welcome your golden hello to the Labour Party, but whether it turns out to be a golden handshake on 10 June is another matter. Whatever the merits of prudential borrowing this is actually a transference of risk away from central Government and potentially onto Londoners. How is the debt to be serviced? Do you anticipate that the debt charges will be met from revenue, from fare income, or from Council Tax?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

Which is a long way of saying you have not received any assurances, and so sceptics would say they cut the transport grant this year and they are likely to cut it in future years. The record in TfL in terms of underspend is not good. What assurances have you given that this money will be well spent?

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

Can I just check something, Mr Mayor, because you used the term `referendum" at one point? Can you confirm that you will be undertaking consultations and that this will not be decided on a referendum basis?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

Surely they would have felt consulted if you had actually addressed envelopes to specific people. After all, we have done some checks and found that TfL did not even attempt to apply for the updated electoral register, which would have made it perfectly possible to have addressed each letter personally to someone in their property. Instead, you have just addressed them in a vague fashion to `the occupier'. Why did you not do it properly if you wanted to hear their views?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 28 April 2004

Can I move on to another aspect of this consultation, which I know was also flagged up to you. This concerns the way you are delivering letters to the people inside the zone, or the immediate area just around the zone, which are, let us say, the people who are probably the most important in this process. You seem to be sending letters not to actual specific people but to `the occupier'. Of course, that means that where people live in blocks of flats those letters are left lying on the floor because no-one knows precisely to whom they are...