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

Londoners in my constituency will welcome your statements about the North London Line, but they would also welcome your support for Finsbury Park Station. We currently have £5 million of TfL money sitting and waiting for the SRA to match it so that crucial work can be done at Finsbury Park, a station that you know is quite unsafe and hostile at night, but it is a key transport interchange. What can you do about that?

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

What direction will you be giving the rail operators on transport policing?

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

Clearly, the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) has been failing London. What proposals have been made with regard to a London regional rail authority?

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

Of course, I understand your desire as a regional politician to expand your empire and take on the power to control more things, no doubt for the good of Londoners. Our experience of taking responsibilities from Government is that they inevitably come with a bill that Londoners have to pay in the end. Have you costed your proposal for a regional rail authority and, if so, how much would it cost Londoners?

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

Have you actually costed it and worked out how much it would cost Londoners and how much it would put on the Council Tax? As a responsible politician who bears in mind the consequences of the decisions you make, I would have expected you to do that.

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

Liberal Democrats have always been in favour of a London regional rail authority, so the more power transferred to this authority the better. I am always concerned when the Government suddenly agrees or goes towards what we have been asking for over a long period of time because it generally means we will get `shafted', to use the word that comes to mind, although I apologise for the language. I read today that the Government is giving you powers to purchase extra trains on the busiest routes to ease rush hour. Are they going to give us some money too...

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

This particular section of the NCR is on a right-angled bend and last week a lorry overturned there because it was obviously going too fast and its load spilled onto the crossing and the pavement where schoolchildren had been walking only a few hours earlier. This has raised great safety issues about the speed of traffic at that section and what can be done to alleviate it. Can you ask TfL what they are doing, particularly at that corner, because it depends on what widening scheme or not takes place there in the future?

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

This particular section of the NCR is on a right-angled bend and last week a lorry overturned there because it was obviously going too fast and its load spilled onto the crossing and the pavement where schoolchildren had been walking only a few hours earlier. This has raised great safety issues about the speed of traffic at that section and what can be done to alleviate it. Can you ask TfL what they are doing, particularly at that corner, because it depends on what widening scheme or not takes place there in the future?

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

How do you think the NCR is doing in that?

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

Where will that come in your priorities in terms of what you have from the Spending Review to spend on London? You have a number of un-funded projects. Where will the NCR be in your priorities?