• 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...

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

Let me put it another way. What is the relevance of the view of somebody living in perhaps Barking, or Dagenham, or Kingston, on a proposal which only affects a very small area of western central London? What is the relevance of their views, given that many of them do not know the area, will never go there and do not have to live with the consequences?

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

Yesterday I think you will have received a letter from the leader of Kensington and Chelsea, Councillor Merrick Cockell, in which he has outlined some serious concerns about the way your consultation on the westward extension of the congestion charge is being conducted. In particular, I think there is real concern that you are attempting to bury the views of those who live in the immediate area under the views of three million other households across London who are also being asked. Why should the people in Kensington and Chelsea, plus a few extra in Westminster, have their futures as...

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

Indeed. You clearly have a cynical frame of mind. Perish the thought that I should think the same. What assurances have you received that they will not cut other budgets? We have seen that this is another example of Gordon Brown's prudence costing Londoners dear, but what always happens is that they give with one hand and they take with the other. What assurances have you received that they will not grant budgets because we can now borrow?

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

But they do not want it anywhere near them.

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

Clearly this is welcome news. We should be grateful for small mercies, and you made the point that actually this is relatively small in terms of the potential that TfL, and indeed the other constituent parts of the GLA family, could support in market terms. We should also be grateful for late mercies because we have been arguing for this for more than four years. What has actually changed over those four years? Why could this announcement not have been made four years ago and then we would have had the benefit of this spending four years earlier?