• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

Okay, but I am saying that contract management and contract negotiation is the name of the game and I do think you are taking seriously what actually was a huge gap in the contract. Anyone from any borough who does outsourcing knows that quality control has to be paid for and no one in this contract was paying for it.

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

You are in a business now where there is going to be a lot of contracts about a lot of things. The point I am making is that quality control assurance is part of any contract and should not have been missed. That is the point and Sally said that the contract should have delivered it in the first place. It should have been part of what Capita was doing anyway and it was not. That is a serious thing to omit in a contract.

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

But then you try and wrap it up by saying "Their quality control was so disgusting that I was on the point of sacking them because it was crap" but actually it was crap because it was not in the contract. It was not in the contract, which is why the quality control was failing and you were absolutely over a barrel in terms of Capita in that contract and you had no earthly hope of sacking them because of your omission with them in that contract. That is the point, Ken.

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

I think it is an absolutely wonderful scheme. That is not what we are discussing at the moment. We are discussing something that was actually left out of the contract and was not spotted, which you have now actually added in. There was an assumption that it was part of the contract, was there not? That is where it came from. Really the criticism is that you got it wrong.

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

I came to the Budget Committee and listened very closely to everything that you said and I do not think we got near the truth behind what happened with the Capita contract. Is it not the case actually that the quality control on customer service, which is very expensive and very time consuming to exercise, was assumed by TfL to be part of Capita's remit but actually was not in the contract? Is not that the truth of what happened and is that not why you had to add it in?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

Given that I have limited time, does it not follow from that then, although I respect the fact and understand that you want to consult on the extension of the zone to Kensington and Chelsea, it would make better sense to maybe consult on the principle of that but not to make a decision until there has been a proper long-term evaluation of the charge in Central London?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

I think that is useful. If I could move on because I have a very limited time on this earth as they say, the second part is about best value in the rounder sense of the term. Best value is, as I think you now, evaluated in terms of not just the finance but also the social and economic benefits. You talked about the cost to business of congestion but is it not the case that we will not really understand the best value until there has been quite a long-term evaluation of this scheme?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

So you are conceding that there is no independent way in which it could be verified that this is value for money for Londoners.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

Unlike the Tories and the Liberals, I do not think there is a smoking gun on this issue and I am prepared, as I think most Londoners are, to take you on good faith. There is an unpredictability about this contract and you have had to vary it. The problem I have is maybe focused in two simple questions: the first is how do we, as part of the democratic audit of your work, establish independently whether there is value for money in this contract given that it is so opaque and caveated by confidentiality? You have revealed the contract...

• Question by: Toby Harris
• Meeting date: 17 September 2003

How do you think London's public services would cope with a 20% cut in funding as proposed by the Conservatives and what do you think that the knock-on impact of that will be on the rest of the country?