• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 22 January 2003

: I would have more confidence - and I don't need a publicity campaign telling me about police on the streets because it's part of the plan - if I thought that, knowing that money is bound to be limited, however much we all want to spend on the police, to be committed to the budget going, perhaps disproportionately to policing numbers, at the very time when the MPS is identifying how many more bangs for the bucks could be achieved by a different approach, doesn't seem to me to be necessary or a proper approach. I have to say...

• Question by: Lord Duvall of Woolwich in the Royal Borough of Greenwich OBE
• Meeting date: 22 January 2003

In your explanation about rises in TfL budgets and the need for more money - something I can subscribe to; we all need more money - would you not acknowledge that, in terms of the increases that you have had from central Government grant - I sometimes wonder whether you acknowledge this - of 17.8% increase this year in Government grant, with 47.3% increase last year, combined with everything else, do you not think that in terms of some of the cases that you make, some of the arguments you put forward could be much better, and you can acknowledge...

• Question by: Lord Duvall of Woolwich in the Royal Borough of Greenwich OBE
• Meeting date: 22 January 2003

So, in essence, the next Transport Strategy will have business cases and finance alongside it, this time integrated. Is that what you're saying?

• Question by: Lord Duvall of Woolwich in the Royal Borough of Greenwich OBE
• Meeting date: 22 January 2003

You alluded to, earlier on, some of the longer terms problems that you have in the budget. Can you tell us where the board are on in urging you to bring forward proposals to tackle some of those problems?

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 22 January 2003

You refer to the A13 scheme and the Coulsdon Relief Road which you have inherited and which you are proceeding with and budgeting for, can I suggest that you have failed to adequately budget for another scheme which you inherited which is the North Circular Road and which you cavalierly disregarded and, instead, come up with another scheme which is totally inadequate and very unpopular? You justified the A13 and the Coulsdon relief road on the grounds that there is a large amount of public support for them. There is a large amount of public support in the boroughs of...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 22 January 2003

I wonder if you could just remind me what the advertising spend is going to be for the congestion charge scheme?

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 22 January 2003

And necessary for the economic life of north London.

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 22 January 2003

Only because you quote a different sum every time you talk about the North Circular Road. It's instant inflation we seem to have had from TfL.

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 22 January 2003

That's utter tosh, Mr Mayor, as you know, because there is a scheme, for example for Henlys Corner, which has been through an extensive and expensive public enquiry and for which traffic orders have been issued, which you are now proposing to abandon in favour of a scheme which is costing a considerable sum of public money which will not improve the situation whatsoever but still spends over £50 million of public money.

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 22 January 2003

Can I first ask you about police numbers? Graham Tope questioned you on this in October and you talked about the new operational policing measure which is being piloted and you said, 'It will be a much more effective mechanism than the numbers game we've all been locked into up untill now' I agree with that and so I wonder why, taking that view, your introduction to the budget commits you to the number that you're working to beyond this coming year. Would it not be more appropriate to see how that measure actually pans out, what it achieves in...