• 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...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 22 January 2003

I would like to follow up Len's last question, if that's agreeable with my colleagues, in a number of ways. I think Londoners will, by and large, strongly support all of these transport initiatives and improvements and they will welcome the growth in bus services, the plans for new infrastructure and so on and so on. But they will ask themselves whether Mr Livingstone has really sweated the assets and has really grappled with the prioritisation that is needed to make sure that they don't get hit in their wallets unless it's really necessary. Government grant has increased by £5.5...

• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 22 January 2003

We've heard from Bob Kiley this morning about some of the internal disciplines. Can you just outline to us about the board's involvement in budget preparation and are they overseeing the finances of TfL?

• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 22 January 2003

Can we then move on to some of the balances? Moving on from Sally's point of view and cover the issues between inner London and outer London and about some of the policies that you'd like to see on the allocation of these CSOs in terms of the visible policing. Where is the allocation likely to go in terms of the outcome of this budget? What discussions have you had with the MPS around that deployment?

• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 22 January 2003

If we agree with the consensus about improvements in terms of managing the budgets within the police, can you tell us how you intend to work with the MPA or give guidance on future investment in police services, of (1) making sure that the MPS sticks to what they say they're going to do with the money and don't get diverted by short-time crises, i.e. the civilianisation policy; (2) what is your thinking about MPA hold back of sums of money as well? Can you just give us some of your thinking around that?