• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 26 February 2003

the longer-term charge and whether it's wise to give commitments now. Finally, can I ask: you said that the copyright of the scheme belongs - do I understand it correctly? - jointly to TfL and Capita. If that is so, have London taxpayers paid for a benefit that is now in private hands?

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 26 February 2003

So, presumably, there are going to be issues about the cost of the service as against the income that is achieved. One would have to be quite careful about the long-term commitment about the level of charge.

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 26 February 2003

I won't go into the details of the case but, as you know, I have a similar case of a constituent who had poor service from Capita. They even got her address wrong and told her she didn't qualify for a discount; it's one of those hard cases. There seems to be no system in Capita for dealing with the hard cases. Even with your personal assurance that it would be dealt with personally by your office I have still not had a response. We are now a week and a half into the congestion charge and this woman has...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 26 February 2003

I apologise for being out of the room when this question started and you may have answered this. What worries me more than the day-to-day details of Capita and their performance of the contract - which I'm sure will lead to them being roasted, if necessary, if they do mess up - is the wider public interest question of whether it's reasonable to enter into contracts which prevent the public from knowing the details of what's happening within those contracts. I think it's a public interest issue about PFIs and about the ability of democracy to scrutinise very expensive and...

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 26 February 2003

You've talked this morning - and I was going to ask you whether we were to believe the Standard - but you've confirmed that you are looking at keeping the charge level constant over a period of perhaps ten years. You've also said it would be unwise to make long-term predictions based on the first week. My question particularly is: how long is Capita's contract with TfL?

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 26 February 2003

I hope they will understand the legitimate public interest. We've talked about penalty notices and so on. I'm aware of many people who have had difficulty registering, who have tendered money to pay as central London residents for the whole year, had thought it was sorted out and as one friend said, I now know what the agent meant when she said, `That will be fine'. Can you confirm that there are, particularly given Capita's past record with a number of boroughs, the BBC and so on, that there are performance measures which will enable us to say, "You should...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 26 February 2003

It's nice to see a bit of deep questioning has exposed the Mayor's lack of understanding of this.

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 26 February 2003

Very similar? In what respect?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 26 February 2003

Does Mr O'Toole have experience of working with the PPP on his railway system in America?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 26 February 2003

In passing, I'd be intrigued to know who applied from Antarctica. The more serious question is about the performance regime that will be set for Mr O'Toole and, indeed, we've been told repeatedly in the past, the performance test that has been set for Mr Kiley. Given your spirit of openness earlier today, are you happy to publish it? You've committed yourself to doing this but you've repeatedly failed to publish the performance criteria by which he will be judged. I think Londoners probably wouldn't really care whether he's run a passenger railway or not - they might be a...