• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

The Transport Policing Initiative, mark one - the 55 bus route conductors. What was the main purpose, Ken, of those conductors on those routes?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

You have gone out of your way on this particular initiative to say, "This is my money, this is Transport for London"s money. We know what's best. We're going to buy it off the police'. You can't then turn round and say, "It"s a police priority issue'.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

Can I just point out that in that interview, she specifically made the point that she wasn't merely speaking for people like herself, she was also speaking for the many other women of all sorts of salary grades, who find themselves working late in London, and who do not feel safe, travelling home on public transport, despite your initiative, which as I say we support, but has not really got very far yet. Now, what is your message to all those other women then, who also feel equally unsafe on public transport? You don't have to be rich to feel...

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

Will that come out in the evaluations, this wider effect on gun crime, or other catching criminals for other offences?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

From the Liberal Democrat side, we want this scheme to work. The budget, I think, which is £24 million a year, is on a par with what it costs to get 1,000 extra police officers onto the streets. There is quite a high threshold of effectiveness, the effectiveness test. Now, the 341 arrests from the June-September period, by my calculation, amounts to 1.4 arrests per police officer per month, which I think compares very unfavourably with the sort of output one would look from a policing of that level. Now, when the scheme -- the question is around the wider...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

You come out of a Tube station, you're on the highway, it's a Metropolitan Police area, and there are no police there, and there's a very high incidence of mugging. Isn't that a hot spot, which you should be targeting police at?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

Do you think it's reasonable the Policing Initiative should be extended, for example, to interchanges in London? We can't get out of a Tube station without it saying "Muggings occur in this area". It's lovely for people on these few bus routes, but what about the real hot spots.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

Do you think it's reasonable, for example, that technology should be used, rather than police officers, to detect certain crimes?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

: I think every Londoner would love to have a policeman or a policewoman walking up and down their street three times a day. The concept of a village bobby on every street in London is a very attractive one, but we all know that modern policing doesn't really extend to that, and you need to have responsive policing, you need to have officers who are there at the end of a phone, who can get there quickly, are not stuck on a little route, which doesn't really mean they're ever likely to catch any criminals.

• Question by: Tony Arbour
• Meeting date: 20 November 2002

I can only tell you that in my three boroughs, there is just a single route, and it is the end of a route, which has the benefit of this. And as you know, the principle problem that people have with policing, is the perception that they live in an area which is crime-ridden. You and I know that that isn't actually so, and the function of the police, very substantially, is reassurance. And they want reassurance on their buses, as well as the buses in inner London, and I would very much hope that the resources which are allocated...