• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

When it comes to companies, do the companies that have signed up include McDonald's and Coca-Cola?

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

So, those that haven't are not necessarily not going to? Which ones haven't?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Except you didn't actually say it when you tackled the Mayor on it.

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

But the reality is they aren't ready. And I'm just trying to put the people's point of view here. And I felt in Mayor's Question Time, you actually expressed quite a great deal of contempt for police front counters, which flies totally in the face of what the Met Commissioner has done by stopping any further closures. And the commitment of assistants, who are so desperate that they are willing to volunteer to open them, when most of them think they should actually be staffed by police. So, you're saying that you don't believe they should have access. All I...

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Okay, so they can't get through to their local police station, 999 isn't answered quickly, and you don't believe that they should have access to a policeman necessarily locally, to any one particular means.

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

I think it's absolutely right to provide a range of opportunities in terms of the telephone and to deal with the calls to 999 that aren't an emergency. That still doesn't answer the question of local answers for local people which is, if you go on the streets, what people want. Moving on now to having a policeman accessible when you need one, do you, as Chair of the MPA, believe that there must be somewhere locally where residents in an emergency situation can run to, where they know that they will be able to find a police officer.

• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Can I come back to your revolutionary suggestion about the revival of police boxes? And then you issued a press release on it. Don't you find it odd that the Budget Committee of the MPA, not one single officer from the MPS or the MPA said they'd been consulted about that idea; not one single officer on the Budget Committee had any calculation of the budgetary cost, either capital or revenue about the idea; or is that the way you, as Chairman of the MPA, intend to do business?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

But that's a phone line, Toby, that no-one is there to answer. People have mobiles and then you said you're going to put phones at bus stops. That's all very welcome, but if there isn't someone there to answer it for sure, and if you can't get a response quickly, then it is useless, however many phones you provide.

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Indeed, but there are a lot of front counters, as we know, that are not open, with volunteers or otherwise. Don't you think it's ridiculous that the public fund a huge service like the Metropolitan Police and actually can't reach them? You're saying they should, but they can't reach them when they need to. And if this was the case with doctors, there would be an absolute outcry. So, why are you not aiming for a structure that would provide that sort of local provision, the same as the Health Service, and would it not be right to create some...

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Is there anyone actually doing a pilot on a non-emergency telephone line?