• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 22 May 2002

But you are banking on the fact they will continue to make those journeys. That's why you're going to get up to 50% of your revenue from these local journeys. The point I'd make is simply that these are clearly journeys they're not going to give up, which is why you're banking on them; they are journeys of local necessity like going to school, like the weekly shop at the supermarket. Now, of course, the point is that anywhere else in London people can make those journeys for absolutely no extra cost. What you're effectively saying is you're putting a...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 22 May 2002

One of the most interesting discoveries that Westminster City Council has made in looking through the various documentation that's been made available to them as part of the process by Transport for London is a discovery that the single largest group that are going to be contributing to your congestion tax are people living on or just around the boundary. According to TfL's own calculation, somewhere between 40% and 50% of the tax raised is going to be coming from the people who live local to the boundary; not, as we've all been led to believe, the mythical wicked selfish...

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 22 May 2002

Just one matter that arises from the Mayor's recent comment a few moments ago. He referred to polls favourable to the congestion charge. Would you agree that the results you get out of a poll often depends upon how honest you are about the proposition? Would you think you would get the same results if you were to paint the congestion charge in the real terms, namely that: · As a means of reducing congestion it will, if it succeeds, kill itself as a means ultimately of raising revenue? · That, as a means of reducing discretionary journeys into London...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 22 May 2002

I don't think people have yet realised quite how ugly your 28-foot TV gantries for the congestion charge are and that will become an issue, I think, in the London media in the coming months, but our party conditionally support you on this. What I'm concerned about is the Westminster issue because it's clearly important that, if there are important issues, they be tested in the courts - that's established in the English constitutional system - and it's pretty important that they be tested sooner rather than later so that if it does cause problems, TfL and GLA can deal...

• Question by: Jennette Arnold OBE
• Meeting date: 22 May 2002

I just want to say that as Chair of the Assembly's Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee I issued a comment and those comments were in line with what the Mayor has said. It's clearly the view of Londoners, that they see this as an important development within a key area of London, that the home of football clearly belongs at Wembley and that the time for action is well overdue. We would like the programme to start as soon as possible. So I know that certainly from my party this is the position and I know that members of the...

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 22 May 2002

Because it is car-based, there is congestion there, but it's the confluence of the M4 and the M25 which generates most of it, not Heathrow as a destination. Are you going to put barriers on the M4 and the M25 and charge people?

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 22 May 2002

The principles you lay down about congestion charging in your answer to Angie Bray I find intriguing. You talk about reducing the short journeys, people jumping in their car and driving 200 yards down to the local shop, you talk about people popping across the zone and, indeed, applying that to congestion. Last Tuesday you called again for a congestion charge around Heathrow. Now, few people jump in their cars just to pop to Heathrow. It is a destination of choice and for specific reasons. Few people drive across the perimeter areas just to cut from Hillingdon to Hounslow, there...

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 22 May 2002

In view of Westminster's shameless piece of political opportunism, which apparently isn't supported by their voters and also is exceptionally lazy because they've based almost their entire objections on the TfL document that's already been produced for general release, would you agree that this is perhaps the time to fast-track the whole idea of a low emission zone, because this would, at least, allay the fears of the inhabitants of Westminster and all the other peripheral boroughs?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 22 May 2002

Would you say that Westminster Council and politicians have made it worse for themselves by not co-operating over the congestion charge and therefore they will probably themselves have inflicted more suffering on their residents than your actual charge?

• Question by: Toby Harris
• Meeting date: 22 May 2002

First of all, clearly I am the constituency member covering Wembley and I should declare a formal interest as a former member of the board of Wembley National Stadium. What is clearly the case has been that a whole number of decisions have been taken about the Wembley project without proper reference to the public interest. That was the role on which I was one of those who was supposed to be trying to defend the public interest on the Wembley board. It got increasingly side-tracked by the Football Association, but more particularly by a sequence of very bizarre decisions...