• Question by: Trevor Phillips
• Meeting date: 16 January 2002

So we can expect precept demands of this order in your own election year? Let me just ask you one other question. Let me just ask you about the advice that you're getting because I'm still puzzled about this prejudice you have against borrowing. I had a look today on the website of the nearest equivalent, the Metropolitan Transport Authority of New York, and their capital programme is funded by a combination of grant and borrowing. In fact, the amount that they borrow, about $1 billion, is about the same as they receive in grant. Their total budget is $6.9...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 16 January 2002

When we look again at the question of borrowings and private funded schemes within public transport, which even the most left wing administrations in this country pursue these days, can you explain to us why you have vetoed what's called the LUPP, the London Underground Property Partnership scheme, which would generate hundreds of millions to help fund deficits in the Underground?

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 16 January 2002

I'm glad to hear you're converted on the topic of PFIs. My last question is with regard to this £76 million investment in a congestion charging fee this coming year. What happens if you are subjected, say, to a judicial review from an agreed borough and that expenditure gets delayed? What happens if you decide after the consultation that you would be better advised to spend a longer time planning the congestion charging programme? What will you spend that £76 million on? Do you have alternative public transport improvement capacity projects on the stocks that you can go for?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 16 January 2002

We've had a lengthy debate earlier about the Underground and the potential effect that will have on TfL's budget, and I happen to accept your view that it would be fairly crazy for us to squirrel away money to simply save the Government having to make hard decisions about how it endows the Underground when it transfers to us. Having said that, the massive deficit in your budget in its structuring is that it says nothing about how you are going to manage the Underground, about what proposals you have. You're putting massive additional subsidies into buses. You're saying nothing...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 16 January 2002

But there are some aspects of the implementation of the congestion charging scheme, which would not have been desirable other than that they fit in with congestion charging, for example the scheme at Box Hill Cross involves the widening of the road. Unless the congestion charging project had been on the cards, that clearly would not have been the case. Going back to this issue of debt in borrowing, while I understand your shyness about entering into hire purchase agreements, do you not think there's a special argument in favour of using debt borrowing and PFI for investment, where it...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 16 January 2002

In terms of this `cart before the horse" argument, are there not staff that have been applied to the implementation of the congestion charging project that could actually be alternatively moved towards the improved increased public transport capacity?

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 16 January 2002

Ken, just going back to the congestion charging again, if a constituent from my borough is looking at this business plan, they might see that for next year you're talking about £94 million increased transport capacity projects, which would involve £76 million of expenditure on congestion charging and then the following year in 2003/04 the bulk of the increase transport capacity projects are actually about increasing public transport capacity - things like the LR extension and so forth. Do you not think there's an argument that says the implementation of the £76 million of congestion charging this next year is...

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 16 January 2002

Both are expensive; £1.1 million per bus route or the millions it's going to cost for the policing initiative, so you're saying really that Londoners should be paying for this through the council tax?

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 16 January 2002

What's the most important thing for the results of the survey? What it costs or some of the other fringe benefits?

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 16 January 2002

Earlier you were discussing the 55 bus route. I've travelled on that and I see some of the advantages, but it is a very expensive way of speeding up buses and I would just like you to clarify two things. Firstly, what is your main ambition with the conductors on buses? Is it to speed buses up, or is it some hark back to the hay days of the 1950s, 1960s or 1980s, depending which decade you're choosing to highlight at any particular time? The Bratton Group report you use as a justification for this police traffic initiative, but it...