• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 16 January 2002

Can I move on to the performance indicator area where I think TfL is exceptionally weak? It's another area where I think it's very difficult to go to London when they have nothing really to measure it by. Bus rider-ship is fantastic. In a way, ironically, it's probably lucky we didn't get the tube because buses would never have had this manner of investment if you'd had other toys in your box. However, I do think that when you look at performance indicators we need to know that these are performance indicators that London would want. I listen to what...

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

But you are content for the Assembly to have a transparent examination of what it is that you have vetoed?

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

Actually this is a hedge against the future really. It's not actually specific. What you're really doing is setting up a fund for, let's say, the next two or three years, to ensure we don't have too much trouble maybe the year after next. Is that what you're trying to do?

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

So you're saying that your dealing with Government totally funds the congestion charging package and should be ignored as one of the lines in this years budget?

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

And you have never considered the impact that will have on London taxpayers?

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

You've never quizzed them on the method by which you might want to buy this scheme?

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

So you're the chair of TfL and you're basically saying you've never actually looked at it? You've never asked the board to look at the justifications as to how you'd structure this spending?

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

I'm taking that as no. Let's look at the congestion charging package. Now regardless of whether it goes ahead, it does require you to procure something like £60 or £70 million worth of work from private contractors. Did you sit down and look through the options of how you should procure that? The way your budget is structured, it's just a straight hit on the taxpayers. It's an obvious scheme where you could have leased it; you could have structured it through a private procurement, which would have been funded from the revenues it generated. Did you look at that...

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

That's helpful to know but you still haven't quite answered why there's £11 million coming off the precept which seems to me a quite arbitrary choice. The total capital requirement in the TfL budget is about £310 million. What you're deciding is that, with the £55 million in TfL, you're going to take it all off grant and precept income. What I can't quite understand is, given the uncertainties that you yourself talked about at Budget Committee, how far should congestion charging go? What would you have to do to absorb London Underground? Why TfL alone, amongst any organisation that...

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

But the increase in grant is over 40% and that's the increase in the net money you get before you go to council taxpayers - over 40%. In what way can you describe an increase of 40% as leading to a position where this year's budget starts as being under-funded? There's a structural increase in the bus subsidies required to provide services. There's roughly £250 million, which is expansion in services. Now that's my assessment but you're saying it's under-funded. Can you explain to us why it is so chronically under-funded that you need another £100 million from London taxpayers?