• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 19 September 2001

Then let me just test you on this. If you are correct in saying that we cannot expect to see most, if any, of the contents of that report put into practice, nevertheless I think you must accept that what the consultants have done is flag up the problems that the boundary road will not be able to cope with. Therefore, if you are not going to proceed with those ideas, can you tell us now how you are going to deal with the problem of a boundary that simply cannot handle the amount of expected extra traffic - and...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 19 September 2001

I must say, for ideas that have been so readily discarded, it took the Evening Standard, as I understand it, a considerable time to drag them out of TfL. That suggests to me that there is something there that you did not want the rest of the world to see.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 19 September 2001

Perhaps we can get back to the congestion charge again. You mentioned in passing the three amazing pages in the Evening Standard, which will have shocked and horrified quite a number of Londoners who read them. They referred, of course, to the so-called "north-west outer package", and looked at the impact of the congestion charge on the boundary road and further afield. In the interests of open government, which I know is a concept to which you are wedded when it suits you, would you now be prepared to publish the other documents which presumably refer to the other parts...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 19 September 2001

The problem, Mr Mayor, is that, in about a year's time - so we are told; it may change again - you will take responsibility for the Tube. You will be responsible for managing 12,000 or more of the 18,000 staff, which includes all the station staff, all the drivers, and the safety responsibility. Obviously, as you say, you will relate to the infracos, but you do not seem - we have probed this elsewhere, through the Committee system - to have any migration strategy for taking on the Underground, other than a policy which says, "We will try to...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 19 September 2001

As without doubt the most well meaning and best intentioned Assembly Member there is, I have a couple of questions about the congestion charge. I am sure you will be pleased to hear that the Labour position has - Bob Neill: Changed again. [Laughter.] John Biggs: - is more supportive now of the principle of the congestion charge than it was before, although we remain concerned that there is a range of wicked issues which could potentially derail you in the court of public opinion - rat running, for example, or the effect on people on low incomes. I have...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 19 September 2001

Given that you have admitted that congestion charge will not improve air quality in London, where it is 100% land traffic, how is it going to improve air quality at Heathrow, where it is only 60%?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 19 September 2001

You see, I think that the voters may be confused by something you say. You tell our Green colleagues that most of the pollution around Heathrow is caused by aircraft, yet you suggest that congestion charge is the solution to this.

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 19 September 2001

When you take your roadshow to the residents of Surbiton, will you also consult them over your proposals to put a congestion charge around Heathrow, which will affect them pretty directly?

• Question by: Louise Bloom
• Meeting date: 19 September 2001

That is part of my point - that we are not talking about a huge number of people here. I am slightly concerned that we seem to be punishing people who legitimately have blue badges for the sake of those who do not.

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 19 September 2001

I do not take taxis very often, but I have friends who do, and they tell me that taxi drivers seem to have a very distorted idea of exactly what congestion charging will mean. I wonder whether you could put something out for taxi drivers, which they could keep in their cabs, so that, when they start talking about the proposals, they can refer to what is actually going to happen, rather than what they have made up on the hoof.