• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

A price mechanism implies the ability to make a choice. If there is no choice, it is not a price mechanism: it is a tax, isn't it? Is that what you are giving them?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

Those are sufficient improvements, you think, to give people an alternative and a choice, are they?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

You have previously said that you will not introduce the scheme until specific improvements in public transport can be met, What are the criteria - not the wish list, but the specific deliverables that have to be met before you introduce it? Not just 200 extra buses - what else?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

Thank you. The change of position by the City is highly symbolic, because they were very strongly supportive of the principle of the charge - indeed, I believe that they even offered to pilot it in the City area. It is a symptom of a wider problem in London, which is that boroughs affected by the charge are getting extremely grumpy and fed up with what they perceive to be a lack of consultation, sharing of information and openness in the way in which TfL are working. I think we are all aware that there are teething problems with TfL...

• Question by: Valerie Shawcross
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

I know that many public sector workers, including the firefighters, have been in to see you, Ken. In some sense, what you just said about people making cases is slightly worrying. In the past, I have asked you to go through a proper, serious impact assessment process, looking at the public sector generally. It would be unfortunate if we ended up with a set of exemptions which were not criteria-led but were in some way influenced by the powers of the lobbying. It is really important, if congestion charging is to work, that it is seen as fair, and those...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

You will be interested to hear that Labour Members are presenting a number of helpful proposals as to how this scheme, if it goes ahead, might work better. That takes me to my final question: although there is a minority view in the Assembly which is very opposed to the scheme, I think you recognise that the majority do not have a problem with the principle, but we are very worried, for good reasons, about details - details on the boundary, details on the exemptions, details of the way it is going to work and whether you are being too...

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 21 November 2001

The answer to the narrow question - are you happy that the technology will work - is yes?

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 17 October 2001

The Assembly accepted the case in respect of the police, but the problem was that starting from scratch meant that inevitably the reserves were rather low. I am sure also of this, but can I ask you, Mayor: will you impress on the Home Secretary and on the Treasury - so far as they ever listen to anybody from outside that building - the need for decisions to be made urgently about central Government assistance in this?

• Question by: Toby Harris
• Meeting date: 17 October 2001

Can we assume that the Mayor has not fallen for the stupid and facile suggestion that the Metropolitan Police Service will run out of money in two or three weeks? While the reserves may be exhausted in that period, it is clearly ludicrous to suggest that an organisation with a budget of £2 billion will have run out of money in terms of its' weekly cash flow. I welcome the Mayor's assurance that he accepts that there will be no attempt to stop the measures currently being taken to protect the security of London simply because the reserves have run...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 17 October 2001

May I ask, finally, then: are you happy, Mr Mayor, to share in a transparent examination of the background to this leak and this assertion, and of the assurances that were made about funding for the Underground in the coming year? My understanding is that at least some confusion is caused by the fact that it was partly based on the assumption that PPP was going ahead, which would require that level of funding, rather than not going ahead, which may not require that level of funding in the current year.