• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 18 July 2001

That is the same as Transport for London, though. So you are just rubbishing board members generally.

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 18 July 2001

Last night on television, Nick Raynsford suggested - no, I think he said - that the board of Transport for London had lost confidence in Bob Kiley. I would like to know whether that is actually so. Had they given a vote of no confidence? Were they going to do so? If they have lost confidence in Bob Kiley, on what basis - on the funding or on his method of negotiation with Government?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 July 2001

So you are saying that, as and when the Underground transfers to your control, its meetings will be held in public.

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 18 July 2001

Samantha Heath: Can you get one of your advisers to bring them down, and we will have them right now? John Biggs: Why is there a 2 o'clock embargo?

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 18 July 2001

Can you circulate it now?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 July 2001

So why didn't you say this when the National Audit Office reported and gave it a broadly clean bill of health? You did not leap up at that point and say, "It has been fiddled"; and you know that the contracts will not be awarded until the National Audit Office looks at it again. So presumably you are saying publicly today that you want the National Audit Office to investigate your allegation that the Government have fiddled the public sector comparator. If they have, I will be right behind you.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 July 2001

John Biggs: There is such - The Mayor: Where do you begin? [Laughter.] John Biggs: I trust I am going to get a couple of opportunities here. First of all, you said that TfL meets in public, but it clearly does not. The board does, but the subsidiary boards meet in private. We have had to lever information out of them by negotiation with TfL, following the budget this year. It does not meet in public; it makes all its important decisions in private. So that is not true. Secondly, it is my view - I do not know whether...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 July 2001

Sorry: is that what the National Audit Office said? Did they say, "The Government have cynically manipulated the public sector comparator in order that the infracos get through"? They are independent, you know, and they looked at it. They may have said certain things about it - they said that it was not the bee's knees in terms of evaluating every nuance -

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 July 2001

I think we should record that, because it will be the only part of TfL whose management boards do meet in public. The second question is about the public sector comparator. When I read Lynne Featherstone's question, I thought, "So what??" It begs a number of other questions about the efficient use of money and the project management and asset management skills within the organisation. The fact is - I think you signed up to this when you appeared in front of Gwyneth Dunwoody at the Transport select Committee - that the public sector comparator has been hammered over and...

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 18 July 2001

But you are Chair of Transport for London. You have decided to pay the Transport Commissioner. I know that members of the TfL board are sometimes exercised about how they are often cut out of decisions. There is a very close relationship between you and Bob Kiley, and I think you are being a bit disingenuous. In your view, why could Bob Kiley not have given that report to the board in good time, if he was serious? At that point, he was Chair of that board, and if he wanted to have an open meeting, it would have been...