• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 20 June 2001

Just a small matter! The Mayor: We left that to last. Bob Neill: You will agree that that is a touch ironic, given that you met Stephen Byers on Friday the 15th and that the Standard on Monday of this week, I think, carried a report suggesting that Bob Kiley was going to meet Stephen Byers, that very day, to say that "there is little prospect of a deal being reached over London Underground's future". It also suggested that you had said "that his Transport Commissioner feels it is becoming increasingly impossible" - if it is possible for something to...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 20 June 2001

If they are moved, but will keep a job, can they say that they do not like the job they are doing and want another one? Can they actually choose among the jobs available?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 20 June 2001

One of the problems with the management is that you spent rather a lot of time running them down, so their jobs are not exactly for life. I wondered whether you could comment on the deal that was done between LUL and the Tube workers. Most of us were very relieved when the strikes were called off, but some of us were rather dismayed when we discovered that the deal was that all these people would have jobs for life, relatively regardless. I wonder whether you can think of any other employer who makes that kind of promise to their...

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 20 June 2001

How do you think he is going to deal with the low level of morale among Tube workers and in the unions and so on after this protracted struggle?

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 20 June 2001

I am concerned about how it is going to be run over the next four years when it is finally handed over to us. Earlier in the year, you said that Bob Kiley would be staying whether or not the Government scheme went ahead. Is that still true?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 20 June 2001

But with respect, Londoners expect the Mayor of London to be a powerful figure who will do a deal of some kind with the Government. You seem to spend your life grandstanding, gesticulating, repenting your past sins in voting for the Act by mistake; and no deal is being done. I think that Londoners can reasonably assume that you have not really been working on this, and it is not going to happen.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 20 June 2001

So in summary, in a moment of weakness you voted with the Government, of whose party you were then a member, and you are going to spend the next four years punishing Londoners by not delivering anything on the Underground. You are going to stand for re-election on a manifesto that says, "I didn't get round to it in the last four years. Vote for me again, and I might do something in four years' time." [Laughter.]

• Question by: Lord Duvall of Woolwich in the Royal Borough of Greenwich OBE
• Meeting date: 20 June 2001

But as I said, it is not Bob Kiley who determines it. He may have a view - I may have a view and hundreds of other people may have a view - but it is, by law, the Health and Safety Executive and the Railways Inspectorate who are responsible: it is not Bob Kiley, not you, not the Government. Do you not accept that?

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 20 June 2001

You rightly praised Docklands Light Railway for the service it provides. I wonder what positive lessons you take away from the DLR to apply, for example, to the Central line, which has constant signal breakdowns and train failures and is an embarrassment to London Underground, over which you will eventually preside.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 20 June 2001

What worries me about this is that what you are saying is reasonable, but it conflicts with your article in the Independent this morning, which creates a new ideological battleground for yourself against the Government on the question whether private involvement in public sector provision should be pursued. I feel strongly that a bottom line which should be non-negotiable is the terms and conditions and security of employees. Another is about safety. Are you saying that the new Ken Livingstone, as of 38 seconds ago, after writing this article, would be minded to explore those options if they could achieve...