• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 18 July 2001

So that is all smoke and mirrors, and the assertion that bonds could not be backed by the fare stream is ridiculous. That leads me on to another area - safety, and the Bob Kiley issue. Given what has happened with the recently admitted dereliction by London Underground in the case which is awaiting sentence, if corporate manslaughter is brought in as a charge against companies, and should - God forbid - the PPP be imposed and an accident happen, have you had any advice from your legal department on whether, under company law, Bob Kiley or you yourself might...

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 18 July 2001

And half of that £2.6 billion is not going to be spent on improving the track, the signalling or the trains - it is going to improve stations and shops. If you had asked any of the people who have been stuck on hot trains in tunnels recently whether they wanted a Tube that worked or a shop, what do you think the answer would have been?

• 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 -