• Question by: Andrew Pelling
• Meeting date: 20 June 2001

But the strength of our negotiating position is weakened if we have to call upon Londoners' pockets to fund the system.

• Question by: Andrew Pelling
• Meeting date: 20 June 2001

You have described how the PPP process could now just run into the sand of the legal process. What is your alternative proposal for funding the Tube?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 20 June 2001

I think it is a disaster from top to bottom, and it is Londoners who are going to pay. I find it incredibly depressing to hear what you have said today. I think you lost a huge opportunity during the election. Although it was only one issue, it was a forcing issue, and you now have no cards to play. It is a lose-lose situation now for the public. Have you any further ideas on what you can do, and when will you, as Mayor, stand up for London and tackle the Government over funding issues? It is not just...

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

I am not entirely convinced by the proposition that Gordon Brown is bossed about by his civil servants, but whoever is in the Treasury, you will recall that this point was raised with you at our meeting on 23 May, when Andrew Pelling, among others, asked whether the danger was not that this deal, which had been made before the general election, would collapse afterwards, because, after the election, we as an authority - the Mayor and TfL - no longer had any card to play. That is clearly coming to be the case, isn't it?

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

Given that, it is very difficult to see what good faith there can ever have been in that offer, - if that offer was being made and trumpeted as the best possible offer in a generation, yet they are still withholding the public sector comparator? It can hardly have been made in good faith, can it?

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

For the record, Chair, as a former council leader, when I became the leader of Tower Hamlets, we agreed a policy more or less the same as this. It was flagged up as a "no compulsory redundancies" policy, which has meant not one person being made compulsorily redundant since that day in that borough. It is a very good way of managing services if you can do it. Obviously, if you get into a crisis, the policy may not be sustainable, but it is a good form of public sector management, and we should support it

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

Usually. I am astonished that you have not seen the agreement with the trade unions with London Underground. I have a copy of it in front of me, and it does not refer to jobs for life. The Mayor: Pass it round. John Biggs: It appears to be a very well designed policy of redeployment, which at a time of growth will mean that, providing people accept the redeployment offer, they are likely to have a job for life. Bob Neill: Will they redeploy Gus McDonald? John Biggs: But it is not a "jobs for life" policy, and it is...

• Question by: Len Duvall OBE
• Meeting date: 20 June 2001

Could I return to the safety issue? I think that everybody on this side agrees that there is no compromise on safety, but there seems to be a flaw in this legal case. It is not the Government who set safety issues but the Railway Inspectorate and the Health and Safety Executive. There are lots of legal people here to advise, but I believe that any judge will say that it is for them to determine safety levels and the safety of PPP, not for the individual - yourself, Bob Kiley, or even Government.

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

I agree with you, and that change can be made only if people are prepared to stand up and fight. Will you, for example, be writing to all Members of Parliament in London asking them to join you and perhaps other people in a campaign to get the Government to change their mind - whether it gets them into trouble with their Whips or not? Would you agree that that is an issue on which they have to be prepared to stand up and be counted?

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

But is this not ultimately a very clear litmus test of the value of having a Mayor and a GLA at all? If you are unable to shift the Government's wholly untenable position on this, don't you think a lot of people will say, "What on earth was the point of having him to start with? If the Government will not allow the Mayor to take the ultimate decisions on transport policy, and if he is unable to use the political and moral clout that the Government said he would have to shift them, what value will there be in...