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

To borrow someone's else's phrase, I think you are in danger of being all spend and no delivery. The problem for Londoners, looking at your balance sheet in 2004, is that they will say, "This man didn't oppose PPP when the Act was going through Parliament - he voted for it willingly. He knew it was going to happen, and he then spent four years obstructing a reasonable deal, with the result that nothing has been spent to improve the Underground. To add insult to injury, the only other solution he is proposing would require more taxes on Londoners rather...

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

Will you perhaps finally consider, and report back to us, if this turns out to be the case in due course, how the inability to have any significant improvement on the Tube will impact on other aspects of your proposed transport policies in London? Would you agree that that clearly undermines the whole of the package of what you have been seeking to do?

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

Given that Stephen Byers has been quoted in his short period in office as saying that the Tube is a "top priority", that is a pretty horrifying scenario; and I am grateful to you for spelling it out for us.

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

The final point which concerns me is that, whichever way we go, we have the prospect of a court case which is very likely to go to appeal, one way or t'other, of the prospect of a complete collapse in negotiations with one of the preferred bidders and therefore of having to bring in a new bidder, and the likelihood that the contracts would have to be re-written. Isn't the reality, either way, that there is not a hope now of a penny piece of investment in the Tube this year?

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

I do not criticise you for that; but I think that many of us would suggest that the fact that this offer - which was put in the Labour party's manifesto as "the best chance in a generation" to improve the Tube - is on the verge of collapse within eight days of the general election suggests that it was an offer that was making a mug of you and of Bob Kiley. Don't you think that has proved to be so now?

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

Perhaps it will teach you not to go out supporting Labour candidates in the general election, I am tempted to say. [Laughter.]

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

I am very interested in your last point - that Stephen Byers is not authorised to vary Government policy. So it is pretty clear that the Secretary of State for Transport etc does not have power in this. Does that mean that it is still back down to the Treasury again?

• 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...