• Question by: Trevor Phillips
• Meeting date: 15 November 2000

Thank you for that statement, Ken, which expresses the view of the Assembly. In accordance with the Assembly's previous resolution, I am pursuing this matter both with Ministers and with the other devolved bodies. I shall shortly be meeting my opposite numbers from Wales and Northern Ireland on this question.

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 15 November 2000

I am grateful to the Mayor for that answer, which I accept. Does he not agree that remembering those killed on active service in Northern Ireland and supporting the peace process are not mutually exclusive?

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

I would like to go back to your statement, which I did not know until now, that you released the document to journalists on the Saturday. You put out a press release with an embargo for midnight on Sunday. Yet the Assembly did not receive this weighty document and important technical document until Monday. That again is diplomacy by press release, which you promised the Assembly you would not do. We were not able to make a response to the report, when your press release had departed from our impressions of it, until the Monday. You knew that we on...

• Question by: Andrew Pelling
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

I am very cautious about getting involved in the internecine wars between yourself and the Labour party over your long-term project to get back into it, and I would not want to accuse you of lying. But I would take up a word that Mr Biggs did use - "fantasising". Is it fantasy to think that there will be a bond issue? If there is a bond issue, is there really enough fares money that you can put into a securitised bond in the way you suggest? I am interested that your bond issue would be secured on fares and...

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

It is very important that we have a agreed written protocol, whereby information is available to the Assembly -

• Question by: Trevor Phillips
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

I think it would be worth your while going over the chronology of this again. We did discuss it on the Friday, and in good faith I accepted that you would not be able to make it available. But the fact is that there were bound copies in circulation on Sunday night in Brighton; that members of the press had it - you say on Saturday - certainly by Sunday. I wonder whether you think it can be right that The Guardian, the Standard and others who happened to be at the Labour party conference saw that important report before...

• Question by: Samantha Heath
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

So you put out a press release before you read it yourself?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

I am going back to Elizabeth's question, in which she asked you to guarantee that you would not increase fares if the bond issue was the way we went forward. Would you agree that the likelihood of fares rising is much greater under PPP after the first seven years than it ever would be if TfL retained control of the bond issue?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

He clearly is. There are a lot of issues on which I agree with Ken, but on this one he is being incredibly dishonest with the Assembly in his conduct. He embargoed the release till midnight; his release went out hand in hand with the PPP report; the newspapers had already gone to bed. Most journalists being fairly lazy on these issues, which are rather technical, they swallowed it and published reports which were basically untrue. The only saving grace, Mayor, was that it did not explode with quite the power that you hoped and did not help to derail...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 October 2000

Am I allowed to accuse him of lying, Chair?