• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

I look forward to that. You said at a previous Mayor's Question Time that the MORI poll undertaken as part of the process cost £25,000, and you mentioned today some polling on the acceptable level of congestion charging. How are you making sure that the results of all this - to use that one example - will feed into all the strategies? After all, the value of the research is that they do feed in.

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

Do you agree that it is important to keep this programme at the top of the agenda? The summit on 27 November was postponed - we were a little surprised that the cost of that was not contained in your report - and the individuals and groups who are consulted must not lose confidence in the process.

• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

I am not sure that that has answered the question about how this is to be made available to the Assembly.

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

I can see you slithering on this one, Ken. You have been in office for six months. You made an explicit statement to the Assembly today that you have no intention of making any commitments to targets if you can possibly avoid it, because that would give you too hard a time as Mayor. I think that, when the people of London elected you, they expected you to work hard for them and to state clearly what you were going to do to improve services. The flat fare initiative is excellent - I totally support it, and it is a...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

I am glad that you have recognised that there seems to be an unholy alliance at work in the Assembly between people like Lynne, who are prepared to wait for ever, apparently, for the perfect congestion charging system to be introduced, and those like the Tories, who want to scupper it altogether. Do you think that there is a problem in the fact that those such as the Lib Dems were prepared to give their full support to congestion charging in theory during the election, but now, when it comes to implementation, they seem to be bottling it? Given that...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

At our last Question Time, you rightly condemned Ministers and civil servants who refused to give evidence to our congestion charge scrutiny exercise. Do you not think that, in refusing to set targets yourself, or take heed of what we have said in this cross-party report, which was assembled using the best information available anywhere, you are behaving as badly as those Ministers and civil servants you condemned?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

The point with congestion charging is that the public and we, the Assembly, need reassuring that the capacity increase is enough to take the people who are leaving their cars to go on public transport. I think you could set targets, and that you are avoiding setting targets. Now you have said that there are so many variables: when can we expect a bottom-line target for an increase in capacity on the buses?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

: Sorry, Ken: your re-election is not really the point

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

I do not think that that is acceptable, from where the scrutiny finished, because it is only by means of targets that we can assess success or failure. If TfL are letting 20% of contracts per year on a five-year rolling programme, then, even with the variables that you just quoted in answer to Samantha, you should be able to give a bottom-line target on which we, the public, would find it acceptable that the congestion charge should be introduced. It simply is not good enough to squeeze people along without them knowing how much extra capacity they might expect...

• Question by: Nicky Gavron
• Meeting date: 20 December 2000

I really take exception to what Darren Johnson said. Although many of us here have stood on platforms about congestion charging, the role of the Assembly is to work with the Mayor on policy development. We cannot do that unless, to a certain extent, you question issues around implementation. I think, Ken, that you are not really helping yourself here. In fact, to some extent, setting targets on the reduction of fares in buses is a target in itself, and you could perhaps in due course be more explicit about that. The minute that congestion charging and all this is...