• Question by: Victor Anderson
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

Why do you think that the Jubilee Line extension turned out to be so expensive? Do you think that one factor was that it was the Government's way of getting people to the Millennium Dome and that it suffered from the general over-emphasis, over-commitment from some of the Ministers to that project and is really part of the price that we are all paying for the failed project of the Dome?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

But it has created the impression of you as being a rather negative spinner on what is basically good news for London. Do you acknowledge that within the announcement the Government is not expecting you to shoulder the bill for the affordability gap on the PPP? I also note that last week you issued a press statement backing the Select Committee's Tube Finance Report, although I'm not too sure you read it before you issued that, because if you do really back it then that suggests you are far more in support of it than you've suggested you are. But...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

I suppose my concern, and I think that of the Labour Party, is not so much in your unhappiness at the £104m but in the manner of your dealing with it. Let's bear in mind that you are a man who is apparently passionate to return to the Labour Party and yet at the first opportunity on this transport bill you appear to be attempting to steal the thunder of a very positive announcement for London and appear to be trying to put the boot in on your old friend Gordon Brown. It's a question not just of your personal...

• Question by: Roger Evans
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

Much as I am tempted to continue on the subject of the Millennium Dome, let's get back to the question and the events of that day. Do you think it was, to use your words, `statesman-like and orderly" or even helpful to Londoners for you to pull out of the press conference with the Minister and go away and have your own press conference and pick a fight over an issue which you subsequently seem to be playing down now and saying there"s not such a big problem and do you think it's helpful to us here that you seem...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

It was just briefly a question whether you would be happy to, because I know you are a bit of a jackdaw, to borrow your good friend Frank Dobson's proposal for a car free celebration to be linked to some more carnival sort of thing " an open day in London when, perhaps, attractions might be open for people. We wouldn't rigorously stick to a European timetable as it might make better sense for it to always be on a Sunday or something?

• Question by: Brian Coleman
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

I think the Mayor has hit the nail on the head. This Car Free Day nonsense is the ultimate in gesture politics and some of us are not into gesture politics and actually want long term solutions to London's problems. And does the Mayor, I'm sure he won't agree with me, feel there is a certain hypocrisy in promoting anti-Car Free Day and then shedding crocodile tears over lost jobs in the car industry at Dagenham?

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

Car Free Day is not just about closing roads it's about encouraging people, if they have to travel at all, to choose other more environmentally friendly means of travel, it's not particularly about closing roads. There are a number of measures which even in the short time available the Mayor could take or could encourage to be taken to provide alternative means of travel. For instance, he may be aware that Connex South Central published a timetable in May, twenty per cent of trains in that timetable have not actually run since January of this year. It would be very...

• Question by: Graham Tope
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

Chair, I agree with the priority to be given to next year, but if the Mayor is successful in supporting and publicising Car Free Day this year and large numbers of people who do have to go into London to work on that Friday do take him at his word and leave their car at home, would he agree with me that it will be a disaster because they will never again wish to use public transport if it remains as it usually is on a Friday morning and Friday evening?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

There are concerns about the link with the Science Park and that's merely going to generate more journeys to work by car to the Science Park.

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

Do you still agree with the notion that you spelt out quite a lot during the election campaign that more road building merely generates more traffic? That's certainly been the concern of Croydon Friends of the Earth with regard to this particular project. And do you not think that any delay in funding might actually give a welcome opportunity for a re-think on the viability of the whole project?