• Question by: Toby Harris
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

And where did they get their information from?

• Question by: Toby Harris
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

So are you saying that the Evening Standard got it wrong?

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

Thanks for that, but tomorrow morning isn't soon enough. As elected members I think there's a real problem when we read something in the Evening Standard first and have our constituents ringing us up and wanting to know what the detail is and as elected representatives we weren't able to give them any further information and when we went to seek that information we were told there was none to give us, which is clearly not true. At the beginning of this Assembly, back in May, you did agree that all documents would be available to us and I'd have...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

Whether the leaks are right or wrong the fact is that Londoners read these stories and, of course, they are then tremendously interested as to how it's going to affect their particular part of London where they live. Wouldn't it be helpful to at least tell us precisely where you want your boundary to be, because really at the moment it is leaving people not knowing quite where they are with it and it is a blight on where they live.

• Question by: Toby Harris
• Meeting date: 27 July 2000

How could any of them have known about it? I know you are a very open administration, but can I be clear about how that information was being circulated yet Assembly Members were being told by the Press Office that they knew nothing of those arrangements.

• 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?