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• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 January 2006

Sally Hamwee (Chair): I explained when I wrote to you ' I think it was before Christmas ' that we would ask about the financial details because it is a very particular, very unusual position that you are in, very much one of public interest. John Biggs (AM): The question was to ask you for a list of the contractual benefits to which you are entitled up to 31 January. Could you tell us how many crates of claret, how many rooms at the Savoy, how many transatlantic flights, how many gold-plated telephones you get as part of your contract?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 January 2006

I was a little uneasy about this question, but I was allocated a lead role on it. Perhaps some of my less pleasant colleagues would like to follow it through. It seems to me that we have a perfect right under the Access to Information legislation to ask formal questions of TfL and the Mayor to which we get formal answers. I suppose underlying this is a concern that down the years that TfL has not been the most transparent organisation in the world. I guess that the contract of its Chief Executive could be seen as the apex of...

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 January 2006

I do not want to rake over answers you have given already, but at the last Mayor's Question Time, the Mayor described that it was asserted ' I think it was an Evening Standard story ' that there had been a bust-up between you and him about the fate or future or proposals of Jay Walder (Managing Director, Finance and Planning, TfL). He described that as being rubbish and piffle. Would you use similar words to describe that or was the Mayor being less than open with us on that matter?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 January 2006

Is there a fundamental disagreement between yourself and Mr Walder on an aspect of strategy which was instrumental in your decision to hang up your boots?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 18 January 2006

I have one other question about your management style. Perhaps you can put the record straight on this, because the press can be very wounding. There have been allegations on the one hand that you are a dreadful control freak and that nothing has happened in TfL without you blocking it or running it over your desk; on the other hand, there have been various scurrilous allegations that in fact you have been almost negligent in your role and are barely in the office, that you have a cardboard cut-out there, for example, and nothing really happens. Can you clarify...

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 06 April 2005

If I can go back to Silverlink for a moment, the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA), as was, rejected the proposal of a commuter rail authority. Your priorities, or the benefits you saw were things like greater efficiency, more frequent services, integrating fares using Oyster and better station facilities. If you do get Silverlink Metro, how many of those benefits would we see soon? The Islington stations, for instance, on the North London Line desperately need modernising and to be made safer for passengers. The same can be said at Queens Park Station on the Watford line. You say you are...

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 06 April 2005

Then it seems we can be optimistic. What about the upgrade of the stations in Queens Park on the Watford line and the Islington stations on the North London Line because they are critical in those negotiations? Can you give any assurance on that?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 06 April 2005

I think it was March 2004 when you launched TfL's bid for a London Regional Rail Authority, which the Liberal Democrats support. If I were to ask you for a progress report on the extent of the negotiations so far with Silverlink - How far has the agenda reached and what discussions are taking place?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 06 April 2005

With these debates about the Congestion Charge, PPP and so on, there is a danger of having a lot of heat and not much light. The existing transport strategy, the one that was consulted on several years ago, puts forward a strategy as an alternative for the PPP. Time has now passed and the PPP is now in operation, but I think we recognise that it has flaws and that it may not actually reach the end of its 30-year life. Is it not time for TfL in a cool and considered way to start to develop an alternative strategy...

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 06 April 2005

£1.6 million in external legal costs is the cost that has come from the Freedom of Information Act request that the Liberal Democrats put to you. These are the legal costs for fighting the PPP originally. I was shoulder to shoulder with the Mayor and you and we were all against the PPP as being unworkable, but this reference by Roger Evans is the first peep, quite frankly, out of the Mayor towards his now chums in the Labour Party that there is anything amiss. Do you really think it is worth waiting until the end of the year? It...