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• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

What about the point about the disproportionate nature of what happens here? If you are looking at people living inside the Congestion Charge zone, the residents who normally get a discount, you are effectively saying that if you are just 1g over your arbitrary cut off point, you go from 80 pence a day to £25 a day. Would you not agree that by any stretch of the imagination, that has to be seen as disproportionate?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

Curiously, I travelled in on the Tube today with the Leader of Kensington & Chelsea Council and we were talking about this very subject. You will be aware that Kensington & Chelsea has actually remained entirely neutral about the issue of how much you want to charge large vehicles and large engines, but they are not at all neutral about the issue of the loss of the principle of the discount for residents. Are you prepared to do battle with Kensington & Chelsea over this?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 05 December 2007

Would you appreciate why they would feel concerned that this would, in many ways, be a complete turnaround on the principle that they felt they had established with the Mayor that there should be a discount for all residents with cars in the western extension?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 10 November 2007

You knew about that. I mean, everybody knew about the land.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 10 November 2007

My final point is this: the people who have been taken for a ride here are the public, aren't they? Part of the design of that bid document was for public consumption, to ensure that opinion polls did not race away against the idea of the Olympic Games in the first place as it might have made us an unpopular venue as far as the IOC was concerned. It was the public that was being lulled into a false sense of security about this when all along the professionals and those who are used to this kind of bidding knew...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 10 November 2007

I am sorry, but all that was known and we all knew about the fact that it was also about regeneration. What I am saying is I think the public will feel that they have been taken for a very large ride, particularly when people now say, 'Oh yeah, that was just to win the bid.' It just does not allow the public to feel very confident that they are being treated like grown ups, does it?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 10 November 2007

This is a question to David Higgins. There was something you said earlier and I just want to go back to it very briefly. I recognise that you came to this after the initial stage, after we had won the bid but I find it vaguely depressing when you say, as you have done in the past, 'Oh yes, well, the plans for the Aquatics Centre - it was all a bit vague. That was in the bid document in order to help us win the bid.' Don't you think that it actually brings the whole process into disrepute, that...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 10 November 2007

Just one final question; do you have any sort of ball-park figure as to the number of trips that have been made by the Mayor's Office and paid for by Visit London?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 10 November 2007

Right, and those figures will go back till when?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 10 November 2007

Final thought; we used to have the London Tourist Office, which we could say was a body that was there simply to actually enhance tourism to this country. You seem now to have created it into something which is completely unmeasurable because you are saying that we do not any longer measure our tourism as such. Visit London is actually wrapped up in far bigger things to do with business, to do with environmental policies. Wouldn't it be simpler if we could actually say, 'Well, this is about promoting tourism and this is why we spent X amount of money...