Appendix 1

London Assembly Plenary: Thursday, 5 March 2020

Transcript of Item 4 – Question and Answer Session on Transport for London

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Thank you. Good morning. In response to public concern about the coronavirus I want to start by reassuring Londoners that we currently do not have any plans to shut down the Tube or transport network. However, we continue to monitor the situation closely and should the advice from Public Health England (PHE) change, we will be prepared to take the necessary action to protect Londoners’ health. For several weeks now I have been in regular contact with PHE and have been receiving regular briefings, and on Monday I convened a Mayor’s Advisory Group of senior officials from PHE, the National Health Service (NHS), the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), the British Transport Police (BTP), the London Fire Brigade, London Ambulance Service, TfL, local authorities, Government and others to make sure London is prepared. One of the things I am doing is ensuring that all organisations in London are working closely together and sharing information so that we are in a position to give Londoners the best possible advice as quickly and as early as possible.

A group led by Dr Fiona Twycross [AM], my Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience, and Chair of the London Resilience Forum, is also meeting colleagues across London regularly to monitor the situation and while there have been no concerns raised by PHE about public transport to date, TfL is in constant contact with them. TfL are also in the process of putting up posters with official NHS advice, including at bus shelters and bus stations across the capital this week.

It is important, however, that we all take the preventative measures PHE have set out, including thoroughly and regularly washing our hands with soap and hot water. Indeed, as the Mayor, I would continue to urge all Londoners and visitors to our city to follow the advice of public health authorities. Anybody who suspects they have symptoms or is worried should not go to general practitioner (GP) surgeries or to accident and emergency (A&E) but should go to the website www.111.NHS.uk and follow the instructions.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): Thank you for that, Mayor, and I am sure Dr Onkar Sahota [AM] and I, doctor and nurse, will join you and add that if people can just cover their mouths while coughing, because that is an art that many of us have lost.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Chair, moving on to other issues, public transport in the city is deeply personal to me. I am not sure if I have mentioned this before, Chair, but my dad was a bus driver and so I am determined to see to it that London has a transport network that it can be truly proud of, one that is affordable, accessible and efficient, modern and well-maintained, safe and secure, clean and green, and which helps to unlock economic growth, housing and opportunities for every community across our city. That is why since being elected Mayor I have taken action to drastically reduce the number of strikes across the network, taken action to get the Night Tube and Night Overground up and running, and taken action to freeze TfL fares for four years and introduce the Hopper, which has been a lifeline for Londoners on low incomes.

The overall effect of these policies has been to make public transport less expensive and more reliable for millions of commuters with the average household saving around £200 in travel costs over the course of my first term in office. This is in stark contrast to the 42% increase we saw in fares under the previous Mayor.

In London, we are incredibly fortunate to have one of the best public transport systems in the world in the form of TfL. In fact, only yesterday I had the honour of attending a fantastic event at the London Transport Museum, along with the Transport Commissioner, to celebrate TfL’s 20th anniversary with some special guests. Not only was it a chance to reflect on how far the organisation has come but it was also an opportunity to look ahead to the future and to reaffirm our ambitions for TfL to play a leading role in the years to come in tackling London’s toxic air and the climate emergency. TfL has already been at the forefront of my administration’s plans to clean up our air and bring down emissions and now operates the largest fleet of electric buses anywhere in Europe. It has helped us to triple the amount of protected space for London cyclists and it has delivered the world’s first Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), the toughest emission standard enforced by any major city in the world.

I would like to end this part of my remarks, Chair, by paying tribute as you did to Mike Brown [MVO], the TfL Commissioner, who will, as you said, sadly be leaving us shortly to take on a new challenge overseeing the restoration of the Houses of Parliament. This is Mike’s last transport Plenary, so I want to place on record my huge thanks to him for the exceptional service he has given to London. Mike first started at TfL in 1989 and became Transport Commissioner in July 2015. He has truly given a lifetime of service to transport in our city.

He has been steadfast in his commitment to ensuring that TfL becomes an organisation that is truly representative of modern London, he has been instrumental in helping to improve our city’s air quality and encouraging more Londoners to use public transport, walk and cycle, and he has led on the delivery of my Transport Strategy, overseeing a multi-billion-pound investment programme and helping to drive crucial efficiencies at TfL. It is not exaggeration to say the transformation of London’s transport network into one of the finest in the world owes a huge amount to his leadership and expertise. Thanks to him, TfL is in a far healthier, stronger and more sustainable footing than it was five years ago. On a personal level I have to say it has been an absolute pleasure to work with Mike and I am sure all Members of the Assembly would agree that his dedication, professionalism and passion for transport in London has always shone through.

Chair, I was also asked last night to provide this morning an update on Hammersmith Bridge. Hammersmith Bridge is a vital crossing and I am doing all I can to bring it back into full use as soon as possible. TfL has been working closely with Hammersmith and Fulham Council, who own to bridge, to finalise the design work and has already committed £25 million towards its restoration. TfL and the Council recently submitted a joint funding bid to the Government, and I am pleased that my Deputy Mayor for Transport and the Leaders of Hammersmith and Fulham, and Richmond Councils are soon to meet with Baroness Vere at the Department for Transport to discuss funding sources.

To enable the bridge to be opened as quickly and safely as possible, it is likely that it will need to be closed completely for repair works. As many people currently walk and cycle across the bridge, TfL are working on plans for a temporary foot and cycle bridge. TfL will be sharing plans for the temporary walking and cycling bridge very shortly and local residents will be able to have their say on the designs at several drop-in sessions later this month. It is hoped work on the temporary bridge could begin later this year should all the necessary consents be granted.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): I would not normally take a follow-up question from the Member who has put that question because this is not Mayor’s update but because of the publicity and the concerns that I know of and a number of Members have raised about Hammersmith Bridge, can I ask Assembly Member Devenish if he has anything briefly to say in response to the Mayor?

Tony Devenish AM: Good morning, Mr Mayor. As you know, it has been shut for 11 months, Hammersmith Bridge. We still do not have a direct plan of when we are going to open a permanent bridge. Can you confirm that the bridge, when it is permanently opened, will be able to be used by buses and other motorised transport, and can you give me a date, if you get the money from the Government, when the permanent bridge will open and a date when the temporary bridge will open?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Chair, with your permission I will bring in the Commissioner in relation to both those questions asked by the Assembly Member, who has been in conversations about it for some time for obvious local reasons.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): It is true we have been working very closely with Hammersmith and Fulham Council, as you know, in particular because it is their bridge and their asset. Our intention is as soon as we can possibly secure the appropriate approvals for the land on either side of the bridge to go ahead with the temporary structure to ensure walking and cycling provision, as the Mayor said. I cannot give you an exact date, because that work is not complete, as to when that will be. Then, of course, we will be working on the full refurbishment planning to bring the bridge back, and absolutely back to full use for buses and motorised vehicles, as you say. Again, I cannot give you a precise date for that because there is clearly a sequencing issue here to get the walking and cycling temporary bridge in place before we are able to commence the major structural work that would necessitate even pedestrians and cyclists not being able to access the bridge.

Can I just say if I may, Chair, through you, that I am fully aware of the significant issues this causes for local communities on either side of the bridge? That, of course, is why we have done our best to maintain the access, such as it is, for walking and cycling across the bridge, and to at least allow that access to the very important transport hubs that are north of the river. I do recognise the challenge that local communities have had, and of course the wider traffic implications and displaced traffic - including, of course, bus services - as a result of this issue.

I would also just say that one of the issues that has emerged with Hammersmith Bridge and the state of Hammersmith Bridge is the rather balkanised and strange way in which bridges across the river are managed and maintained. In the previous operational funding that we had from central Government - which, as Members will be aware, Chair, we no longer have - this is precisely the sort of operational spend that would be used for capital assessment and remedial works on structures such as Hammersmith Bridge, even though it was not our asset. You may say, “That is a bit odd to use operational spend on capital”, but Treasury rules actually require us to use operational spend from our perspective on capital spend if it is somebody else’s asset. I have raised this issue with the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer - actually two Chancellors ago now - and with his officials in great detail, and I know that there is work continuing with Treasury officials in this regard generally because this is, in a sense, an asset that has become slightly orphaned. I do recognise nobody intended it to be orphaned as a result of the reduction in operational grant from central Government, as Members know, to the tune of about £700 million a year.

Tony Devenish AM: Pedestrians and cyclists are now being cut off. You are saying the bridge is going to shut now for a period of time. What are we going to do for those pedestrians and cyclists, as you are doing with the boat race? Can I just put on record the Council have said that you are shutting the bridge because of police advice on boat race day? The police have now said that is not true. They were not even consulted. We have that in writing. Can you please go back to the Council and get the Council to get a grip? Because this Council is incompetent.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): I will certainly have a conversation on that specific issue. I have to confess I did not know that the police had not been consulted. If that is what you say then I will happily get my people to follow up with you offline on that particular issue. I did not know that. Clearly there is a particular issue about the number of people you would have on the bridge at any one time because it is quite a different scenario, people crossing the bridge who do not tend to stop in the middle of it, and large crowds of people being stationary on a bridge for a long period of time as they would be traditionally for the boat race. I will certainly find out about that particular point. I was not aware of that, but I will follow up, of course.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): The constituency Member has had the opportunity to raise the issue that I know has overwhelmed his casework recently, so I am going to pass over to the Deputy Chair for the next series of questions.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): Assembly Member Shah to ask the first lead-off question to the Mayor.

2020/0948 - London’s transport policies Navin Shah Given the challenges of providing transport in London, are you pleased with what you have achieved and where would you like to go further?

Navin Shah AM: Mr Mayor, given the challenges of providing transport in London, are you pleased with what you have achieved and where would you like to go further?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Thank you for your question. I am proud of what we have achieved over the last four years and the improvements we have made for all Londoners. In the years before I became Mayor, TfL fares increased by more than 42%. Londoners were paying some of the highest public transport fares of any major city. Since I was elected I have worked to ensure that travel in the capital is convenient, affordable and increasingly environmentally friendly. I made a pledge to freeze London’s transport fares for four years, paid for by making TfL more efficient and exploring new revenue-raising opportunities.

I am also pleased to have introduced the Hopper fare, which has made travel more affordable to millions of Londoners, got the Night Tube up and running, seen increased capacity and new trains across our rail network and the Tube, tripled the amount of protected space for cyclists and introduced a world-leading ULEZ which is making a real difference to the air Londoners breathe. We are modernising London’s bus fleet with the 12 Low Emission Bus Zones in place and the world’s first bus routes which operate only electric double-decker buses. The work to retrofit older, more polluting buses and only to procure clean vehicles in the future is making the network fit for the future. I have ensured record investment in making our streets safer and more attractive for people cycling and walking, and by appointing London’s first Walking and Cycling Commissioner, Will Norman, we have ensured that sustainable, safe and healthy travel is at the core of TfL’s thinking.

Looking ahead, we have plans to ensure London’s public transport network remains the envy of the world. I know there is more to do. New signalling on the Circle, District, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City lines will increase capacity by 40% of the network and new rolling stock on the Piccadilly line will increase service at peak times. Over the next five years TfL is planning to have at least 2,000 electric buses out on London’s roads, and I want to bring forward the date by which the entire bus fleet is zero-emission. My focus is to work with the Government to ensure London gets certainty over long-term funding. TfL is one of the only transport authorities in the world not to receive Government operational grant for day-to-day running costs and this will

enable TfL to plan for the future, progressing vital transport links to ensure that we can meet future demand and ensure London remains the economic engine of the United Kingdom (UK).

Navin Shah AM: Talking about your achievements both in the opening remarks and now you mentioned some of those, and you have now alluded to one of the major challenges you have, which is long-term funding from Government. On that note, what has been the biggest challenge or what have been your biggest challenges that you have faced with regard to London’s transport, and what have you done and what do you intend to do to meet those challenges?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): The big issue obviously is the uncertainty of funding. If you look at the operational grant, on average it is £700 million a year gone. A big issue in relation to funding. Just one example was raised by Assembly Member Devenish in relation to Hammersmith Bridge. You can see the issues there are in relation to that. The economic uncertainty is an issue in relation to buoyancy of fares but also of people’s lives changing. The third part of that is obviously Crossrail and the consequential cost delays, aside from the delays to businesses and London, the cost to us in relation to the additional cost of delay, which we are meeting as a city rather than the Government.

The other big issue is obviously we need to address the fact that we face a climate emergency. We have to encourage people to move away from driving vehicles to walking, cycling and using public transport. Clearly the more people we encourage to walk and cycle the less fares we bring in, but the Commissioner has been very supportive of that agenda. Even though it means less fares for public transport, the reality is the more people we can encourage to walk and cycle, the better it is for our city and also their health as well.

Navin Shah AM: Commissioner, from your professional perspective and experience, what have been the challenges?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): I think the main challenge is not being able to continue the trajectory of modernisation that we have seen over the Tube network over recent years. While it is great, as the Mayor said, that we are able to commit in the Business Plan to 2,000 electric buses, while it is great that we have the next phase of the ULEZ being worked on and being implemented, and while it is good that our major capital spend in places like Bank Monument, the Northern Line extension and the extension to Barking Riverside, just to call out three, are continuing, it is of course a huge disappointment to me that while we will have new Piccadilly line trains being put into service from 2023, giving us about a 12% increase in capacity on that very critical line for London, we will not get the benefits - at least not yet - of a 60% increase overall in Piccadilly line capacity which you would get were we able to let a contract for new signalling on that line.

That is a problem twofold. It is a problem because the old signalling system - and many Assembly Members will have seen the old system on the Piccadilly line - operates on a ‘pianola roll’ style thing with holes punched to operate the signalling. No metro in the world has that type of ancient technology. We do need to replace it. It is expensive to maintain, and it is not as reliable as it needs to be. Therefore, we need to replace it for that reason, but also we need to replace it because frankly the growth that we are seeing on London’s transport network and London’s population means that we really need to continue the trajectory going forward. Also, of course, the supply chain has resourced up explicitly to apply digital signalling skills and implementation, a reducing cost base since we started with the Jubilee line many years ago, and that knowledge, I am afraid, is already going to start to be lost to other countries around the world because we do not have the certainty of funding that we need from central Government to allow us to continue to deliver this sort of technology.

Shaun Bailey AM: Mr Mayor, on 7 February [2020] 97% of Unite bus drivers voted to strike over fatigue and safety. A week later, you announced that bus drivers would receive an extra £34 million in bonuses. How many more trade unions can expect this kind of hush money?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): I think that is a very serious allegation. The work that was undertaken to try to improve retention in the bus operators was work that has been being undertaken for some time now, a number of months, because one of the things that we noticed that for some operators, before two years were up bus drivers had left and stopped working, some at 40%. More left before the third year. TfL, with the operators and those who represent drivers, worked for some time on a scheme to try to encourage people to stay bus drivers longer, and the advantage is customers benefit because obviously if you have more experienced bus drivers staying longer being bus drivers their professionalism improves and also the quality of service that customers receive improves as well. Also, bus drivers who start working as bus drivers do not earn a huge salary.

That is one piece of work and I think what you are conflating it with is that it is the first time ever any work has been undertaken in relation to bus driver fatigue, undertaken by Loughborough University, I think, which is world-leading. There is a separate piece of work being undertaken between TfL, the operators and those who represent the drivers to try to improve the issue of bus driver fatigue. You will be aware of the awful Sandilands tram accident, where many lives were lost, and many people were injured because of concerns around fatigue we discovered afterwards. What TfL are doing is across all modes of transport, from trams to London Overground, Tubes and buses, seeing how we can do this. In particular with bus drivers, the research from Loughborough University has provided a good template for further work to be undertaken.

Shaun Bailey AM: But clearly this has not addressed their concerns because 97% of their members voted to strike.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): In relation to strikes across the piece, one of the things that I am proud of is that while we had a situation with the previous Mayor of regular strikes across the network, since I have become Mayor I think strikes have reduced by 78%, which shows the difference that talking and listening can make in relation to resolving concerns that those who work extremely hard for TfL have. One of the reasons why the Commissioner and I were so keen for Her Royal Highness [Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall] and His Royal Highness [Prince Charles] to meet yesterday with hard-working TfL staff was a way of recognising the contribution they make, recognised by Their Royal Highnesses, and I recognise how hard our staff work and will never minimise or trivialise that. Also, I recognise that it is very difficult to have 30,000 individual conversations with our staff. One of the best ways to have conversations is with those who represent the staff, which are trade unions. I think collective bargaining has a huge role to play in our society and I encourage it.

Shaun Bailey AM: But clearly you have failed in your own target for strikes. In 2016 you gave a speech saying that you would deliver no strikes in your term. You again confirmed it in this very Chamber, and you have had a record amount of strikes.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Let us deal with that because I know what happens, Chair, sometimes mischievous Assembly Members mislead the public by clipping what I say in this Chamber, so I want to be quite clear in relation to what I promised in my manifesto. In my manifesto I promised that if I was elected to be Mayor we would spend more time talking to and listening to trade unions and we would reduce

the amount of strikes in our city, and lo and behold, since I have become Mayor we have reduced, I think, by 78% the amount of strikes in our city, yet another example of a promise made and a promise delivered.

Shaun Bailey AM: Let us be clear. What you said was:

“As Mayor, what I will do is roll up my sleeves and make sure that I am talking to everybody who runs public transport to make sure that there are zero days of strikes.”

You are very far away from that.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): That is not what was in my manifesto, Chair. What happens, Chair, is when people are struggling in a campaign they try to mislead the public to try to garner support. It will not work --

Shaun Bailey AM: Mr Mayor --

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): -- Londoners can go to my manifesto, which is quite clear on the pledges and promises I made. What is important is in addition to making massive savings in TfL, I am the first Mayor ever and this is the first Commissioner ever who have reduced year-on-year operating costs. We have reduced back office costs, we have merged some parts of the organisation, we have had a cap in relation to those owing the largest amounts, made sure that we are all pulling together, and notwithstanding all the massive upheaval and change, we have managed to reduce strikes by in the region of 78%. The biggest transformation within TfL, yet the biggest reduction in strike action. A good example of the difference a good mayor makes and another reason why I expect people will be voting for me in 63 days’ time.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): I would rather you did not campaign in this meeting. Carry on.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): I think he has run out of ideas, run out of questions.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): I am waiting, yes.

Shaun Bailey AM: Let us be very clear, Mr Mayor.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): This is what Londoners are voting for, is it?

Shaun Bailey AM: Let us be clear, Mr Mayor. You promised zero days of strikes. We have had 23 days of strikes. You have utterly failed on that. It is a broken promise. So for you to sit there and disingenuously say you did not make that promise is wrong. You said it publicly. You have failed to deliver on it.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Deputy Chair, is that a question?

Shaun Bailey AM: Do you agree?

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): That is a question.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Well, Deputy Chair, we could teach him afterwards how to be a good politician but the reality is this: when I took on to be the Mayor in 2016, my manifesto was quite clear in relation to what I would do if I elected Mayor and I have done that, which is working with the Commissioner

and his top team and engaging with those who work incredibly hard for TfL, which means engaging with trade unions. I am proud to somebody who is a trade unionist and also recognises the contribution good trade unions can make. By speaking to and listening with the trade unions we have managed to make the huge savings that we have needed to make because of Government cuts but also reduce strikes across TfL by the tune of 78%. The promise I make, Deputy Chair, is if I win the next election I will continue to make that promise.

Shaun Bailey AM: So, Mr Mayor, you are denying that in this Chamber you said you would deliver zero days of strikes? Is that what you are saying? Yes or no.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): What I would say to anybody who watches the clip made by the Tories --

Shaun Bailey AM: Are you denying it? Yes or no.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): -- go to my manifesto from 2016, where it is quite clear the promise I made and if you compare the last four years to my manifesto, a good example of promise made, promise delivered.

Shaun Bailey AM: The best politicians tell the truth. You did say that in this Chamber. You should admit to that. Thank you very much, Chair.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Deputy Chair, I know you are impartial. Was that a question for me?

Keith Prince AM: Yes, it was. He said you should --

Shaun Bailey AM: Yes, yes.

Shaun Bailey AM: Are you aware that the best politicians tell the truth? You absolutely made this statement in this Chamber. Do you agree? I made it a question twice.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): I think we got there in the end with the question, Deputy Chair, so let me respond to the question we finally got to in the end. I am quite clear we are going through massive transformation in TfL. It will not be possible for us to make the transformation we require and make the savings without working cooperatively with those who work in TfL and those who work for operators, who are bus drivers, and what we are doing is --

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): It was a short question; it required a short answer and you are kind of spinning it out. I think the question was: are you aware about the comment that was made about the best politicians?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Can I just check, Deputy Chair? Where in the Standing Orders does it say that the Deputy Chair gives the Mayor advice on how to answer a question?

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): I am not giving you advice.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Because I know you are impartial.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): You are answering a question which was not asked.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Deputy Chair, you cannot save him every time he messes up. That is not how it works.

Shaun Bailey AM: Chair, enough from me.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): OK, he has finished. Assembly Member --

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): He is finished? That is what Londoners will say on 8 May, or 7 May.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: Mr Mayor, in terms of going further, let us look at the ULEZ. The first phase came in in April last year. It has been a huge success and I really welcome its extension in October 2021, but I do have some questions about how the wider zone is going to operate. Firstly, it is going to go up to but not include the North and South Circular. I am wondering, will you consider revising the border to include the North and South Circulars?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): I will bring the Commissioner in shortly, with the Chair’s permission, to explain the complexities of the infrastructure required, but just a correction: the ULEZ extends this October in relation to the coaches, the lorries and the buses for all of London --

Keith Prince AM: That is the Low Emission Zone (LEZ), not the ULEZ.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): The LEZ, as it was, will go to the ULEZ standards. I will educate that Conservative Member later on about the different standards. We can do it because we have infrastructure in place for the LEZ. For the ULEZ to go up to the North and South Circular requires infrastructure investment, which we are doing, and the Commissioner will explain. The one final point is we have consulted on the ULEZ up to the North and South Circular so if we were to change that we would have to reconsult in addition to the infrastructure investment, which could delay things anyway. I will bring the Commissioner in.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: I have some further questions which maybe Mike [Brown MVO] might be able to answer. Last week you published a report that showed the ULEZ will help save the NHS around £5 billion over the next 30 years. It is a policy that is going to be so effective. I am wondering why you are limiting its positive impact. Why cannot people living in Catford, Eltham, Forest Hill or Dulwich benefit from cleaner air by the South Circular actually being included in it? I am just wondering whether you might reconsider that at some point before it is rolled out.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): They will benefit because the evidence we have from ULEZ phase 1 is that everyone’s cars become more compliant across London and the quality of air has improved across London. It is simply not possible to roll it out as quickly across all of London. We can do it by October 2021 up to the North and South Circular because of the infrastructure we have. Additional investment in cameras, the automatic number plate recognition and the work we have to do we would not be able to do by October 2021 if we went to all of London, which means more delay, which means quality of life being improved less quickly and the quality of air being improved less quickly. This is the fastest way to improve the air. I make this final point. King’s College [London] have said that under the policies of the previous Mayor, it would take 193 years to bring our air within legal limits. Under our policies, by 2025.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: But it is something you might like to do in the further, extend it further? Is that something you are saying?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): We will always review our policies to make sure they are the best they can be.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: That is really helpful. Then, the existing ULEZ is using the Congestion Charge cameras but we have no detail of how the ULEZ extension will actually operate. What technology will be used for the ULEZ extension? When are you looking to sign the contract?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): We are working through that detail right now so I cannot give you a precise date when the contract will be let but clearly we are looking at what technology is available. There is clearly a different set of technologies now that we can use, including mobile cameras, including ensuring that we are able to assess people who should not be entering the zone with a more polluting vehicle at particular times by targeting specific routes to ensure compliance. Of course cameras are only part of the issue. There is a huge amount of engagement going on with local boroughs which I personally have been involved in a lot of, because of course some local boroughs have some very legitimate and understandable concerns about the short journeys that often happen to just cut across the North or South Circular, mostly the South but sometimes the North Circular as well. The signage, the awareness of people, much the same way we did with the first phase of the ULEZ in terms of working with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) to write to people, in advance of the zone becoming live, who are crossing it on a regular basis, so that people are as well-informed as possible.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE AM: The technology is likely to be cameras, by the sound of it, but what I wanted to really understand is that congestion is increasing in London, the population is growing, and traffic speeds are going down. Will you ensure that the technology that you put in for the ULEZ extension is future-proofed so that it could be used at a later stage to operate a potential road pricing scheme in London?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): It is an excellent point and ‘absolutely’ is the answer to that. That is something that I personally have asked the team to make sure that we do as far as is possible, future-proof this so that we have the digital processes and technology in place. Absolutely.

Léonie Cooper AM: One of the issues that is filling my postbag is from people on my side of the river who are struggling with the replacement bus services, which they say are just not frequent enough, particularly in the rush hour peaks. I wondered if there was any likelihood of bus frequency being improved because it is quite clear from your answer to Assembly Member [Tony] Devenish that we are talking about something that is going to longer rather than shorter, which is pretty much as anticipated. Is there anything you can do for my constituents?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): Perhaps I could take that. I will absolutely look at that. We do have a look at this on a regular basis and you are quite right, I equally have had some correspondence on this issue, as you would expect. It is something we are continuing to look at. Clearly we had to do something quite rapidly with the closure of the bridge and we have done some tweaks already, as you know. Those may not have been as effective as they might be, and I am more than happy to work with you offline to ensure that we respond to those particular concerns. I know the team is already looking at it, but I am very happy to consider enhancements, particularly in the morning peak.

Léonie Cooper AM: Thank you very much. I have specific bus routes in mind, but we can take that offline.

We have just been touching on the issue of the expansion of the ULEZ and also the Low Emission Bus Zones, the first of which I am pleased to say was in Putney High Street, which is why I am keen to keep the buses working properly for my constituents even with the Hammersmith Bridge closed. That has led to the most amazing reduction in nitrogen dioxide pollution across London, an average of 28% reduction on some key routes, and the number of times that we have been breaking the law, breaking the legal limit, has fallen by 99%. What reduction in air pollution are we anticipating when the whole of London becomes a Low Emission Bus Zone in October of this year? I think it is going to be great.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Yes. You were there when we launched the first Low Emission Bus Zone in Putney High Street. You will be also be aware that previously, by the first week of January we had had the annual amount of air quality breaches that should be had in Putney High Street. We also know that half of the nitrogen oxides (NOx) come from road transport and a significant amount of the road transport NOx comes from buses, also from lorries and others which use Putney High Street.

The good news is we have accelerated plans to make all our buses ULEZ-compliant. They will all be ULEZ-compliant by October this year. I think 80% are currently ULEZ-compliant, a combination of new buses and retrofitting and making the adjustments. We have already reduced bus fleet NOx emissions by more than 80% from 2016 levels and particulate matter (PM) emissions over the same period have been reduced by 50%. A retrofitted bus can reduce NOx by up to 90% and PM by around 80%. We are going to make that progress.

Just to remind you, 85% of the road transport NOx is not from our buses, so whilst we are doing whatever we can we also have to make sure that other parts of the road transport network do their best, which is why the ULEZ coming to all of London from this October for the big vehicles, the buses, coaches and lorries, will really make a difference.

Léonie Cooper AM: You are saying that we are at 80% now in terms of the Euro VI compliance --

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): Yes.

Léonie Cooper AM: -- and we are going to be at 100% Euro VI compliant - that is retrofit or bringing new buses onto all of the routes - by October 2020?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): That is correct. Just to put this in context, four years ago my team told me this was an impossible task, we could not do it. We have been ahead of the curve, working with the supply chain and working with the bus operators. It actually has been remarkable how the application of something so important to Londoners has really invigorated people to deliver something that initially they said was impossible. I absolutely concur with you, by the way. Although what the Mayor says is absolutely right about the impact of other vehicles as well as buses, buses of course, in themselves, in particular parts of London - and you used the example that you used in your constituency - absolutely make a material difference to businesses, schools and communities living on those lines of route.

Léonie Cooper AM: The only problem with that, of course, is that obviously people then want us to step up even further, and I know that our next goal after 100% compliance with Euro VI by October of this year is to have zero-emission buses by 2037. Is that going to be achievable?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): I believe it is. I think the Mayor has already said about the 2,000 electric buses. As recently as last week I was in Ballymena talking to the new owners of the manufacturer there. We were talking about hydrogen where, I am delighted to say that despite the

difficulties of the previous company there, which went into administration, we now have the funding back, if you like, for the 20 hydrogen buses we procured. Hydrogen is useful as part of the solution, I believe, because it does support longer routes where electric vehicles still do not quite have the technology, and can therefore play a part in this. I am not sure it is the whole part although the new owner was very persuasive in his commitment to investing in hydrogen. I am very excited that we have a couple of different technologies in place to explore here. That does give me confidence that the trajectory of progress we are seeing will be continued, absolutely.

Léonie Cooper AM: Thank you very much. That is going to make my constituents very happy. Thank you, Chair.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): Thank you very much. Can I ask both of you, please, not to forget the plight of the marooned residents and businesses of Barnes, who really are, I would say, the recipients of the worst effects of the closure of the bridge?

Jennette Arnold OBE AM: Firstly, can I just add my congratulations to TfL staff and management for what I would call the transport revolution that has taken place across our city in the last 20 years. I say that based on the knowledge of the first transport goals and aims that were set out by the first Labour Mayor and having been able to be in a position in my constituency, with all the infrastructure development that my constituents have received, to see that 20-year strategy being delivered.

Commissioner, that is the high point. I want now to raise some concerns that certainly my constituents have, and I know a number of other Assembly Members’ constituents have, and that is the current state of customer satisfaction. Let me just say briefly, Deputy Chair, because it needs to be put into context, TfL makes a bold statement that, “We put customers at the heart of everything we do”. Now, that cannot be just when things are going well. That has to be when things are going badly as well, because that is when customers can then get a sense of: what is the quality? How deep is the meaning within an organisation?

I regret and I am sad to say that in my experience and the experience of my constituents and other constituents, we believe TfL’s customer satisfaction is going backwards rather than forwards. I just say this to you. Many of my constituents have reached the point where they were tearing their hair out because they were heading towards court because of mismanagement and just inappropriate customer satisfaction responses from TfL. I do not believe they are the only people who have experienced this, and I have put a question to the Mayor to find out how widespread this is.

Commissioner, would you agree with myself and other Members on this Assembly that there is something to be done when only 50% to 55% of Londoners polled in your own survey believe that they get good customer service, especially when things go wrong? Their perception is that TfL has now, if you like, adopted a mode of being overly defensive and basically quoting legislation here, there and everywhere, basically saying, “We are TfL. Just go and suck it and see”.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): That could not be further, Deputy Chair, from my approach. Let me just say to start with I absolutely regret any single passenger or user of our network who feels disappointed with the service they get or indeed the response when a complaint is made. I would just say that the numbers you quote, quite rightly, are the care score that we look at, which is the 51% score, and that is based on a number of factors where actually we have seen some consistent increases in recent years. I would also refer you to our overall customer satisfaction score, which is the largest statistically significant survey of its type in the country, which has consistently shown both London Underground and London buses, just to pick

out two, as being of the order of 85%, 84% satisfaction for the overall journey experience of people who use our services.

Now, none of that, those facts - and I could quote statistics at you and we could share them between ourselves, I am sure, for some time - should take away from my headline point, which is that if anyone is not getting the service they need either in the moment on a station or on a bus, on a Tube station, on a bus or anywhere else on our network, then clearly we have to seek to do that better. But I am extraordinarily proud - and the Mayor alluded to it earlier on - of the many fantastic people that I witness and I see and I hear about every day, who do give the most extraordinary service, above and beyond, to our passengers, to our users across the transport services.

Of course we sometimes get things wrong and I will never be complacent about that. I know my team will never be complacent about that. The new Managing Director of London Underground, for example, comes from a service background working for an airline previously and is absolutely obsessed with doing all that he can, with his leadership team, to improve in this regard as well. Of course, the follow-up is also true and I have to tell you personally I intervened on a number of cases where people have self-evidently had a poor experience and I and my senior team intervened to try to put that right so far as we can. So, we are never complacent but actually the customer satisfaction scores do speak for themselves as to where we are consistently delivering. Of course there is the odd fluctuation from quarter to quarter but actually those are broadly very high scores when you compare them with other service providers.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM: I think I made it clear that you can have high customer satisfaction. I am talking about where things go wrong and that is where your care charter kicks in. The test of an organisation is not doing what it is paid to do, what it is in its professional remit to do. We take that, as service users, for granted. I put to you again that what needs looking at are the processes about when things go wrong, and I am saying to you again -- and I can see heads nodding. If you do not want to hear because I understand you are leaving, I will direct this to the Mayor. There is something wrong in that area and I would ask you to go away and ask to take a quite forensic look at: are you overly defensive? Do you really have to quote the legislation and the Transport for London Act in the first two-thirds of a letter to someone who is desperately saying, “It is not me. I have not defrauded TfL. Please listen to me”. I am saying there is a piece of work there to be done.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): For the avoidance of doubt, I do not mean to sound defensive at all and if I have done in any sense I do apologise. First of all, I welcome all such feedback and all such specific examples of where things have gone wrong and will always strive to improve and get them better. Forgive me for maybe cutting across what the Mayor was about to say. We have also, just since 2017, significantly changed the way that we allow people to complain about our services because frankly before that we had a hugely cumbersome bureaucratic process that required all sorts of form filling in online or by letter or whatever else. I would be amazed if half the people complaining did not give up the will to live before they had even got to the end of the form.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM: They did. We dealt with that.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): We have changed that, we have absolutely changed that to make the complaint system more accessible, more immediate, more deliverable and more in line with modern technology, as you would expect. But I would say, Deputy Chair, through you, that none of that should take away at all my commitment to continue to get this better. I am very happy to work with individual Assembly Members or more collectively on that regard because we can always learn, we can always

do better and any single disappointed passenger, customer or user experience is one too many from my perspective.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM: Thank you.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): Assembly Member Hall?

Susan Hall AM: First of all, bravo for those questions. Thank you very much, Assembly Member Arnold, for that. Susan Hall AM: I am sure the Mayor is as surprised as I am - for once we will share an emotion - that the Assembly Member for Harrow and Brent did not even mention the wretched Metropolitan line, which has been a complete disaster for the last year. We have had nothing but trouble being turfed off trains and so on. Mr Mayor, I will ask you: are you happy with the service that --

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): Hang on, Assembly Member Hall. Assembly Member Shah wishes to make a point of order.

Navin Shah AM: Chair, I have been named saying that I have not raised the issue about the Metropolitan [line]. That is not absolutely true. That is complete, utter nonsense. On a number of occasions both in this Chamber as well as written questions, including, I believe, one last month to which I am awaiting reply, I have raised this issue constantly. I hope that is not only recorded but that there is an apology for misrepresenting my position.

Susan Hall AM: OK. Going back, I was surprised that since you had a lead-off question you did not question the Mayor about the disaster - I will say it again - the disaster of the Metropolitan line. Assembly Member [Jennette] Arnold [OBE] quite rightly said, and I quote, “People are tearing their hair out”, and we have been because it is such a disaster. From one who uses it, I can confirm. My question to you, Mr Mayor, is: are you happy with the service that is given to the commuters who are using the Metropolitan line?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): First, Chair, it is really important that we are accurate here and it is the case that Assembly Member Shah on a regular basis has been raising the concerns raised by his constituents --

Susan Hall AM: I was referring to today.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): -- about the quality of service on the Metropolitan line. What he does not do is play to the gallery. What he does instead is raise these really important questions to TfL, to my team and the Deputy Mayor. One of the things that Assembly Member Shah has been saying is his concern -- Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): Would you answer Assembly Member Hall’s question? I think your peroration on that is sufficient.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Again, Deputy Chair, you are in danger of telling me how to answer a question. That is not your job. I know you are a Conservative and you want to help their side but that is not your job.

Susan Hall AM: I do not need help. I want an answer.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): No, I am sorry. Do you know, Mr Mayor, this is outrageous?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): I agree.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): I take the view that I am completely non-partisan. I know that the Chair, when she is in this position, similarly is non-partisan. Just because you do not like what is happening does not mean to say that we are being partisan. Our interests are in the interest of seeing that Assembly Members make the best use of their time. It seems to me that what you are doing is padding out your answers, your so-called answers, to take up people’s time.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Again, for a Deputy Chair to say, in inverted commas, ‘so-called answers’, demonstrates your partiality. I will not be lectured by a Conservative on how to answer a question, particularly 60 days before an election.

Joanne McCartney AM: Chair, can I just say that actually Assembly Member Hall raised the issue of the Assembly Member in her question? It was part of the question that was asked.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): Let us deal with the question that was asked about the Metropolitan line, not about Assembly Member Shah.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): It was really important we were accurate. The first few words of the question mentioned Assembly Member Shah, who represents Brent and Harrow. You might not like that, but it is a fact and you have to be accurate.

Susan Hall AM: Point of order. I actually referred to the question earlier from the Member that did not contain anything about the Metropolitan line --

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): I rest my case.

Susan Hall AM: -- which is a disaster.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): I rest my case, Deputy Chair.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): Thank you. I very much regret that this has descended to personalities. This is the Commissioner’s last meeting. It is the last meeting of this session of the Assembly and we should be talking about TfL business, not about people and whether they have said something or another about any particular thing. We want to know the answers to the questions which are being asked by Assembly Members.

Tony Devenish AM: Can we move on?

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): Yes.

Susan Hall AM: No. I want an answer. What does he think about the Metropolitan line service?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): As I was answering before I was interrupted by the Deputy Chair, one of the points that has been raised a number of times to me by the local Assembly Member is the issue of the quality of service on the Metropolitan line --

-- particularly since improvements were sought to be made on the signalling. This is the oldest train line in London, arguably in the world underground. It celebrated 150 years in 2013. One of the things that we have been doing from TfL is to invest in a new signalling system and the quality of service received by Assembly Member Shah’s constituents has not been good enough. I will pass over to the Commissioner to explain some of the steps we are doing to try to improve the service that residents who use the Metropolitan line --

Susan Hall AM: Chairman, I want to know his view, the Mayor’s view.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): I think, Mr Mayor, the question was asked of you.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): I am happy to.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): Please.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): TfL has been working hard to improve the reliability of the Metropolitan line service following disruptions relating to the rollout of our new digital signalling system.

Susan Hall AM: I’ve heard all this before. I want to know what his view is.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): The issues only emerged when TfL started to run trains in a live environment and largely centred around the ability of the trains to connect to the signalling system. TfL has been working around the clock with its partner and team of technical experts to recover the reliability of the service, applied improvements on all 192 trains, on trackside infrastructure and on the central signalling system. Software and communication system updates --

Susan Hall AM: Mr Mayor, you have told us this before. I asked you for your view.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Deputy Chair, sorry, am I going to be allowed to answer the question or not?

Susan Hall AM: Are you incapable of just telling us what your view is without reading it, that somebody else has written for you? Just tell me what your view is. Are you sorry? Would you like to say sorry to the Metropolitan line users?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Deputy Chair, are you chairing this or not? Are you chairing this meeting or not?

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): I am chairing this but we take the view, the Chair and I take the view that Assembly Members are responsible for the way their questions are being managed and if the questioner does not like the way you are answering it, it is a matter for the questioner. As far as we are concerned, we simply do not want you to waste Members’ time. Our time is very short to question you. That is the position. The Assembly Member is indeed seeking to manage you.

Susan Hall AM: She wants to know your view, not something somebody else has written down, Mr Mayor. What is your view? Are you sorry and will you apologise to Metropolitan line users?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): I wrote my views down in this answer which I am giving, Deputy Chair. There is still some way to go until we reach --

Susan Hall AM: No, I do not want you to read something out. I wanted your view.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): We know who is in charge of this meeting, Deputy Chair, and it is not you.

Susan Hall AM: Can you think for yourself, Mr Mayor? If you do, can you tell me what you think? Are you sorry that you are causing so much trouble for the Metropolitan line users? Are you?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Is it my turn now?

Susan Hall AM: It is easy. You do not have to have it written down.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): No, let him answer.

Susan Hall AM: He is just going to read something again.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): Mr Mayor, please answer the question.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): This work is part of a vital £5.4 million investment on the oldest part of the network. Once completed it will improve journeys on 40% of the Tube network. It is the largest single upgrade in the history of the Underground. I am disappointed by the disruption caused to those commuters who use this service. I am disappointed that the previous Mayor failed to invest in this service. I am making good the errors of his way by investing in this service. I am hoping that commuters will see the benefits of this investment but of course I am disappointed that there were problems with the initial phasing of the signalling. We are learning the lessons to make sure there is no further disruption going forward. Our job would have been made much easier had we been able to invest in this line eight years ago when it was supposed to have happened, rather than the delay --

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Again you are interrupting my answer.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): No, I am not interrupting your answer.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): It is a shambles.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): I have explained this, and I have attempted to explain this to you over the past four years. This is our time and you are seeking to take time from Members. The Member has said she does not want to hear any more from you on this matter, so I am proceeding to the next question --

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): That is not how it works. For goodness’ sake, read the Standing Orders, man.

Joanne McCartney AM: Chair, can I raise a point? I remember distinctly, I think it was last meeting or the meeting before, that Assembly Member [Jennette] Arnold [OBE], in Chair, said that the Mayor was to be allowed to answer any question as he saw fit. Now you are saying something different.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): Thank you. Assembly Member Berry.

Siân Berry AM:. I am going to ask two short questions for two pieces of information, if that is OK. First of all, Mr Mayor, you wrote to me in September 2019 about some of the operational aspects of the ULEZ and said that in relation to things like the operations plan and the camera strategy there would be a data protection impact assessment. Has that been done? If not, when will that be done?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Can I pass it over to the Commissioner, who is in charge of those areas?

Siân Berry AM: Yes.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): That work is in train at the moment. It is not complete, but it is being worked on at the moment. I am very happy to come back to the Assembly, of course, or my successor will come back to the Assembly when we finish that work.

Siân Berry AM: Have you decided yet in terms of scoping whether or not there will need to be a public consultation on aspects related to privacy?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): That will depend on the outcome of our assessment, of course. Look, I am very mindful of the issue and you have very eloquently raised it with the Mayor and with us, and we will of course respond in full when we have done the necessary assessment.

Siân Berry AM: OK. Thank you. Mr Mayor, at Mayor’s Question Time on 24 February 2020 I asked you to publish the relevant parts of the contract for the Silvertown road tunnel so that we could assess relevant and estimated costs of potentially cancelling it that might be incurred by the next Mayor. You said you were effectively more than happy to have it made public, subject to advice. When will we see the information that we need?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): I think we are in train. The issue, if you remember, was commercial sensitivities and the conflicts that might bring to TfL. The Commissioner has sought legal advice, is seeking legal advice.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): Of course we are aware there are different views on this particular piece of infrastructure, which of course does increase bus service provision from five an hour through the Blackwall tunnel to 36 an hour through the Silvertown tunnel.

Siân Berry AM: I just want to see the costs for when I want to cancel it.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): It is a great public transport scheme from that perspective to connect communities either side of the river, which we have been talking about earlier on, of course. We are looking at the issue of any potential cancellation of that project were it to materialise but as the Mayor says, there are some quite significant commercial issues because there has been two bidders initially involved in the final application of the tender, which went to RiverLinx recently, as you will know. We do have to slightly unpick all of that, so it is quite a complex commercial legal process to get to that point and we are not quite there yet.

Siân Berry AM: OK. Will we get this before 23 March, is a very important question?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): I am not honestly sure, but again I will go back and find out.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner, Transport for London): Just for the avoidance of doubt, Deputy Chair, through you, we are not holding this up for any reason. We are doing it as fast as we can to work that through, of course.

Siân Berry AM: In answer to a written Mayor’s Question from Assembly Member [Len] Duvall at the same meeting we have an answer that was apparently provided on 20 February [2020], four days before the meeting, so I am guessing that needs to be updated in the database that outlines the type of costs that might be incurred, things like paying back loans early that the contractor might have taken on. Would it be possible to at least get the order of magnitude of each of those types of costs as an estimate from you as a separate paper if you cannot release the contract?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): Yes. I will have a look and see what we can release. Of course, I have to tell you my legal team is quite a stickler in terms of how they want this stuff to be produced, quite rightly so because of commercial sensitivities and the potential of course, as you would understand, for legal challenge from particular partners that we work with in this regard, but I will see what we can do. If we can do anything at all, I will make sure we can.

Siân Berry AM: We will maintain some direct contact about that in the run-up to 23 March.

Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman in the Chair): I should tell Members that there are seven of you who want to speak on this matter.

Andrew Dismore AM: What action has been taken to improve cycling infrastructure in London over the past four years?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): We have increased hugely investment by 40% in cycling and walking. The spend we give to cycling is comparable to some of the leading countries in the world, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and others. We have trebled the amount of protected cycle space in our city; in eight years of the previous Mayor, roughly speaking, 50 kilometres protected cycle space. We have not just increased that. We have more than doubled that in just four years and we will continue to make progress.

It is difficult though because 95% of the roads are not our roads. They are council roads and some councils are anti-cycling like Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. We will work with the coalition of the willing.

Andrew Dismore AM: Can I firstly welcome the improvements for cycling and pedestrians at Stirling Corner, which have made a fast and dangerous junction much safer? I am pleased to see that my 20-year-plus campaign to achieve this, ignored at best and actively opposed at worst by the Conservatives, has finally come to fruition before I finally bow out at the end of the current term.

TfL has said that most people who cycle in London and do so quite regularly and have been doing so for more than five years tend to be mostly male, white and in employment with relatively higher household incomes. How you are encouraging under-represented groups to cycle?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Yes, I know the sort of cyclists you mean. One of the things that Will Norman, Walking and Cycling Commissioner, has been doing with the TfL team is trying to assist people to get more confident in cycling who otherwise are not. There are free cycling courses. We are looking particularly at women and encouraging them to cycle, but you can understand if people do not feel safe cycling. That is one of the reasons why we are so keen to improve the cycling infrastructure, not just protected cycles spaces but also things like junctions. We know that a huge amount of accidents and fatalities occur around junctions. We have a programme to improve junctions and make them safer. Also, we have to give free cycling lessons to those who do not have the confidence and make it easier to get bikes as well.

You are absolutely right. We have to get rid of the stereotype around cyclists. One of the reasons why we have moved away from the language of ‘superhighways’ is some of the research done in relation to barriers for the people you are talking about taking up cycling more so than they currently do.

Andrew Dismore AM: Going on to the Cycle Superhighway programme, it is supposed to have a focus on segregated provision. What level of segregation have you achieved since you became Mayor?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): What we have done is we have worked with cycling groups like the London Cycling Campaign and many others to make sure there is a quality mark around the protected space we do. There were concerns around the previous quality of cycling provision and so there is now a benchmark in relation to what qualifies as protected space.

Roughly speaking, from 53 kilometres under the previous Mayor over eight years, we will either have completed or have under construction 163-ish. To give you an idea, if you did it back to back, when I was elected Mayor you could cycle from Leicester Square to Luton and now you can go from Leicester Square to New Street Station in Birmingham. We are going to carry on should I be fortunate to be elected for a second term.

Andrew Dismore AM: There has been some underspend in the cycling budget. Why is this and what are you going to do to review this and reverse it?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): One of the big reasons for the underspend is not for a lack of trying. It is because councils have taken us to court - the famous judicial review from Westminster Council - or councils have said no at the last minute and pulled the rug from under us.

What we are doing now is learning the lessons and over-programming so that we do not underspend. We have to first plan a route, consult, change the route, re-consult, get the permission, start the route. That takes some time. We are now going at full speed and, because of the huge work from Will [Norman, Walking and Cycling Commissioner], Heidi [Alexander, Deputy Mayor for Transport] and the team at TfL, conversations have taken place and I am optimistic we will go even faster in term two.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Mr Mayor, one of the figures collected by TfL is the lost customer hours due to industrial strikes. In the eight years when we had Boris Johnson as the Mayor, 28.4 million hours were lost. Under your mayoralty so far, it has only been 5.3 million.

Apart from you rolling your sleeves up and getting involved in industrial action - and London has benefitted from that - but also London has benefited from your fares policy. Can you please tell me that apart from you rolling your sleeves up and reducing industrial strikes in London, what else have you done that has benefited Londoners than your fares policies?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Can I just deal with this issue of rolling your sleeves up? You have to be full-time chief executive if you are a good Mayor, not a part-time chair, and we know what happens when a part-time chair becomes a prime minister and the consequences of that.

One of things we have to do is to realise we are going through a massive transformation with TfL because of the cuts from the Government of the operating grant. We cannot do it without the great work of our staff, and I give huge credit to our staff who work incredibly hard.

Things like making it more affordable to use public transport is really important, freezing TfL fares, bringing the Hopper in. More than 450 million journeys on the Hopper; we think 250,000 a day using the Hopper. The previous Mayor gave up on the Night Tube, if you remember. He said it is too hard. We have brought in the Night Tube with five lines up and running and the Night Overground up and running; really important.

One of things I am proudest of is that we were told it is not possible to bring in the ULEZ when we wanted to do so in 2019. We have done so. The amount of compliant vehicles is now about 75%; that is really important. It was about 38% when I first announced plans for a ULEZ. Also, you will know this as a practising doctor. We have managed to reduce NOx in the ULEZ areas where there are monitors by about third, an immediate transformation of the quality there because of our policies.

Assembly Member Cooper referred to the Low Emission Bus Zones, originally planned for just 12 areas. We are now going to have by the end of September/October every single bus in London ULEZ compliant, which means the whole of London will be a Low Emission Bus Zone. Just imagine the difference that will make on your patients’ air quality, asthma, underdeveloped lungs, heart disease, cancer, dementia. We have improved not just public transport but the quality of health as a consequence of our policies whilst continuing to make it affordable at a time the Government has made massive cuts and also at the same time reducing strikes by 78%. It is a win-win-win-win-win. These are good examples of promises made and promises delivered.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: The other thing of course is this agreement between the train operators and the Government, which affects the fares set on Travelcard. I know that you have lived up to your promise, but you have been hampered by the fact that the train operators, which work with the Government do not.

What are you doing about that? What can the Government do to help you to deliver the promise that you made to Londoners?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): I will bring the Commissioner in on the issue of the train operating companies (TOCs). It is really frustrating because we have managed to on our services freeze TfL fares, whereas the private TOCs are making massive profits and have not. The Commissioner will explain some of the frustrations we have in relation to everyone benefiting from our fares freeze.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): Yes, you are quite right to raise that point because we are subject to a national agreement with the TOCs and therefore subject to the Government’s inflation-related fares policy insofar as it applies to joint tickets that apply to the TOCs and to TfL services.

It is interesting to note by the way the impact of the fares freeze when we saw the TOCs serving London and therefore on equivalent or proximate routes to TfL services. We did see a sharper decline in their ridership than we saw in TfL services. We estimate some 250 million public transport journeys are to have been generated by the fact that fares have been affordable for all Londoners. The contrast with the TOCs is quite interesting in that regard.

We have to do more work. We have had some commercial disputes with the TOCs and the Rail Delivery Group as well. Actually, we have had some real successes in winning some of those disputes with them, but it does not unfortunately impact on the wider issue that we are still constrained by, which is that the Mayor has the responsibility for setting the core TfL fares but where there is shared ticketing - for example, in the Travelcard - that is subject to the reality of where the national fares increase applies.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: I just want to talk about the upcoming Spending Review also. We continue to wait for the Government to hold a Spending Review to see what projects in London it will be funding. You have recently outlined what projects you are seeking Government support for. Can I first ask you about Crossrail 2? How can they help us to deliver that?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): Crossrail 2 is very important. I was interested to note comments from the Prime Minister when he was the Mayor of this city - and I am sure he holds the same view now - that the imperative of getting on with and delivering Crossrail to by delivering imaginative funding solutions that the Government could permit TfL to have access to is an absolute imperative. I can share the precise quote with Assembly Members, but I know that the Prime Minister has been a consistent advocate of Crossrail 2 when he was in the position of Mayor. I know the current Mayor of course is equally determined to pursue Crossrail 2. It is a real imperative to ensure that we provide relief at Waterloo Main Line Station, which is the busiest station in the UK, and it continues to suffer from congestion on a daily basis. If there are service challenges, which there have been recently, that is exacerbated still further.

Of course it is also important that we have secured funding options to critical schemes such as the Bakerloo line extension, such as the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) extension potentially to Thamesmead, schemes that in themselves generate a huge amount of opportunities for businesses and of course very importantly for decent affordable housing to be delivered for Londoners who need decently affordable houses, of course, as we well know.

I am very determined that we continue to work with the Government in this regard. The Department for Transport has said to us that our strategic guideline business case for Crossrail 2 - by the way, no project in the history of humankind has ever had so many strategic outline business cases created - is a real exemplar of a piece of work. I would give huge credit to Michèle Dix [CBE, Managing Director – Crossrail 2, TfL] in my team for her tenacity and resilience in that regard.

I don’t think anyone could logically say that delivering Crossrail 2 should be at the expense of the much needed real imperative of delivering critical transport schemes in the great northern cities, to connect the great northern cities and within the great northern cities of the country or cities more generally outside of London, but you cannot leave London to wither when the population continues to grow and when, of course, jobs and growth from investment in London are so important. As soon as next Tuesday I will be up in Goole in Humberside, visiting the site of the new factory that is being built as a direct result of Piccadilly line trains being provided to London. I hope that factory has a long future and not a very short one.

Dr Onkar Sahota AM: Can I turn to the West London Orbital? This scheme will enable the creation of 8,800 new homes and 23,000 new jobs and will reduce journey times on public transport across west London and northwest London. What discussions have you had with the Government over the funding for that scheme?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): That is something, again, that we have put in the mix of the general discussion. I should have added that to my list. You are quite right to pick me up on that. I should have added that into the list as well.

These orbital journeys are increasingly important. The success of the London Overground network, the North London Line, for example, where we have seen a nearly 300% increase in patronage since we took over responsibility for that route, running now 10 trains an hour in the peak hours with a turn-up-and-go metro-style service, compared to the occasional three trains an hour that were operating when the service was provided under the traditional franchise model. We recognise that these orbital routes and reopening critical connections such as the West London Orbital have a really important part to play. It may not get the headlines of massive new lines of route being constructed, but it is usually important to local communities and connecting communities with jobs, leisure activities, healthcare and everything else that we seek to deliver.

Joanne McCartney AM: I will start with the Mayor. It is about train devolution. You met with the Secretary of State [for Transport] last August [2019] and things went well, but I am just wondering what discussions have been had since then about devolving some of those other suburban rail lines to TfL?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): We have submitted a business case for the Great Northern Line post the review that was undertaken, and we are optimistic we will make some progress there. I wrote to the Secretary of State not too long ago in relation to his concerns. There was controversy around the northern franchise and that being brought back in and taken off the private company and, with the Southwestern, there were concerns around its viability. We wrote, after consulting the Commissioner and the Commissioner was happy for me to do so, offering to help the Government in relation to the running of that line. As far as I am aware, no response yet from the Secretary of State but we are willing to provide the expertise. As you remember, there originally was a deal for us to take over south, Southwestern and Southeastern commuter trains coming in, but then the previous Secretary of State decided to do a U-turn. We are more than happy to provide those services.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): Perhaps if I could add to that, it would be helpful. The Mayor is absolutely right. The first absolute priority is to get the Great Northern services transferred over. They would then become part of the London Overground network and those services operating out of Moorgate, for those who are not familiar with those lines of route. That is something we are very keen to pursue.

The other thing I would say is that our involvement and input into the Williams report, led by Keith Williams, who of course is a former TfL board member and well known to us, has been really at an extremely senior and high-powered level. Both the Deputy Mayor and I have met on a regular basis with Keith Williams. We await his report and I keep very close to the Government to see when that report will be issued, but it is no secret to suggest that the rail franchising situation insofar as it is currently constructed, particularly in the urban and suburban routes, which is most relevant for London commuters of course, is no longer fit for purpose and meets to be considered in a different way. I am encouraged by the signs I am getting with regard to the Keith Williams report that the TfL-style model is being considered as a result of that. That is a very important next stage and it may well give the leverage, if you like, for the Government then to work more actively with us on other routes.

Joanne McCartney AM: As a regular daily user, in fact, of the Great Northern Line, the service leaves a lot to be desired and many of my constituents would agree with me and so I am delighted that you have put in another strategic business case to take over that line. Do you have any indication about the timescales where a decision might be made?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): I am hoping we will get the decision quite soon. I am not honestly quite sure. I did raise it with the Permanent Secretary when I met her just a couple of

weeks ago, but I am not quite sure whether they are waiting for the Williams report to be produced and then that would become part of the overall announcement, but we will continue to push them in that regard.

Joanne McCartney AM: Good, and we will keep lobbying as well.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): Thank you.

Joanne McCartney AM: On the Southeastern franchise, do you have any news on that? That has now been brought back inhouse on 1 April [2020] and one would think that that would be one of the easiest to transfer to TfL.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): There are some complexities with the Southeastern route, to be honest, because it is a very integrated service operation with long-distance and short-distance services interacting with each other and the same trains operating on different routes at different times of the day. It is actually more complex than it might appear at first glance.

It also, to be fair to both Network Rail and the operator, is an area that has seen some improvement in the last few years in terms of service provision. It did have quite a challenging level of service more recently, but it is something we continue to look at. It is certainly one that we are, again, in the mix on considering but, again, that one definitely is material on the Williams report coming out and what that will recommend.

Navin Shah AM: Mr Mayor, I have questions on the ULEZ expansion. Before I ask that, I would like to thank you for your explanation on the Metropolitan line disruptions. Can you please make sure that from TfL or from your officers I have a clear explanation as to the causes for the disruption and what is being done urgently to overcome those issues?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Absolutely.

Navin Shah AM: Thank you. Moving on to the question itself, what are the benefits in terms of air pollution and associated health benefits of the introduction of the central London ULEZ having been brought forward to April 2019?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Firstly, thank you for your support. There are lots of Members of this Assembly who supported our action to bring it forward in April 2019. There were also many Members of this Assembly who were against us bringing it forward in April 2019.

If you compare and contrast when I first announced the ULEZ coming forward in 2019 versus the consequences a few months afterwards, we had, roughly speaking, 35% of vehicles compliant in 2017 when I first announced it. We have north of 70% of vehicles that are now compliant. The amount of non-compliant vehicles has gone down. Also, we have seen the improvement in NOx being emitted from road transport. The reduction has been around a third of NOx, a reduction in particulate matter and also a reduction in carbon as well. We have been really pleased by the ULEZ.

By the way, there were not the normal hiccups and bumps in the road you get when a new system begins. It is a massive new system. Because of the great work from TfL and also across the piece the GLA family - there were teams working in Coventry in the call centres - you will remember that the start had no hiccups, which is a good example of what can be delivered with good planning and preparation.

Navin Shah AM: Compliance in the Central Zone has so far been high at over 70%. How will you work to ensure that compliance in the expanded ULEZ is just as high and successful?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): This is the real prize. How can we before October 2021 make sure as many people as possible move over to vehicles that are ULEZ compliant? We are deliberately giving a lot of time for people to make the transition. We all know low-income families who may have bought diesel cars because they were encouraged to do so by experts and politicians 10 years ago, small businesses, charities. We have to give them time to move away from vehicles that are churning out NOx and particulate matter and also give them subsidy and assistance.

The Government has said no to a national diesel scrappage scheme, which I find infuriating. Notwithstanding that we are doing what we can from TfL, we have put aside almost £50 million to help low-income families, to help small businesses and to help charities make the transition away from the polluting diesel and petrol [vehicles] that could be non-ULEZ compliant to vehicles that are compliant. It is really important we help them, and I will continue to lobby the Government to give us some assistance towards a diesel scrappage scheme.

Navin Shah AM: What assessments have you made of the additional technology that is required to operate the expanded ULEZ? How will you ensure that it is all in place in good time? Do you have a timeframe for that as well?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): I will bring in the Commissioner. These are issues raised by Caroline Pidgeon [MBE AM], Siân Berry [AM] and Caroline Russell [AM] as well in relation to technology about ULEZ and I know they have taken a keen interest in this. I will bring the Commissioner in to answer that question because it is a live question.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): First of all, just to say to you that we of course are working very hard on this. It is our absolute priority to get this technology in place properly. As I said earlier on, it is a combination of ensuring that we have the right information available to motorists at the moment who have non-compliant vehicles and who will be potentially paying if they continue to operate in the way they have done, crossing the new boundary of the ULEZ. That is a combination of camera technology, which Assembly Member Pidgeon so eloquently asked me the question about. How do you ensure that is futureproofed in terms of its digital capability and its technology going forward were it to be required for some further process as well or some further issues as well? We will be doing that.

The conversation equally with the boroughs is really important here and I do want to re-emphasise that point, if I may, Deputy Chairman, through you because the discussions I have had with the boroughs have been extraordinarily pragmatic, really positive and really good. Of course they have some issues of concern for their local residents and local communities who potentially do have to cross the new boundary on a regular basis. It is a different type of boundary than the one we have seen for the Central Zone, but nonetheless that work is continuing.

I am very assured. I get regular updates from the team on the technology implementation and what we are doing on contracting the technology, as I said earlier on, and so we will continue to update the Assembly and the Transport Committee, I suspect, specifically as to that progress going forward.

Navin Shah AM: Yes, that is very helpful. Mr Mayor, you picked up the issue about a scrappage scheme affecting low-income families, etc, and you recently expanded the eligibility for the business scrappage scheme to support businesses with up to 50 employees. Will this increase take-up and how many additional businesses will benefit?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Thanks for that. In the first phase of the scrappage scheme, we were targeting and supporting microbusinesses. These are businesses that employ less than 10 people. We are now rolling it out to make more businesses eligible so that it is not just microbusinesses.

To give you an idea, the estimate that TfL had is that there are potentially an additional 30,000 businesses that could be eligible, and they own in the order of 120,000 older vehicles. The money has been set aside there for the London scrappage scheme and we are hoping that because we have made the eligibility easier and more people eligible, more businesses will apply. The key thing is not to wait until the middle of next year to apply and to do it now. We have deliberately, 20 months in advance, got this scheme going.

Clearly, if the Government was to have a national diesel scrappage scheme to supplement this, that would be really good. We will continue to lobby the Government because we realise that small businesses have small margins in relation to profit, just like low-income [households] have small margins in relation to disposable income. It is very difficult, often, to make the transition and we will make it as easy as possible.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): The changes have been well received, I should say, and really so far we have seen a boost in applications, as we would have expected. It seems to be being responded to very positively.

Tony Devenish AM: Mr Mayor, going back to Assembly Member Arnold’s question about tin-eared anti-customer service culture, in many ways the best question I have heard in the entire four years from this Assembly, I have a suggestion for you. Will you consider involving the retiring Deputy Chair and Chair of the Assembly in the recruitment of Mr Brown’s successor? We have to sort out customer services. It is a shocking set of customer services. TfL does many things well, but customer service is not one of them.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Let me just disentangle the two points there. One is the Commissioner’s successor and two is the issue of customer services. Look, the Chair quite eloquently articulated the frustrations that I hear from Members around this Chamber cross-party. This is not a party issue. On the issue of noise at night-time, I know Assembly Member Dismore, Assembly Member Arnold and others - and in fact you - have raised the issue of the noise at night-time and issues around when a complaint is made and how it is dealt with.

Rather than rebutting, I have to respond and reflect on that and take it away. Your question is meant in a good spirit of how we can improve the service we provide because these are not just people who have received a bad service. These are people who have received a bad service, raised it and then received further bad service by raising it, which is why the question was so well made. Can we go away and reflect upon that? Also, I will make sure I include the Deputy Mayor [for Transport] in relation to that.

Nicky Gavron AM: Before I ask my questions, which are about the bus service in outer London, I just want to place on record my congratulations to TfL for what it has achieved over the last 20 years. I can remember in the 1990s when we were looking at international ratings of London and it was considered the easiest major city in the world to get to and the most difficult to get around. In those 20 years we have seen no less really than a

bus revolution, a rail renaissance, the pushing of more walking and cycling and more laterally the phenomenal cleaning up of London’s air. I just want to congratulate you, Commissioner and Mayor, for your part in that.

Of course, it is still a work in progress and my questions are really about the outer London bus service and about that work in progress. London Councils has recently asked for a review of outer London bus services. Are you supporting that?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Yes, we are actually doing a number of reviews around outer London. The Commissioner used the phrase in answer to a question from Assembly Member Sahota on orbitals around journeys in outer London. What we know is that actually people in outer London do not just come to inner London. They also have journey patterns in other parts of London.

The Commissioner and his team have already undertaken some reviews in some parts of outer London and will carry on doing so. We have begun 11 new routes in outer London. Can the Commissioner explain some of the progress we have made?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): Just in headline terms, it is worth saying that four years ago we ran 676 bus routes in London. Today we run 676 bus routes in London. What we have sought to do is to respond to duplicative routes and respond to the reality of the bus Hopper, which the Mayor has already alluded to, which of course allows the interchange between routes much more effectively. We continue to operate a huge mileage on London’s bus network, in the order of 22.6 million miles in a four-weekly period.

Demand has been a challenge, although it is worth emphasising that demand on buses in London has been less of a challenge significantly than any other part of England, where of course in some cities we have seen a real falling off the cliff in bus demand including, for example, in somewhere like Sheffield where bus routes have been totally removed from many parts of the city. That is not an approach we are taking in London at all.

However, what we do need to do is increase bus usage in outer London it is a major part of the Mayor’s Transport Strategy and something that we really need to do to increase the mode share and to make public transport provision relevant to people to make those choices and to come out of their cars. I recognise that if you do not have a frequent, reliable bus route, then it is very difficult to make that argument to boroughs and communities in outer London, which we continue to do. The new routes in the last 12 months, including the very popular X140 from Heathrow to Harrow, an express service including Bexleyheath to Woolwich, including the 35 route, Kidbrooke to North Greenwich, serving of course new housing developments in those areas. There were six new routes we saw just last year [2019] and another one in January [2020], frequency extensions on 24 routes, extending a further two. All of these issues are a real demonstration of our continual commitment to London’s bus service, recognising that times change and it is important that we have a bus network in all of London that is fit for purpose for today and not based on some historical norms.

Nicky Gavron AM: Are you actually going to support London Councils wanting this review?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): I met with London Councils a few weeks ago and I said, yes, we of course will look at that. What we need to do is look at it almost area by area --

Nicky Gavron AM: I agree.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): -- to ensure there is proper provisions. It is sometimes easy - and indeed I have been asked by Members of this Assembly before - to look at borough by borough kilometrage of bus network. Londoners do not travel based on borough boundaries, as you well know. They travel based on the need to get to individual centres, jobs, leisure activities, families, friends, hospitals or anything else as part of their normal travel, and so --

Nicky Gavron AM: You are projecting an increase in outer London bus services over the next four years, yes?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): Yes, we are.

Nicky Gavron AM: I just want to say also that I know from the planning side that 61% of the housing that we are going to have over the next 10 or so years has to be in outer London. In the areas at Public Transport Accessibility Level (PTAL) 1 and 2, sometimes one household in four does not have a car, which means that there is quite a job to be done if we want that very ambitious modal shift, which I really applaud, getting people out of their cars and on to buses, walking and cycling.

What are you doing to diversify the bus offer?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): As one specific example, which is ongoing at the moment, is the two trials of demand-responsive buses that we have in place in Sutton and in Ealing. Those are two quite different parts of London but they share the fact that we believe - and the evidence is already emerging from Ealing, by the way, but I do not have the full results yet - that if you provide an on-demand bus service, which we have been doing in key parts of Ealing that have not been well served by buses before, you stimulate demand with the view then that you can add a formal route as a result of that testing of the market and encouraging people to use buses. It is getting the confidence for people, as I say, that there is that reliable route available to them. Particularly of course, when you get new housing developments, you get new communities emerging and new demand therefore being there. If you provide the supply of the services, you almost always get people using them, and so it is a very good point.

Unmesh Desai AM: Mr Mayor, we know that whilst crime per passenger remains low, there has been an upturn in crime levels across the TfL network over the past five years. What work is being planned to tackle this in the forthcoming year?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Thank you for your question. We are not complacent at all, but give you a context, for every 1 million passenger journeys, there are 10 reported crimes. I am not trivialising it, but context is important.

We at TfL invest in policing. We have officers and there is a hypothecation that takes place in the relevant team to make sure we get the officers we pay from the MPS. The British Transport Police (BTP) are doing a huge amount in relation to working with us as well.

We are also investing a huge amount in closed-circuit TV and investing a huge amount in relation to the new trains we are bringing onstream. We are also encouraging people to report it. One of the big campaigns we have had is to report the issue of sexual assaults particularly women and girls on public transport. We continue to invest and that is an issue we take very seriously.

Before we introduced the Night Tube and the Night Overground, we made sure in advance that we were ready for any potential antisocial behaviour or crime issues. We are not complacent at all.

Unmesh Desai AM: Thank you, Mr Mayor. I applaud what you are saying about not being complacent at all because, clearly, transport improvements go hand in hand with safety. People will not travel if they do not feel safe.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Absolutely.

Unmesh Desai AM: I am glad you made reference to sexual assaults because my follow-up question is about the increase in reporting of sexual offences in recent years, in part due to the success of Project Guardian and initiatives such as the Report It to Stop It advertising campaign.

Moving forward will you be carrying on this type of work and, if so, how to encourage further reporting of sexual offences on the TfL network?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): It is crucial and one of the reasons why I supported a change in the law in relation to making up-skirting a criminal offence is that I realised that if you are a girl or a woman your experience in our city is very different to the experience you and I have. We have to encourage people to report it to stop it. Staff have been trained, are extremely professional and take very seriously any reports made to them. They are also very good at chasing up any potential evidence, working closely with the police. We continue to make sure body-worn videos are rolled out to frontline staff. As well as - you will remember - the biggest rollout of any country or city in the world with our police officers, now we have staff who are wearing body-worn videos to try to secure the evidence to get convictions. We want these people arrested, charged, prosecuted and found guilty.

Unmesh Desai AM: Commissioner, TfL staff are often those most at risk of harm from violent passengers on the network and I note that you have said TfL will be funding 50 extra BTP officers along with body-worn videos being rolled out to all station staff. The Mayor has just made reference to that.

When can we expect the new officers to be in place and when will all station staff have access to body-worn video cameras?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): The police officers are being recruited as I speak. I met with the Chief Constable of the BTP a couple of weeks ago on this very issue. In addition to them and the body-worn cameras that now are being rolled out for availability to all members of staff who wish to have them across the frontline staff group, we are also recruiting 150 new transport support and enforcement officers, which is a new group of staff who will be able to target particular parts of the network where staff feel particularly vulnerable on the Tube network and at bus stations and at transport hubs. This is a new resource that we have never had before, and it is a real significant investment.

Of course, as well as making our frontline staff feel more safe and secure, it also of course contributes to passengers feeling more safe and secure because there are more people out there.

Unmesh Desai AM: My final question, Mr Mayor. Earlier you said you recognised the contribution that good trade unions can make. The Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA), I am aware, advocates an approach to assaults on staff similar to your Vision Zero strategy for reducing traffic accidents and deaths. Would you welcome this approach to having a Vision Zero?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Absolutely. It is unacceptable for any member of our staff to be abused or to be a victim of a crime, whether it is verbal or otherwise. We have a zero-tolerance action towards this. From the Commissioner down, we all think there should be zero tolerance towards this.

Tom Copley AM: Mr Mayor, you have made a very welcome pledge on London becoming a carbon-neutral city by 2030. Of course TfL will need to contribute to that and so I wonder if you could tell me what TfL is doing to make the most of opportunities to generate renewable energy.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): A great question. We have a huge amount of work in relation to our Solar Action Plan. We are working on a London Solar Opportunity Map. You will know. If you think about the amount of ‘real estate’ we have, the potential for solar panels on some of our roofs is huge. The challenge for TfL is to let us know what the viable sites are, and we can roll this out. The Commissioner will want to come back on that.

The second issue is that we are probably the biggest use of energy in our city and so we have a huge opportunity to use our purchasing power to make sure the grid is renewable and can help us in the transition towards zero carbon. That is aside from our policies in relation to the ULEZ, electric buses, electric taxis and all the rest of it, but it is a priority for the Deputy Mayor [for Transport] and the Commissioner has been fully signed up to this, as has his team.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): Yes, absolutely. In that regard, on the solar panels in particular, we have initially three sites, starting with the tram depot at Croydon where 1.1 megawatts of solar generation capacity is being proposed. Just to give that some context for that for those who are not familiar, 1 megawatt is the equivalent of the supply of the average power requirement for 2,000 homes for one hour and so it is not insignificant in terms of how that might be used rolling out still further.

Again, Assembly Members I am sure will have noticed this morning a press release that is coming out from Islington Council talking about the world’s first scheme using waste heat from the Tube to warm houses in that particular area, two leisure centres and a school in Islington from Northern line heat being reused to that effect. This revolutionary Bunhill 2 Energy Centre, the first of its kind in the world, is a further blueprint of how we continue to ensure that we make absolute progress in this regard.

There will be, I am delighted to say, in the TfL high-level scorecard for the next financial year starting on 1 April [2020] a very explicit carbon reduction measure at the top and at the forefront of that scorecard measure. We are doing a lot of work in this regard.

Tom Copley AM: Thanks, Mike. I was going to ask you about the Bunhill trial, actually, but could I ask you now about the waste heat recovery on Crossrail? Will this cover the whole underground section of Crossrail and have you conducted studies as to how many homes it will power when operational and how much carbon will be saved?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): This is a balance of priorities. I will be honest. The most pressing priority, as you will well know, is to get the Crossrail central section open, but there is an opportunity to ensure how we can reutilise energy for heat in that regard. It follows on, incidentally, from some of the technology we have been applying to some of the existing Tube lines in terms of regenerative braking processes to ensure that we save energy. We are also considering something called green communications-based train control (CBTC), which is a bit complicated, but it is about how you ensure that the operation of off-peak services on digital parts of the Tube network are less hard in terms of acceleration curves

and braking curves to therefore minimise energy expenditure. In all of these areas, we are looking in great detail at what we can do with regard to energy reutilisation.

I was saying just yesterday, to name-drop just a bit, to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales as we were on a bus together that I talked about the Euro VI buses but four years ago my team was telling me that it is impossible in our lifetime to imagine a fully electric double-decker bus that does not have a secondary diesel engine with systems powering the subsidiary elements of the bus. I was on one yesterday. There are 90 now in service across London with a further rollout emerging. This technology is so exciting and everyone in London will be supporting the initiatives that we are putting forward.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): The meeting is back with me and we move on to black cabs. The question is in the name of Assembly Member Kurten.

2020/0929 – Black Cabs David Kurten What are your plans for the future of the Black Cab trade?

David Kurten AM: My question to you is: what are your plans for the future of the black cab trade?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): London’s taxis are well known and well loved. They are a London icon and have for many years provided a reliable and trusted service to the city. Black cabs offer passengers both safety and convenience, playing a key role in providing accessible travel for all.

Under my mayoralty, taxis have been an important part of London’s transport offer. I made this clear both in my Transport Strategy and in my Taxi and Private Hire Action Plan published shortly after I was elected. I have taken a number of steps to help the taxi industry thrive. TfL has introduced mandatory card and contactless payment. I have ensured taxis can continue to access bus lanes, enabling taxi access to a further 18 lanes at key locations on its road network. TfL has also written to the boroughs requesting taxi access to bus lanes on the roads they control. I have increased the number of taxi ranks across London with the total increasing to around 600, an increase of 160 since 2015, and we continue to press local authorities for additional tank locations.

TfL is promoting the benefits of being a London taxi driver by raising the profile of The Knowledge and TfL has opened up a further 20 bus lanes to taxis on the TfL Road Network (TLRN), meaning that taxis can now access 95% of bus lanes on the TLRN, and 93% of all bus lanes across London.

The support of the taxi trade in tackling the toxic air crisis we are facing has been vital. London cabbies are at the vanguard of adopting zero-emission-capable vehicles with more than 3,200 new licensed and every new vehicle entering the fleet since January 2018 is now zero-emission-capable. We continue to contribute towards the £7,500 grant off the purchase of a new zero-emission-capable taxi and we have installed more than 232 rapid charging points across London with 73 of these dedicated to taxis only.

My track record of supporting the trade and its transformation to a modern environmentally sustainable part of our transport offer speaks for itself. I have checked what previous Mayors did for taxis and it is clear that I have had the most pro black taxi policies of any Mayor that has served our city.

David Kurten AM: OK. Mr Mayor, thank you for your answer about black taxis. I do agree with you that they are world renowned and the best taxi service in the world and they are a London icon and need to be looked after and I do acknowledge you have done some things for the taxi trade. You said there you are going to open up 18 more bus lanes and that is a very good thing. There is contactless payment, which is a good thing for customers and passengers.

However, there is one thing that you have done which has been quite devastating to the taxi trade and that is that you have reduced the maximum licence age from 15 years to 12 years and that has caused directly, I would say, a reduction in the fleet number. When you came into office, there were 21,700 taxi vehicles registered and now there are only 19,000. That is a reduction of 2,700 taxi vehicles in your four years. Before then, the taxi numbers were very stable. You need to rethink that policy, Mr Mayor, because the fleet is being devastated and there just are not enough vehicles coming off the production line for taxi drivers to purchase.

What are you going to do to help the taxi fleet numbers to be increased again so that taxi drivers can have a job and a taxi to drive?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Firstly, I am not sure of your analysis of cause and effect. The numbers of black taxis have been going down since 2008. You - for reasons that I understand - began your question with 2016 but they have been going down since 2008 for a variety of reasons --

David Kurten AM: Mr Mayor, I would say since 2008 they have gone down by 500. Since 2016 they have gone down by 2,700. The rate at which they are going down has accelerated tenfold since you have become Mayor.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): You will be aware because I know you like to give a complete picture that more and more drivers are now sharing taxis than was previously the case. We now have a situation where we have examples of two or three drivers and the same vehicle. Although there may be fewer vehicles in a global sense --

David Kurten AM: Mr Mayor, once again I would disagree because I am looking at TfL that I got off the website this morning. Since you became Mayor, the number of registered taxi drivers has gone down from 24,870 to 22,441 today, 2,400 fewer taxi drivers since you have become Mayor, but the number of taxi drivers has not gone down at all since 2008. That reduction has happened entirely on your watch and it was stable over the previous eight years.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): That is not the case. I have the figures from 2008. This has been a trade since 2008 that has been going down. You will be aware the reason why the change was made from 15 years to 12 years was because of the real crisis we have with the air quality. You will also beware that because we have cleaned up our buses, the other biggest factor in relation to the NOx and the particulate matter is our black taxis, which is why we have increased the subsidy to the black [taxis] and also made it attractive.

It is also not true, as you gave the impression, that the reason for people not moving to zero-emission-capable taxis is because of the delay in them being procured. Actually, there is not ostensibly a waiting list for people to get new zero-emission-capable taxis.

David Kurten AM: Mr Mayor, I do not agree with your synopsis. We can argue about figures. I have the figures from the TfL website this morning.

However, there is a problem and taxi drivers’ representatives tell me there is a problem. What you may not be aware of - I hope you are but you may not be - is that although about half of taxi drivers own their own vehicles, nearly half of them are owned by fleets and taxi drivers rent those vehicles on a day-by-day or week-by-week basis. The fleet operators tell me there just simply are not enough taxis coming off the taxi production lines to make up for the ones that they have had to decommission because you have reduced the age from 15 to 12 years. The number of taxis that fleets own is going down and that is a direct result of your policy.

I have spoken about it to you and to Commissioner Mike Brown about this many times and I have suggested, as has Assembly Member Prince, that the solution to this is to reinstate the Mercedes Vito as an approved taxi and that will mitigate the circumstances that have been created by your policy. Maybe it was unintended, but you need to recognise that there is a problem now and there is a solution. I am giving you the solution. It will not affect your ULEZ because the Mercedes Vito is Euro 6 diesel. You have allowed thousands of private hire vehicles to be registered - still do - that are Euro 6 ULEZ compliant. That is a solution to the problem. You now need to recognise the taxi trade is suffering and you need to act to mitigate this unintended consequence.

All the taxi drivers that I speak to understand this is what is happening and that is the solution. I am giving it to you. What do you say?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): If I may just come in on this, the Mercedes Vito as it applies to a taxi is not -- Euro 6 has subcategories of definition within it and, unfortunately, the Euro 6 Mercedes Vito does not meet the air quality compliance standards. It just does not.

David Kurten AM: Sorry, Commissioner, I would say --

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): I can give you the scientific evidence.

David Kurten AM: You still give private hire vehicles Euro 6. You still license them.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): It is different to the private hire vehicles. There is a different standard.

What I would say as well and the other thing that you did not point out in your question, if I may, and I just maybe support the Mayor in his answer here, is that of course there now is a choice of two types of vehicle. As well as the 3,200 zero-emission-capable taxis that have now been licensed, cabbies in the black cab trade now have a choice of a further vehicle that is now purely electric, which is the Nissan vehicle --

David Kurten AM: The Nissan Dynamo.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): -- the Nissan Dynamo, which I have seen and been in. From talking to the drivers, they are very positive and keen on it in this regard.

I would also assure you just so you know that in the last four or five years since I have been doing this job, I have of course met regularly with representatives of the taxi trade on a continual basis. We have had some very constructive dialogue with many of them, not with all but with many of them, and of course I listen to and understand their concerns in this regard. However, the Mayor’s Taxi and Private Hire Action Plan, of which we have achieved many of the outcomes and objectives, has made significant inroads. Of course black cabs will continue to and still do play a very important part in moving people around our city.

David Kurten AM: I do not have much time left. As I said before, I do recognise some of the things in the Taxi and Private Hire Action Plan have been implemented and they are good, but this is something that is causing serious problems because there just are not enough taxis around for the fleets to give out and so some taxi drivers do not have a vehicle to drive and the fleet numbers have gone down, as I said, by 2,700. That is a result of your policies and you do need to look at this. I would do something different if I were sitting in that chair and so we will see what happens, if we may.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): Assembly Member Kurten is out of time. We wish him well with his ambitions.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Some of us do, Chair. Some of us do not.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): We wish everybody well. You have heard of how impartial the Deputy [Chairman] and I are.

Keith Prince AM: First of all, Mr Mayor, thank you for attending the Haven House event last week. It was very gracious of you to come along to that.

Continuing on black cabs, one of the big issues of course is around The Knowledge and the massive drops we have seen in the number of black cab drivers doing The Knowledge. I have actually seen advertising for people to do The Knowledge, which is something I have never seen before. What can we do about that, Mr Mayor? What plan do you have to do about it?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): It is a serious concern. Thanks for raising it. You have been consistent in raising concerns, as has Assembly Member Kurten, around the black cabs and I am grateful for that.

TfL has been for some time working closely with the Office for Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual). We are trying to explore ways for TfL to gain accreditation for The Knowledge. We are also, by the way, separately promoting The Knowledge as well.

My understanding is - and the Commissioner can come in - that there are some changes required to The Knowledge for Ofqual to be satisfied. If you would not mind just for a moment letting the Commissioner add?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): Yes, that is true. It has become apparent that some of those would require quite significant changes to The Knowledge of London processes. It is not something that we have previously discussed and whether we would pursue that or not, but it is something that I will need to now forward with taxi trade representatives to see if that is something that would be worth considering.

Notwithstanding all of that, we do continue to promote The Knowledge and the How to Become a London Taxi Driver brochure, as you know, is out there. It includes successful case studies, very importantly because real examples are very important in this regard, of students from different backgrounds have gone through The Knowledge of London process. That brochure is available on our website.

Of course, there are also things like mandatory card and contactless payments, disability access and protection of the hailing process which is helping to ensure that the trade remains fit for the future. We are trying to do a number of things in proper consultation and dialogue with taxi trade representatives on this issue.

Keith Prince AM: There are more issues, but we do not have enough time, unfortunately. What I would just say to you, Mr Mayor - and with all due respect, Mike, you are leaving the business - will you ensure, Mr Mayor, that you do everything in your power to work with the taxi trade to ensure that we get accreditation for The Knowledge? It will become a qualification and it will have a much greater value. Otherwise it is something that is not a transferable skill.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): You make the point very well and I will continue to do what I can with the Deputy Mayor [for Transport] and the new Commissioner. Both you and Assembly Member Kurten have explained some of the challenges there are. One of the things we have to do is explain the benefits. I would not want anybody watching to be put off becoming a cabbie because there are concerns and there are challenges. When you speak to cabbies, a lot of them love their job and so, yes, I will continue to do what I can to promote the trade.

2020/0930 – TfL Inefficiency Keith Prince 4 years ago, in your manifesto, you claimed that TfL was “inefficient and flabby”. Can you name one piece of flab that you have cut?

Keith Prince AM: Mr Mayor, four years ago in your manifesto you claimed that TfL was inefficient and flabby. Can you name one piece of flab that you have cut?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): There are quite a few, Chair. When I was elected in 2016 --

Keith Prince AM: Can I just say, Mr Mayor? The question is can you name one piece of flab that you have cut, please?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): The answer is yes.

Keith Prince AM: If that is your answer, Mr Mayor, I will live with that. Thank you very much.

Mr Mayor, do you believe that all the flab is now gone, and that TfL is as efficient as it is going to get or is there still more flab to cut?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): No, there is still more we can do to make TfL even more efficient. I am really proud of the progress we have made over the last four years. For the first time in the history of TfL - and as we said in opening, it is now 20 years old - we have managed to reduce operating costs year on year, never done before I became Mayor. We have also gone from a position where we had a deficit of £1.5 billion when you include the operating grant when I first became Mayor to one that has taken £1 billion. It is £400 million or £500 million, and we are going to get to surplus in 2022.

There are more things we can do to increase efficiencies. One of the reasons why it is crucial to have good relations with those who work for us through their trade unions is because there is further transformation required. I am really pleased we have managed to reduce bonuses for the top team by almost half, a good example of the progress made and everyone sharing the burden, merging engineering, merging business support, and making sure we continue to get passengers using public transport. Freezing fares helps in

relation to our buses and the Hopper helps, but there is more we can do, and we will carry on trying to find the efficiencies wherever we can.

One of the things that this Commissioner has done is make sure to look everywhere possible to find those savings, at the same time trying to increase revenue streams where we can. One is obviously to try and save what you spend but also to try to increase what you bring in and so we are trying to do both those things.

Keith Prince AM: Thank you very much for that, Mr Mayor. Is it true that in your manifesto you said:

“My plans to freeze transport fares will be funded by making TfL a more efficient and profitable operation, not by cuts to spending on better services and more capacity.”

Is that true?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): We have done that. You can see the benefits of the efficiencies not just in relation to the fares frozen, but we have actually made more savings than the amount spent on the fares freeze. As I said, the deficit was £1.5 billion when I became Mayor. It is down by more than £1 billion since then. That begs the question did the fares freeze cost £1 billion? No, it cost far less than that. The efficiencies have paid not just for the fares freeze but far more, which you see across us filling in in relation to the costs in relation to Crossrail, the operating grant being lost, £700 million on average a year, changes in people’s travel habits because of how they do their leisure, whether it is Netflix or whether it is staying with Deliveroo and other comparable deliverers of food and other things as well. There are other examples of some of the fruits of efficiency, not just the fares freeze.

Keith Prince AM: Mr Mayor, when you scrapped the plans to purchase 27 trains for the Northern and Jubilee lines, was that not a cut spending on better services and more capacity?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): It is worth just explaining two things. One is that one of the reasons why sometimes we do not buy trains that we originally planned to do so is because our maintenance has improved so much that there is no need to buy a train if it is working very well. I will give you an example. If you have a car and you are servicing it regularly and doing MOTs and doing more service, the fact that you four years ago planned to buy a new car, you are not going to buy a new car if the car is working well.

On the Northern line we have seen huge improvements. There is now an extended rush hour service, which helps more and more passengers --

Keith Prince AM: The Jubilee line has not, though, has it? We still have queues of people trying to get onto the platform, let alone on a train, in certain Jubilee stations. You accept that, do you not, Mr Mayor? You have accepted that in the past.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): One of the things that will help the Jubilee line is when the Elizabeth line opens up. You will appreciate that a lot of those currently using the Jubilee line, particularly in the east section, will have somewhere else they can go to. That is one of the reasons why we are keen - aside from the obvious other issues - for the Elizabeth line to open up as soon as possible. In relation to investment, which you referred to, one of the big reasons we have had to --

Keith Prince AM: Mr Mayor, on that point, you did give me an assurance quite a few months ago that people would not be queuing to get on the platforms on the Jubilee line because you would improve the

efficiency through better timetabling and better technology. You did give me that assurance, did you not, Mr Mayor, but you have not delivered on that, have you?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): I will let the Commissioner talk in a moment about some of the improvements made on the Jubilee line but, as I said to you, the Jubilee line will be transformed when the Elizabeth line opens because it will free up capacity, but we have made improvements --

Keith Prince AM: I do not argue with that, but you gave me an assurance, Mr Mayor, that you have not kept.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): As somebody who used the Jubilee line very recently, it is a much-improved service to what it was when I became Mayor and the Commissioner can explain some of the progress we have made.

Keith Prince AM: Can I ask the Commissioner a question?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): The Assembly Member does not want to hear about the improvements made.

Keith Prince AM: Can I ask the Commissioner a question, please. Mr Brown, what do you think would be the benefit of upgrading Holborn and Camden Town Stations?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): They are projects that I would seek to do, again, a bit like the Piccadilly line signalling, if I had certainty of capital funding going forward, but these are long-term projects a bit like the fantastic work that we are seeing at the moment going on at Bank Monument Station to increase capacity there. These are long-term projects. The work that is required at Camden to give proper step-free access, for example, between the two Northern line branches a very important piece of work. It is one that I would wish to go ahead with. The work at Holborn would be very important particularly in the event of Piccadilly line signalling funding being secured going forward. These things are all linked. These are major capital schemes that require a certainty of capital funding going forward from the Government to allow the letting of contracts in that regard.

Keith Prince AM: In regard to Holborn and Camden Town, Commissioner, that was planned to be upgraded and then that plan was put back. Why was that?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): Because we did not get the certainty of funding from central Government. It is quite clear to me that if I do not have the certainty of capital spend and of devolution of business rates to the Mayor and therefore the pass-through to TfL, I cannot in good faith allow us to enter into a contract when I do not have certainty of funding.

Keith Prince AM: How much funding would have been required for the Holborn and Camden Town upgrade, Mr Brown?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): It would have been more than we have the ability to commit to going forward in time. It is an important priority but my assessment - and this was endorsed by the Mayor and the TfL Board - is that actually it is very important to continue your commitments you have made under existing contracts such as resignalling the Metropolitan and Circle lines, such as

continuing with Bank Monument Station, such as the Northern Line extension, such as Barking Riverside, such as the other schemes that we are delivering now.

Keith Prince AM: How much funding would have been required to purchase the 27 trains for the Northern and Jubilee lines? Do you know that?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): I can give you the exact figure. I do not have it immediately to hand here, but the point is --

Keith Prince AM: Do you have a ballpark figure in mind, by any chance?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): The point is, Chair --

Keith Prince AM: Commissioner, would you agree that if you had an extra £150 million of revenue every year, you would have been able to afford some of these projects that you have had to stall because you would have been able to generate 10 times that amount of capital investment?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): I would say that if there was a logical provision of how much TfL was able to borrow on the market given its asset base having increased with, for example, the delivery of the Crossrail tunnel and if there were more imaginative arrangements possible from her Majesty’s Treasury and from central Government, we would be able to enter into longer-term contracts to increase the capital spend on TfL services.

Keith Prince AM: A simple question, Commissioner: would you agree that had you an extra £150 million worth of revenue, you would have been able to afford to do those schemes?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): That is revenue and that would not cover the cost of the Jubilee line trains.

Keith Prince AM: I have already explained to you, Commissioner - and you and I have been around local government too many decades to want to remember - you can use revenue to fund capital borrowing.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): Yes, we can but --

Keith Prince AM: You could have borrowed the money on the surety of that revenue.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): No, our borrowing is hugely constrained and the payback by which you can enter into a commercial agreement with a supplier for those trains is far too long term to enable you to do that. The logic of what you have said is precisely the logic --

Keith Prince AM: Not at all, no. If you have --

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): Assembly Member Prince, you will let the Commissioner finish.

Keith Prince AM: No, I will when he answers the question.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): It is not Tony [Arbour AM, Deputy Chairman] chairing now, Keith. It is a proper Chair.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): No, excuse me.

Keith Prince AM: Mr Mayor, please.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): No, can we just get a complete answer from the Commissioner?

Keith Prince AM: You should be pleased that I am having this lovely conversation with you --

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): Assembly Member Prince, please.

Keith Prince AM: What?

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): Can you just be mindful of the Chair? I am speaking.

Keith Prince AM: Of course, Chair. You know I worship you, Chair.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): Commissioner, can you just finish that question so that we can move on? It is of interest to everybody here.

Keith Prince AM: The point is he is using the wrong point, you see. Can I just make the point? The point is that that £150 million worth of revenue is ongoing revenue and so it is secure revenue, Mr Brown. You could use that £150 million for one year but, if you are borrowing over a 10-year period, you would have that revenue stream over that period. I get the point you were trying to make, but I am not saying one year of £150 million of revenue. I am saying an ongoing amount of revenue.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): What I was seeking to say in the answer in that regard is your logic is without flaw --

Keith Prince AM: Thank you.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): -- and I absolutely bow to your logic. However, the reality is that our ability to borrow for capital spend is artificially constrained regardless of our revenue stream or asset base. It is constrained in a way that is applied by Treasury rules. We are working very hard with Treasury. I have been working recently very hard with Canary Wharf, for example, on what other imaginative ways we could to further enhance capacity on the Jubilee line. I will continue to explore with you or anyone else any such options that are available.

However, I can assure you I have a very competent, capable finance team, as the Mayor said, which has taken £1 billion out of our operating spend in the last four years and I can assure you they have explored every possible option to do things as imaginatively as possible.

Keith Prince AM: I am going to finish on this because I want to give time to my colleagues, but is it not the case, Mr Brown, that had we not had partial fares freeze that the Mayor currently has invoked, we would have had that £150 million a year revenue?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): If we had not had the partial fares freeze, we would not have allowed the transport network to be accessible to Londoners as broadly as it has been.

Keith Prince AM: A very simple yes or no question: without that partial fares freeze - I must correct myself - we would have had the £150 million in revenue. Is that the case?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): I believe that actually, as I said earlier on, the stimulation of 250 million journeys --

Keith Prince AM: Did you not advise the Mayor that making that fares freeze would cost him £150 million worth of revenue?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): Look, I have answered the question, Chair.

Keith Prince AM: You have not but, anyway, that is fine. I am happy with that.

Susan Hall AM: Mr Mayor, there is real growing local support and a very positive campaign from the splendid Elliot Colburn MP [for Carshalton and Wallington]. Will you start to seriously consider the extension of the Overground from West Croydon to Sutton?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): The Overground?

Susan Hall AM: Yes. There are lines already there, apparently. It would be quite easy. Locals are desperate for more trains in that area. Elliot has been knocking on doors, as you would expect, and there is massive support. Can you look into it for us?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Can I pass over to the Commissioner to answer that particular question?

Susan Hall AM: As long as he says yes.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): I, of course, would expand the Overground to Edinburgh if I could. I would absolutely expand it anywhere --

Susan Hall AM: No, that will not help London. Just Croydon to Sutton.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): -- but, if I may, it is Network Rail infrastructure. Without being flippant about this, it is entirely an issue that is dependent on the discussions, given the earlier discussion around the Williams review and what happens there, but of course I would look favourably on such an option going forward. I would welcome it hugely.

Susan Hall AM: For that, we are very grateful. This is for you, actually, Mike, if I may. I wrote to you earlier in January [2020] asking for information on when TfL will be removing the various posters and promotions that feature the Mayor’s name, stressing the importance of doing as such before the pre-election period. The reply I received said:

“Steps are being taken to ensure that our marketing and advertising campaigns that are due to run into or through the pre-election period will not include reference to any individual by name who is standing for election.”

Can you tell me what steps you are taking to make sure that you are getting there?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): Precisely that. As ever, I take advice from my general counsel on these issues and we have absolutely responded to your helpful letter in that regard and we are doing just that. We will be ensuring that insofar as is humanly possible all such references are not in place in the pre-election period.

Susan Hall AM: How are you doing that? Do you have a list of where all these posters of the Mayor are?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): I confess that I have many things in my in-tray and a list of where all the posters are on the Tube network is not at the top of my list of in-tray issues but --

Susan Hall AM: No, that would be ridiculous, but it would not be ridiculous for TfL to have them. I was really assuming, as head of the organisation --

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): All I can do is assure you that I have asked the team to make absolutely sure insofar as it is humanly possible - and I am not trying to be difficult here - that these posters are not on display in the pre-election period and I continue to ask that question and that is standard good practice that we have applied in every pre-election period throughout TfL’s history.

Susan Hall AM: Perhaps give me a bit more confidence. Somebody within the organisation then knows exactly which adverts are where, do they?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): I assume somebody has a view either station by station or location by location, yes.

Susan Hall AM: Can you then please write to me as soon as possible, giving me a list of exactly where all of the posters, etc, that I mentioned in there are so that we can keep a beady eye to make sure that we help you out in that respect?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): I will assess what is practically possible in that regard, of course.

Susan Hall AM: That is good, Mr Mayor. Can you tell me why the adverts that are going up for the People’s Question Time simply contain pictures of you and not this wonderful Assembly?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): That is not quite right, is it, Chair? I have seen posters with some incredibly good-looking Members of the Assembly when I go about my business and I have made sure that I vomit into my tissue. I am only joking. That is not the case. You know it is not the case.

Susan Hall AM: That is very unpleasant, Mr Mayor.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): You know it is not the case.

Susan Hall AM: No. I know it is the case --

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Why do you want to mislead people? Come on. You are better than that.

Susan Hall AM: No, somebody came to me this morning and --

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Do not clip it and put it in a tweet. That is beneath you.

Susan Hall AM: No, it is not. I will tweet anything --

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): We know it is not beneath you. We know very well it is not beneath you. You have form, do you not?

Susan Hall AM: -- especially, Mr Mayor, when you are being ridiculous.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): You have form, do you not?

Susan Hall AM: I take great delight in as many tweets as possible, my point being - and I am quite happy to tweet this if you like - you mentioning this --

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): The Member who misleads, Susan Hall.

Susan Hall AM: Can you tell me again? If somebody saw one - in fact, my colleague saw a picture of you beaming out at him, as you do - without any pictures of the very handsome Members of our Assembly here and bearing in mind it is a People’s Question Time for the Mayor and the Assembly --

Tom Copley AM: I often see posters of the Assembly.

Susan Hall AM: -- can you explain to me why you feel that there is no necessity to put the Assembly on the same poster?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Chair, can I just reassure you that I have lots and lots of things to be doing; one of them is not dictating which posters go where. I appreciate that the Assembly Member may have not many other things to do and she is probably going around the Tube stations trying to spot these posters. If she finds any that she wants swapped around, I am sure Mike and his team will look at her request favourably.

Susan Hall AM: I am not going to have to, you see. You cannot have listened to Mr Brown. He is going to send me a list, very helpfully, of where all of your posters are so that colleagues can help me make sure that they are all taken down pre-election.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Chair, members of the gallery watching this discussion will think, “Geez”.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): Assembly Member Hall?

Susan Hall AM: Unfortunately, there are not many people in the Assembly watching, unlike when Boris [Johnson MP] was the Mayor and you could not get a seat for love nor money. That should tell us something, Mr Mayor.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Where is he hiding today?

Susan Hall AM: Thank you, Chair.

Female Speaker: Actually, in Number 10.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): Can I just on behalf of the Assembly just make it factually clear that the watchability of the Assembly has increased tenfold in the last eight months and it is all to do with the work that the Assembly Members are doing.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Some of them, Chair.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): Just a bit more information: I was at Baker Street and saw a poster of all my colleagues there. It might have been one from last year - I do not know - but then I -- Tony Arbour AM (Deputy Chairman): The one at Southwark is just here.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): Go to Baker Street if you want to see yourself in a poster. That is all I can say to you.

Susan Hall AM: I just do not want to see the Mayor.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): Let us move on. The next question is in the name of Assembly Member Russell on cutting traffic in London.

2020/0931 – Cutting traffic in London Caroline Russell What progress have you made in cutting traffic in this term?

Caroline Russell AM: My question is what progress have you made in cutting traffic in this town?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Thank you for your question. Throughout my term, I have championed a fundamental change to the way people choose to move around London. As Mayor, my strategy has been focused on encouraging more people to walk, cycle and use public transport rather than driving. Fewer car journeys in our city will lead to improved air quality, reduced carbon emissions, safer streets and better health outcomes for millions of Londoners. This focus has successfully removed the equivalent of 2.9 million private vehicle trips from London’s roads each day. Last week I was proud to announce that we have tripled the amount of protected cycle space for cycling, making it safer and more convenient for Londoners across our city to cycle as part of their everyday routine.

Recent data suggests that as a consequence of our policies, we are making huge progress here, but you will also beware that private hire vehicles account for over 40% of car traffic at certain times in central London. To start to address this, last year I removed the Congestion Charge exemption for private hire vehicles.

Chair, I want to give the Assembly Member a chance to ask further questions and so I can write to her with a fuller answer to give her a chance.

Caroline Russell AM: Thank you. The question was what progress have you made in cutting traffic in this term? While in central London quite a bit of progress has been made on cutting traffic - it is gone down

almost 9% - if you take Greater London as a whole, traffic has gone up by 1.3% and in outer London it has gone up by 1.9%. There clearly much more than the central London ULEZ area to deal with when it comes to cutting traffic.

Mike, in the Mayor’s 2018 Transport Strategy, he committed to investigate proposals for the next generation of road user charging systems that could replace schemes such as the Congestion Charge, Low Emission Zone and ULEZ. Mike, how far have you got with that investigation into smart, fair road pricing?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): Chair, through you, if I may, this is again in answer to Assembly Member Pidgeon’s question earlier on, which was around how we futureproof the technology that we are applying for policies that have already been approved and agreed such as the expansion of the ULEZ to the North and South Circular roads. It is to ensure that, that technology is capable to flex should there be some further interventions that we might want to use those provisions for going forward. That has really being the focus of our attention to ensure that we practically deliver on what we have committed to delivering already such as the ULEZ but we do futureproof this technology in a way that it is flexible and fit for further use should it be required.

Caroline Russell AM: Would it be fair to say that you would be willing to do more practical development on a smart, fair, privacy-friendly road pricing scheme but that you have been waiting for political direction from the Mayor?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): No, that would not be fair. We have had some very useful dialogue in this regard. The last four years have seen a huge step change in the promotion of walking, cycling and public transport. The Mayor referred earlier on to the creation of a Walking and Cycling Commissioner for London, the first time that all-encompassing role has been in place. I have to say the collaboration and the work that we have done with Will Norman [Walking and Cycling Commissioner] has been extraordinary in that regard and so this is not around a lack of political will. This is around a lack of practicality and --

Caroline Russell AM: This is very specifically about road pricing.

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): I know, and I am just saying that there has not been any sense that we have been held back as a result of any political decisions. We have had some very good dialogue and of course the work that we are doing more broadly in promoting public transport in outer London is part of all of this. There is a coherent approach to traffic levels, car ownership and use in outer London.

Caroline Russell AM: Mr Mayor, we have had the Centre for London report on how smart, fair road pricing would work and countless other reports. Why have you not shown more leadership on this? Why have you not pushed it forward?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Perhaps the Member can share with us which major cities do this.

Caroline Russell AM: What, right now?

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Just name five cities, yes, any five.

Caroline Russell AM: London should be leading, not --

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): That is why I am sure you will put on record your congratulations for having the world’s first ULEZ, which --

Caroline Russell AM: Absolutely. Your ULEZ is fantastic, but that is dealing with the very centre at the moment.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): -- just in the first few months has reduced NOx by a third and which we intend to roll out if I am elected, which is no certainty.

Keith Prince AM: A big if.

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): Exactly, a big if. This is a two-horse race where either of the two candidates can win and --

Caroline Russell AM: You are stepping across a line. Chair, is this not getting into electoral stuff? We are meant to be focusing on --

Sadiq Khan (Chair, Transport for London): The point I was making in a mischievous way - and I apologise - was that you have to give credit for the progress we have made in relation to the ULEZ, in relation to trebling the protected cycle space, in relation to expanding the ULEZ going forward, a big risk with challenges, but also to accept that actually nowhere around the world is doing half the stuff we are doing let alone some of the stuff you are suggesting.

Caroline Russell AM: I am going to use the last of my time for a question for Mike. Do you think it is time for a woman to be in charge of TfL?

Mike Brown MVO (Commissioner of Transport for London): I would absolutely love for there to be a woman in charge of TfL. I have found that having powerful senior women around my table such as Michèle Dix [CBE, Managing Director – Crossrail 2, TfL] and Tricia Wright [Chief People Officer, TfL], having a much more diverse senior management team overall in TfL in the last few years has totally changed the quality of the debate and the calibre of the debate. I absolutely welcome having a proper senior leadership that reflects the great diversity of this most wonderful city on earth.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): OK. That is it. All the groups have used up their time. . I will just say thank you to the Mayor and thank you to Mike Brown for answering the questions here today and once again for his service to Londoners. That brings us to the end of Part A.