Speeches by Mayer.

“Is this all predicated upon goodwill or are everyone’s incentives aligned enough to achieve good transport outcomes?”

“Is there a danger that you just end up with the lowest common denominator?”

“We heard very much from the last panel that strategic powers were going to mayoral strategic authorities—as they now are—but that they are not delivery bodies. Do you think that is an issue? Obviously, you could have mayoral development corporations tagged on, but do we need to get delivery powers at a regional level t…”

“Let us assume I want to achieve transport integration. What should I be measuring?”

“How should we measure and put a value on transport integration? Can you give a couple of practical examples of what we are already measuring that makes sense, and what we should be measuring that would be helpful?”

“Who should I be chucking out?”

“If I am a voter and I think that the transport in my area is rubbish and badly integrated, who do I vote out of office?”

“Integrating transport and aligning it with spatial planning and development involves bringing lots of people and organisations—both public and private—together. Whose job is it to be the leader in this and do they have enough powers?”

“Can you put the price up when the facilities are better?”

“You just said that there was no incentive, in effect, to invest because everything is full already. If facilities are better, can you not charge more and therefore the investor might make a return?”

“Lots of letters are late. One that stood out to me, which a constituent raised, was a parking fine that had almost doubled in price by the time it arrived. Locally, the Royal Mail tells me that it is recruiting 12 new postal workers, but if that does not fix the problem, what should we try next?”

“It was very largely the same point, in the sense that I cannot see what is in it for a local authority. I understand what is in it for the driver and the national economy. Perhaps you can see what is in it for the local authority, but if you cannot, perhaps it needs to be taken away from the local authority.”

“Do lorry drivers ever pre-book their spaces or is it all turn up and pay and display?”

“Maybe they could be incentivised.”

“Young coach drivers are severely limited in the distances they are allowed to drive. Trying to get to London from your constituency, Madam Deputy Speaker, they would only make it as far as Sheffield. The Government have recently closed a consultation on this issue. Could the Leader of the House let us know when we will…”

“I recently ran a survey in a local school and asked the children what they thought they would be doing if they were not spending as much time on smartphones. About a third of them said they thought they would be reading more if they were on social media less, so I am really pleased that the Government are running a con…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I want to put it on the record that Paddington is my favourite bear, and I have a large poster of Paddington in Westminster in my office, so I do not want people to get the wrong end of the stick and think he is only liked by certain other parties. In the ea…”

“Do Government need to have a policy specifically for the coach industry, to perhaps suggest what kind of vehicles it might have or to try to work out where some of this high-powered charging at service stations for their 50-odd passengers should be?”

“I take slight issue with that, in the sense that buses obviously have fixed routes; coaches tend to do various different journeys, so there is a difference between bus and coach infrastructure.”

“It would appear that in continental Europe it is going to be fine to drive from Germany to Switzerland, and yet driving between Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire might well be different.”