Heavy duty Transport Committee meeting which I chair. We had Transport for London, Ealing Council and a couple of learned professors to answer our questions arising from our trip along the route of the West London Tram and from the evidence we had taken from local people and groups.

Whether we will be able to get a consensus on the committee for our report – who knows. I would like to think it possible – if we stick to evidence-based recommendations rather than political rant.

The second half of the session was devoted to the future of rail in London. Fairly gloomy would be my judgement. The Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) and Network Rail were our witnesses. Didn’t sense any great shift in ATOC’s position – other than they have learned to talk using the right words. Whether this has a flying chance of translating into more services for us poor Londoners…?

But the real excitement was a two second item as the committee agreed the terms of reference for a scrutiny on parking enforcement in London. With a couple of amendments this went through – and all media hell broke loose.

With all the reports in the press of unfairness, wayward clampers, overzealous wardens etc, it seems to me a good idea to look at what the truth is – are the reports accurate or exaggerated?

Needless to say the boroughs are concerned that we are looking into their business (and a very good business as far as I can tell) and I haven’t heard what Transport for London (TfL) think yet. But what I do know, is that if enforcement has become ‘unfair’ then ordinary, decent folk start feeling angry and upset that life is becoming impossible – and unfairly so.

And many people who use public transport whenever they can – still at times use a car for journeys that are not covered or possible by public transport. And other journeys are really necessary for the disabled and other vulnerable people.

If parking regulations and enforcement are about resolving traffic problems and keeping proper flows and rationing scarce space – that’s great and quite right that money raised from them should be spent on improving traffic and transport in that borough. However if things have gone too far and this has turned into simple revenue raising – it is not alright.

Admittedly, boroughs have an incentive to bring in parking revenue as it is virtually their one funding stream that Gordon Brown and the Treasury cannot nick back. Other profit that a council might make is then deducted from their normal grant from Government – which may be the source of some of these issues.

But we are also looking at the plethora of times and signage, etc, that confuse residents as they pick their way through the minefield as well. No-one is as well-placed as the boroughs to design their own schemes to suit local needs and local people. However, just as we did with trying to look at the myriad of different boroughs approaches to Blue Badge holders – so we hope to be able to help flag up some issues for the boroughs to then hopefully work on.