Question: Congestion charging has reduced London traffic by 16 per cent - are you still against the policy in principle?

Tim Collins: Well, the figures remain slightly ambiguous because of course you say that it's reduced London traffic.

At best it may have reduced traffic within the zone, there's quite a lot of evidence that traffic outside the zone has if anything got worse, and Trafficmaster figures indicate that I think on all 10 of the major routes they've measured from outer London into the centre have actually seen travel times go up.

So the evidence on congestion itself, if you look outside the zone across London as a whole is at best mixed and Transport for London themselves say, sensibly so, we should wait for a full 12 month cycle before we can reach final conclusions about that.

What is however clear is that there has been substantial damage done to the retail economy in the centre of London: the local chamber of commerce are extremely agitated and the basic fundamental unfairness of charging the millionaire the same as the student has not been addressed so, yes, the Conservatives do remain opposed to the congestion charge as it has been applied in London.

Question: Under what conditions would you support road tolls? Alistair Darling has indicated that road taxes could be reduced or scrapped in favour of a pricing scheme.

Tim Collins: Well, the first thing to note is that we have said that we would be interested in exploring the possibility of road tolling to pay for major improvements in roads infrastructure - in other words, charging motorists to gain access to a new road or a new bridge or something like that.

We did that when we were in government with the Dartford crossing, we started the process, which the present government has continued to do, that in the context of the new Northern relief road on the M6.

Those are the sort of things which seem reasonable to expect for motorists to help to pay for, and all the evidence from the motoring organisations and otherwise is that motorists are prepared to do that. Where we are much, much more cautious is with the idea that Alistair Darling has floated that you should have a comprehensive system of road pricing, charging people for using all roads at all times.

And I think, really, motorists would deeply resent being asked to pay extra for using roads for which, of course, they have already paid many times over.

And you say that Alistair Darling has hinted, indeed he has only hinted, that the government are looking at a scheme that would be offset by cutbacks in other motoring taxes - there is no guarantee of that, he didn't specifically commit himself to that in his House of Commons statement, we have no pledge from the Treasury that they would look at reducing other taxes as part of this.

And a number of people, such as the Guardian, for example, have said that road pricing should be on top of existing motoring taxes rather than instead of them. So I think most people, given this government's track record on tax, will take with a pinch of salt the idea that it would not be an extra supplementary tax.

Question: Your party has welcomed the recent statement on road expansions, but described it as being belated. What was missing from Alistair Darling's statement that you would like to see?

Tim Collins: Well, what we said was it was too little, too late. It's obviously too late because many of the programmes that he announced are actually projects which the Labour party inherited in 1997 and axed in 1998 so we've had, however you look at it, five or six wasted years.

The reason it's too little, I'm afraid, is that even with this road building programme it's still one of the smallest road building programmes in Western Europe, and even after it's completed, we will still have very substantially fewer miles of motorway in this country either by area or by head of population, than any other major EU economy.

And I think what is therefore necessary is for us to think very carefully whether we believe in this country, as uniquely in Europe, that the road structure with which we ended the 20th century is going to be adequate for the needs if the 21st.

I don't believe it will be and while that doesn't mean that one can authorise every road project that everybody ever conceives of - you've got to balance out economic and environmental considerations as well, of course - I do think we needed a much clearer lead from the government that they do recognise that we do have a responsibility as a nation to give our businesses and our motorists a modern road network, not one which effectively was frozen by the 1990s, which is proving increasingly inadequate for the needs for today.

Question: How would you like to see them paid for, if not through higher taxation?

Tim Collins: That is actually partially covered by my answer to the previous question.

Yes, we'd certainly look at road tolling for major infrastructure improvements.

We also, of course, recognise that motorists are getting a pretty raw deal at the moment. The amount that is being raised in motoring taxes has grown very, very substantially, it's grown from something like £32billion a year in 1997 to £45billion this year and its due to grow even further in coming years.

But the proportion of that money that's spent on roads has actually steadily declined in that period, and again that is something that we would want to explore to see whether it might be reasonable to get some additional funding from that source.

Question: Alistair Darling has recently also been appointed Scotland secretary - have you seen any changes in his handling of the transport brief since the reshuffle?

Tim Collins: Well, there's no doubt that he has got an extremely onerous task now, and I remain opposed to the idea of doubling up a role as important as transport secretary with any other cabinet role, whether its Scottish or otherwise.

Alistair is a very hard-working, he's a very diligent individual, and of course he hasn't failed to turn up in the House of Commons on any occasions that he should have done, but there have been a couple of reports that he wasn't able to be present at the opening of a new road project in Yorkshire, for example, because he had commitments in Scotland.

And with the best will in the world, however hard you work you can't be in two places at once. And every moment that he is spending on Scottish Office business, which includes negotiating with the Treasury for the overall financial settlement for Scotland, and includes appearing before Scottish select committees, answering Scottish questions in the House of Commons, appearing on the Scottish media - every minute he is doing that he's obviously not able to focus on the transport issues.

Question: You have called for a slimming down of the Strategic Rail Authority due to its being to interfering - would you make the same argument regarding the recent case of Connex, whose licence was taken away?

Tim Collins: Well, I think what's going to be quite interesting with Connex is whether it turns out to be something similar to Railtrack.

When Railtrack was wound up by the government, there were very few people who shed many tears over it, but of course it consequently turned out that what was put in place afterwards - first the period of administration and now Network Rail - has proven to be even worse.

We will wait and see whether what replaces Connex is better or worse than what was there before. There are already some quite discouraging pieces of evidence coming forward; there was very little planning as to what should take place once Connex went.

Many of the key senior managers of Connex have already departed, there is an indefinite period of interim administration, there is lack of clarity as to who and when is going to take over the new franchise from Connex.

And while I have no brief for arguing that Connex was in any sense either perfect or even acceptable, I do think that the SRA probably should have done more work to analyse what they were going to put in its place.

And if we end up - as we did in the case of Railtrack transform it to Network Rail, its something that's actually worse than what was there before - I don't think anybody's going to thank them for the decision they took.

Question: What measures do you think a reformed Strategic Rail Authority should have at its disposal to discipline failing rail companies?

Tim Collins: Well, what we've demonstrated, ironically, in the case of Connex, is that it is not necessary to have short train franchises for the SRA, if it feels sufficiently strongly, to step in and take over responsibility itself or take responsibility away from existing franchise holder.

One of the reasons we want to change the SRA presumption away from short franchises to longer franchises is that we do want to build incentives for train operating companies to invest not simply in hardware of rolling stock and stations and car parks, but also invest in their people in training. And it's already clear that even with a long franchise, which is what Connex still had, the SRA had the power to step in.

So I don't think the problem with the SRA is insufficient powers, I think its whether or not its exercising them in the way that it should, and certainly talking to some of the train operating companies, they are concerned that they're getting a very, very prescriptive set of requirements imposed on them, even, its been put to me, in one case the SRA specifying how many times the toilet seat needs to be up and down on a particular train journey, and that does reduce the ability and incentive for managers to deliver a better service to passengers.

Question: Are the government doing enough to prepare London's transport for a possible Olympic games in 2012? What would you like to see done?

Tim Collins: Well, I think we all regrettably but inevitably accept the very firm view which has been expressed by the government, that they see no possibility of Crossrail being ready in time for the Olympic games in 2012, and I fear given what transpired this week when it became clear in questioning in the House of Commons, that Alistair Darling has not in fact given a clear green light to Crossrail at all, that there is no chance of that being ready by 2012.

Other than that, clearly the priority is to try to upgrade other parts of the transport infrastructure, notably the tube, obviously, and the road network. And it is not yet at all clear that sufficient grip has been applied to it.

I get the sense, to be honest, that the government are slightly going through the motions as far as the Olympics bid is concerned and they feel that, following the Picketts Lock fiasco, the international sporting world are very unlikely, in fact, to award the Olympics to London. I think if the government thought that they had a realistic chance of winning, they would be moving in a more determined and speedy manner.

Question: We are a maximum of three years away from a general election - how pleased are you with your party's progress so far?

Tim Collins: Well, if you realise where we started when Iain Duncan Smith took over as party leader, we were down to about 27, 28 per cent in the polls, we're now up around about 35, 36.

We, obviously in order to win, we need to make a similar step forward in the next two years.

If we make exactly the same advance in the next two years as we have in the last two years, getting into the early 40s, then we will win the next general election.

And I think what is extremely encouraging from our point of view is that people are clearly getting disillusioned with the present government, but they're also increasingly interested in looking at what the Conservative alternative might be.

A lot of hard work clearly to be done, but I've no doubt that of all the parties, the one that's leaving parliament as it rises this week with its morale highest is the Conservative Party.