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Mr. Geraint Davies: Does my hon. Friend accept that the primary reason why the service is deteriorating is that ever more people are using the service and that necessary
investment levels are not being delivered? Is it not a matter more of need for greater investment, with more people using the system, than of structure?
Mr. Livingstone: I completely reject my hon. Friend's suggestion. I think that the management changes prefiguring PPP are exacerbating the problems of under-investment.
A quite sinister--although, I am sure, purely innocent--coincidence is that, on 1 November, Stanley Hart, the chief railway safety inspector and author of the leaked letter, was moved from his post, so that he will not be making the final recommendations. I regret that. I hope that, even at this stage, the Government will bring him back. Confidence will be retained only if Stanley Hart signs off on the issue.
Mr. Kiley is no member of the Militant Tendency, but has a very interesting career path which started in the Central Intelligence Agency. He moved on successfully to the private sector and to running New York's and Boston's transport systems. More recently, he was effectively the managing director of New York's equivalent to London First and the London chamber of commerce.
On 20 October, we wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister, asking that Mr. Kiley be given all the information on PPP. Mr. Kiley gave a clear undertaking, which I accept, that what he was given would remain confidential. I have not asked that anything that is passed to Mr. Kiley be passed to me.
Mr. Kiley had meetings with the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Hill), and with the Minister for Transport, who indicated that information would be supplied. As of today, however, Mr. Kiley has not received all the information that he has requested, notably the bids from the PPP companies. He has also received no explanation of why those documents have been withheld. It is a ridiculous situation. The advice of a proven transport manager with a record of success is being offered free to the Government, but the Government are not seizing that advice.
I am specifically reiterating that Mr. Kiley wishes to see, at the earliest possible opportunity, the best and final offers from the consortiums that are due on 20 November. He would also like to see the current public sector comparator, because the copy that he has been given, which is confidential and not available to me, is dated March. By now, I suspect, it has been seriously amended. If that information is given to Mr. Kiley, I shall give a commitment to the House. If Mr. Kiley, having undertaken a full study of those documents, comes back to me and says, "This system will work", I will drop my opposition to PPP.
However, if Mr. Kiley--acknowledged to be the best mass-transit manager of modern times--says to the Government, "I do not think that this will work. There are safety implications, and financial problems for Londoners", will they accept his advice without reservation? He is a genuinely independent person, and I hope that the Government will make a clear commitment that the information that I have specified will rapidly be made available to him, and that they will be prepared to listen to the advice that he gives them.
Mr. Richard Ottaway (Croydon, South): What is Mr. Kiley's status? Has he been hired to run
London Underground? Is that a short-term measure? Is he a consultant? What will happen if the Government do not accept his advice and go ahead with the PPP?
Mr. Livingstone: Mr. Kiley has been appointed commissioner for transport, the senior officer in the whole Transport for London mini-empire. He will be responsible for buses, the Public Carriage Office and the docklands light railway. As soon as the underground is transferred, he will become directly responsible for that as well. His contract has been agreed, and we expect him to sign it on his next visit, this Thursday. I have no doubt that he will sign it: he is desperately keen to be able to turn round transport in this city. Although we have had to pay him a considerable sum, it will be money well spent if he is able to achieve that.
Mr. Kiley is not a man who flounces away. He is a man who, having had the experience of managing vast projects, may well concentrate the minds of some of the infracos. They may have assumed that they would have to manage with some rather dull and unimaginative public transport official--like the sort of dullards who are currently negotiating the contracts. Given that those people have manifestly failed to run the underground, the idea that we should give them the power to negotiate those contracts with some of the sharpest lawyers on the face of the planet does not fill me with enthusiasm. I do not think that the consortiums are happy, having come up against someone who knows as much about these matters as they do. Perhaps they will not find such easy pickings as they had imagined.
We should also consider what the public think. I commissioned an opinion poll, the results of which I received this morning, to assist the Government in moving forward. It is interesting because it is no good simply asking questions about the tube. We asked for comparisons between the tube and the overland rail services. At the moment, 46 per cent. of Londoners are satisfied with the service on the underground, and 32 per cent. are dissatisfied, which, given all the problems, is a remarkable figure. On the overground, only 30 per cent. are satisfied, while 36 per cent. are dissatisfied. Anything that moves the management of the underground towards the management of the overground system is not something about which Londoners should be optimistic.
I asked the polling organisation to ask what Londoners would expect if the PPP went ahead. Nineteen per cent. expected safety to improve, while 42 per cent. expected it to worsen. Sixteen per cent. expected to get value for money, but 47 per cent. did not and expected the system to get worse.
The Government have not managed to persuade Londoners--whose underground it is, and who have paid for it over the best part of a century--of their case; nor have they persuaded their own supporters. The Greater London Labour party bi-annual conference met last weekend. It was not a conference dominated by my old friends. As the Evening Standard defined it, the Blairite candidate for chair won by 60 per cent. over the pro-Livingstone candidate, who got 40 per cent. So this was a conference under control, except when it discussed the public-private partnership. A motion that in the light of Hatfield, the Government should withdraw the PPP was
carried so overwhelmingly that a card vote was not required. So not only have the Government not persuaded Londoners, they have not persuaded their own supporters.The Prime Minister has often said that we should not fight the battles of the past. Why are we now facing PPP? The Government came to office with two immediate problems. The management of the underground was pretty dire--which is why we are looking forward to a clean-out as soon as I get my hands on it--and the problem of under-investment, for which the Conservative party must take responsibility, had become acute. Yet the Government had bound themselves by a promise to observe the outgoing Government's public spending limits.
The Government set out to find a revenue stream and to bring in good management. The problem now is not a failure to find a revenue stream--it is that the Treasury cannot spend the money quickly enough before the general election. Equally, the problem of management is resolved. I have resolved it by bringing in Bob Kiley, who I think will cut through the dead wood of London Underground's senior management like a scythe going through butter.
Mr. Brake: Could the hon. Gentleman be a little more precise about how much dead wood in the organisation he means? It is causing concern among London Underground staff.
Mr. Livingstone: I consider that there will be substantial and extensive change. We will look to promote those people who have some enthusiasm, but an awful lot of people have been ground down by years of failure. I am talking about changing not one or two people in senior management but dozens, and I regret that it has not been done before.
As I said, I did not automatically reject PPP at first. I focused on it massively in virtually everything that I did in the election campaign. Since I have been elected Mayor, it is the single biggest problem on my desk. I am honestly not persuaded that the system is safer. I genuinely fear that right hon. and hon. Members may be hearing a statement in two, three or four years' time about a major loss of life on the underground because of this system. Labour Members will not be able to blame such a disaster on the previous Government or on anyone else. This proposal is this Government's creation. Nobody else will be at fault. I beg my colleagues: is this a risk they want to take?
We already know that the Liberal Democrats will be standing at the election next May--if it is May--saying, "Liberal Democrats against tube privatisation." The contracts have slipped so that the earliest they can be signed is April. This will be a live election issue. We have not persuaded Londoners; we have not persuaded our own activists. I beg the Government to step back. Here is the face-saving way out--to offer Bob Kiley all the information that he has asked for and then accept his advice, as I have undertaken to do here today.
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