Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
MR TIM
O'TOOLE
8 DECEMBER 2004
Q100 Miss McIntosh: Is it true that you
still have a major problem with graffiti? Your document shows
that it costs £12 million a year to clear it up. If you had
more police officers do you think that the graffiti problem also
would go down?
Mr O'Toole: I hope so. There is
a continuing dialogue with the police because they are trying
to support us with the graffiti, but they have many other issues:
crimes against people and the like. We do have a problem with
graffiti but I think we are making some progress. I will give
a compliment to the Infracos in this respect, that the work they
have done to remove graffiti from the trains has been a tremendous
success. The fact of the matter is that trains still get hit,
and I think the current estimates are something like 800 tags
a night. That requires the police to help us do something about
that. Those tags are not being applied in the depot; they are
being applied in service. It is mostly kids riding late at night
hitting trailing cars and the like.
Q101 Chairman: Do you not have CCTV?
Mr O'Toole: We have CCTV on the
stations, which is largely why we have licked the problem in stations.
Unlike the Network Rail stations, our stations are largely clean
if you think about them. We do not have CCTV in the train carriages
themselves. The new train carriages will have CCTV, so that will
be a big leg up. We are also starting an experiment with painting
out line-side graffiti. This is a very hard one to do. We are
looking for partnerships with boroughs and local people. If you
look at the section of track between Barons Court and Hammersmith
you will know that we have completely painted that out because
we just wanted to see what would happen. It has been hit twice
since. We have painted it again and since then it has been left
clean. We are now going to paint out an entire line and see what
happens. We are going to experiment with that and we are going
to keep after it because we do believe that unless you are comprehensive
in taking on these problems they just creep back at you.
Q102 Miss McIntosh: Do you have a problem
with homeless people riding on the trains at night?
Mr O'Toole: I do not know whether
they are homeless or not, to be honest with you. I do not have
the statistics.
Q103 Miss McIntosh: I was going to call
them tramps.
Mr O'Toole: There are difficulties
in removing people, especially on the late night trains, and that
is often where station staff run into assault situations, when
they are trying to remove people who are sleeping on trains, often
not entirely in control of their faculties.
Q104 Miss McIntosh: Is that something
that is going down?
Mr O'Toole: I do not know what
the numbers are on that. In fact, I do not know that we keep that
specific category separate.
Q105 Miss McIntosh: In the first 12-24
months you identified focusing on the signals passed at "danger".
Have they gone down?
Mr O'Toole: They have gone down
very marginally but we have a lot of work to do there. Though
they have gone down I would not take credit for that. I would
say it is more like they are fluctuating and we are just lucky
where we are right now. We have a company-wide programme to do
something about this. It is a very touchy subject. The drivers
feel that it is a persecution and it is very important that we
deliver a comprehensive effort about moving signals that are spad
traps, about providing retraining that is actually useful, about
making sure we have training for our instructor operators that
is comprehensive. Finally, it is about the drivers living up to
their responsibilities. This will take a while to tackle but we
will.
Q106 Miss McIntosh: Can I ask you specifically,
are you saying that the drivers are not co-operating with you
on this?
Mr O'Toole: No; they are co-operating.
I suppose there is enough bad blood from the past that when they
hear of initiatives like this they think it is just an excuse
to apply discipline. The thing I always say to them is, "Do
you have any idea how much it costs me to create a driver? Why
would I want to get rid of them?", but we do have to do something
about spads. On the Underground, as you know, it is not primarily
a safety issue because the trains are stopped if they go through
a signal, but every time this happens the service is destroyed
because it is a minimum three minutes and often it is 20 minutes
in order to rectify the situation, so we have got to do something
about this problem.
Q107 Chairman: How much of it is ancient
signalling?
Mr O'Toole: Sometimes it is a
function of the old signalling in the sense that the signalling
bobs. We get what we call a category B spad and a category B spad,
technical spads, spads that the driver could do nothing about,
have increased over the past year as the assets continue to degrade,
but the larger part of it has to do with the operation of the
railway.
Q108 Miss McIntosh: Many of the improvements
that you have planned will not be delivered until after the first
seven and a half year period, yet there appears to be no committed
funding beyond the first seven and a half years. Do you want to
comment on that?
Mr O'Toole: That is why I said,
and I was not being disingenuous, that I am happy for the spotlight
because what concerns me is that a deal was struck to rehabilitate
the Underground this way. That is what we have and that is what
we are going to make work. What I do not want to happen is for
people to get to the seven and a half year period and say, just
when we are about to get all this rehabilitated kit delivered,
"You know, it actually did not get that much better. Why
would we want to put more money into that?" I want to make
sure people are bought into the schedule that we have all agreed
to.
Chairman: Did you have an interest to
declare, Ms McIntosh?
Miss McIntosh: I did and I do apologise.
I have a past interest to declare in Railtrack. I am currently
doing a programme with Network Rail, I have interests in First
Group and Eurotunnel and I travel frequently by train.
Q109 Mr Stringer: You were describing
the Wembley Park overspend as a mini Jubilee Line. Can you tell
us what the exact overspend was?
Mr O'Toole: It was not an overspend.
All I meant by that was that the price was also largely a function
of the arbitrary deadline placed on people who have to deliver
the project, and if you ask for something sooner it costs more.
That is all I meant by that allusion.
Q110 Mr Stringer: How much more?
Mr O'Toole: Terry and I could
debate that for a long time, I imagine. The total price is going
to come in somewhere around £60 million, and if you take
away the £25 million (or whatever it is) actual construction
costs and then another £15 million for the other PFIs that
have to be installed that are nothing to do with Tube Lines problems,
somewhere in that delta is the risk of the extra expense of doing
things faster.
Q111 Mr Stringer: Did you ask the project
team of the national stadium to make a contribution because that
is why you are having to do it so quickly, is it not?
Mr O'Toole: Those negotiations
predate me. There is some contribution out of the public agencies
that are involved in that or the local borough but I could not
tell you. That all predates me.
Q112 Mr Stringer: Can you let us have
a note on that?
Mr O'Toole: Sure I can let you
know. In fact, I can also let you know what the funding is from
each source on that.
Q113 Mr Stringer: That would be excellent.
How would you describe industrial relations?
Mr O'Toole: The actual amount
of industrial action has been quite limited by historical standards
but I must say I seem to be in this arms race of PR releases threatening
me with industrial action on a regular basis. I was pleased to
hear Bob say that most of the things are going well. It is just
that about every fortnight I am told that I am going to be balloted.
I think there is a natural period of feeling ourselves out here
between the two groups in that this is a new management team.
I feel like I get credibility that otherwise I would not have
because of the Mayor. I think there is a sense among the trade
unions that ultimately they will be treated fairly. If you are
a trade union employee at London Underground I would defy them
to say that they have not been treated fairly in the deals that
I have struck since I have been here.
Q114 Mr Stringer: Is the two-year deal
going to bring peace in our time?
Mr O'Toole: We will certainly
avoid a wage negotiation in the spring. I cannot say they will
deliver any more peace than that.
Q115 Mr Stringer: Do you think it is
reasonable or efficient to allow station staff 52 days' holiday
a year?
Mr O'Toole: Obviously, I think
the deal I struck is reasonable and efficient. I am not responsible
for the weekends they get off or the bank holidays and all the
rest of it that I have been credited with in that press release,
but what we faced was the following. We wanted to do a long term
deal. The trade unions were very plain. They said, "Until
London Underground lives up to its requirement"—which
was, they believe, agreed to back in 1999—"to deliver
a 35-hour week for station staff"—the same as the train
staff already had—"you can forget about a long term
deal", so we set about agreeing to that. Ultimately what
we said was, "We will agree to a wage increase but the reduction
in hours has to be paid for with efficiencies", and we will
move to 36 hours in the first year and then down to 35 after the
second, depending on whether we can find efficiencies and if we
can find them sooner we will go all at once, because actually
it is cheaper for us only to re-roster the one time. The teams
worked together. They came up with the efficiencies and it was
then that the unions suggested an already existing procedure to
use, and that is that the workers work the longer week and be
allowed to bank the extra hours to be used as a rest day. For
me it is slightly cheaper to roster it that way, so it sounds
like a spectacular number but it is just the maths of going from
a 37½-hour week to a 35-hour week.
Q116 Mr Stringer: Was this a negotiation
that just focused on the Underground or did you look for external
industrial comparators in terms of both pay and holidays?
Mr O'Toole: In this one negotiation
I have had so far and in every labour negotiation I have ever
been in in the States, we begin the negotiations by setting forth
those comparators. I would say most of the deals pale in comparison
to the working conditions on London Underground.
Q117 Mr Stringer: So they were not very
helpful to your case?
Mr O'Toole: The trade unions did
not feel they were very relevant to the discussions.
Q118 Mr Stringer: So how much around
the industrial norm are you on this particular deal?
Mr O'Toole: If you look at the
train operating companies' pay, if you look at the top, say, 30
companies, on engineers we are, I think, in the top 10%.
Q119 Mr Stringer: And station staff?
Mr O'Toole: I am not quite sure
of the number. I can give you that but it is somewhere similar.
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