Examination of Witnesses (Questions 65
- 79)
WEDNESDAY 17 OCTOBER 2007
MR BOB
RIXHAM, MR
BRIAN HARRIS,
MR GERRY
DOHERTY AND
MR ANDY
YOUNG
Q65 Chairman: Good afternoon, gentlemen.
Thank you very much for coming. I am sorry to say that Mr John
Leach—not the John Leech who graces this Committee but the
John Leach who should have been with us from RMT—has unfortunately
been taken ill, so we will have to proceed without him. Gentlemen,
can I ask you firstly to identify yourselves for the record, starting
on my left?
Mr Young: I am Andy Young, Regional
Organiser for the TSSA with responsibility for Metronet.
Mr Doherty: Gerry Doherty, General
Secretary, Transport Salaried Staffs' Association.
Mr Rixham: Bob Rixham, National
Officer for Unite Amicus, section railways, buses and ferries.
Mr Harris: Brian Harris, Regional
Officer for Amicus Unite. I look after Metronet at the moment.
Q66 Chairman: Thank you very much.
Do any of you have anything you wanted to say briefly, or may
we go directly to questions?
Mr Doherty: I understand the inquiry
is into PPP, but having listened to the last witness you interviewed
and having been back over the research that we have had, can I
just say at the outset that we wholeheartedly agree with comments
which you yourself made in respect of the last investigation this
Committee had, and I do quote: "I welcome the fact that the
Government is at last putting real money into the Tube, but I
cannot see why it needs the PPP to do it." Nothing has happened
since then to have changed their minds, and indeed with the Metronet
debacle has only served to confirm our view that PPP was poorly
conceived in the first place, it was inappropriate, it was unable
to deliver the improvement to the London Underground system and
we think what has happened in recent times just bears out our
view, and yours.
Q67 Chairman: Thank you very much.
Can we just explore some of the aspects of this? What has happened
to safety levels on the network since our last inquiry in 2005?
Mr Doherty: We have certainly
got concerns that safety levels are being undermined by the very
structure of PPP itself. Only last month we had emergency brake
problems which led to the suspension of the Hammersmith, City,
Circle and District lines, and in July hundreds of passengers
were stranded and 11 were taken to hospital when three carriages
came off the rails between Mile End and Bethnal Green on a westbound
Central line tube train. We have sought the views of our workplace
representatives with regards specifically to safety and the feedback
we have had from one indicates that the main problem is that the
contractors do not comply with safety regulations on the Underground,
and indeed the auditing by LUL is limited and pressure is put
on management and staff to allow the contractors to get on with
things and to turn a blind eye. To give you one specific example,
one of our safety representatives came across the storage of explosives
in Golders Green Station. This is Tube Lines, it is not under
the remit of Metronet, but these explosives were stored without
any permission and this was resolved following an HMRI investigation,
but what we actually found was unauthorised storage of detonators
at Golders Green Station without licence. Our concern is not that
specific incident, because I am certain that the media—and
I did some media interviews this morning—is concerned that
in light of the terrorist attacks in recent times on the Tube
that is a danger in itself. We do not think in itself it was a
danger, but what it does do is it says to us that safety standards
are slipping under PPP—and this is not Metronet, this is
Tube Lines.
Q68 Chairman: Unite actually said
in their evidence that a lack of "joined up thinking"
could have been to blame for the incident on the Central line
on 4 July 2007. Do you want to tell us a bit about that?
Mr Rixham: Yes. Some debris was
left on the line by contractors. I think the reports we are getting
back about that incident and others is the lack of communications
between the various contractors undertaking the work. This repeats
itself over and over again.
Q69 Chairman: What are we talking
about, Mr Rixham, when you say something like "over and over
again"?
Mr Rixham: We are told by the
shop stewards that you have got companies which work in isolation
and they tend not to share information with the other companies
or communicate with other sectors of workers, and that seems to
be a general problem not with just one of the groups but, as I
say, across the range of contractors.
Q70 Chairman: Mr Doherty, I should
have asked you, what length of time was there before you got an
immediate response to your Health & Safety officer on that
particular one at Golders Green?
Mr Doherty: It was discovered
on 17 September, so we are a month away from it now, and I have
to say that Tube Lines have dealt with it. Our concern is what
else is out there that we have not found.
Chairman: I am sure that is an interesting
point.
Q71 Mrs Ellman: In the evidence we
have got from the Office of Rail Regulation they say that as a
result of the PPP rail defects are now more likely to be detected
before they become rail breaks and that there is no indication
that the PPP has had a detrimental effect on rolling stock maintenance.
Is that a finding you would agree with, or is it something which
surprises you?
Mr Rixham: I do not think we would
oppose that on rolling stock maintenance. We have said in our
evidence that we have not provided anything on that, so we would
accept that to be the case. Just going on to our evidence, before
we move off to Health & Safety, we have also indicated the
incidents in March 2007 when 12 electricians were actually found
on site to be working over and above—they had been working
all week and then coming on to Tube Lines to actually do additional
work, and they were thrown off, so it is a lack of control over
people working on the contracts.
Q72 Chairman: Can we establish what
the circumstances were? Are you saying they were working beyond
the hours they would be expected to work?
Mr Harris: It was a group of individuals
who had done already a shift of work on day shift for a company
and had then been found to have come on for another subcontract
company to work the night shift on the Underground, and for us
that breaks any Working Time Directive, the length of time, it
breaks safety regulations, et cetera, and that for us is not acceptable.
Mr Doherty: Just to answer your
specific point, Mrs Ellman, on the train maintenance, I did indicate
that it was only last month that emergency brake problems led
to the suspension of the Hammersmith & City and the Circle
and District lines, and that is directly attributable to maintenance
of the trains, not of the track.
Q73 Chairman: Is there any other
incident? That is a major incident, but is there any other incident
which comes to mind at the moment?
Mr Doherty: Not that comes immediately
to mind, Chairman.
Q74 Mrs Ellman: Are there any problems
with communications on reporting concerns or faults with the Infracos
or the Underground?
Mr Harris: I think the basic problem
we have with the structures that exist is that the structures
with the Infracos themselves, with Tube Lines and with Metronet,
on safety are set up as per the London Underground systems previously
and where those are working—I say that in a loose form—it
takes an awful lot of time to get minor concerns driven through
and safety changed quickly because of the disjointed nature of
management within the companies. Where there is an emergency situation,
such as the brake failures, then that is dealt with quickly because
quite clearly that is a major safety concern and it is in the
public eye, but where we have a major problem is in the systems
which are in place. They just do not work. The lack of communication
between the companies and the contractors where you may have a
gang who are a contract gang working on a repair who are not employed
and under the control of the foreman from Metronet or Tube Lines
and there seems to be a lack of communication or communication
systems to enable safety to be taken seriously.
Q75 Mrs Ellman: Is that problem being
addressed?
Mr Harris: That problem in terms
of the problems with Metronet, in my experience of working with
the company on a day to day basis, no, because if you look at
the history over the past six to eight months of what we have
been doing as a body of employees working within the company is
that we have lurched from one crisis to another in terms of issues
which the company raised. First of all, we had an issue with the
fleet transfer, which basically was a transfer of up to 1,000
people initially to Bombardier, who then lurched from that, once
that was resolved, to a reorganisation which could have resulted
in over 700 people losing their jobs. We then lurched from that
and in the middle of that straight into PPP, which is where we
find ourselves now. So we have been trying to work these things
through, but I think the management's priority has been elsewhere
and what has resulted is that safety has been put on the back
burner and has been let go in the medium term.
Mr Young: There were just two
quick points I was going to make. Firstly, to go back to the explosives
detonators issue at Golders Green, the safety rep for a TSSA who
was looking to deal with that situation, when he came upon it,
actually had some real problems about who to address the issue
to because it was a Tube Lines storage area, if you like, but
on a London Underground station. So there were real issues about
who to report it to and ultimately resolution was by him writing
to the HMRI, which cut through those kinds of problems.
Q76 Chairman: Has anybody done an
audit of similar circumstances where the lines of communication
are not clear?
Mr Young: Not to my knowledge.
The other point I was going to make is that it struck me—and
I am relatively new to the industry—at the Health &
Safety committees for London Underground the Infracos are not
represented at the highest level at the company Health & Safety
committee.
Q77 Chairman: You have made that
point, presumably?
Mr Young: Yes. There are inevitably
some issues there. That lack of communication is almost built
into the system.
Q78 Chairman: Has there been a report
from the HMRI on that?
Mr Young: There was into the Golders
Green situation, yes, which made recommendations for Tube Lines.
Q79 Mrs Ellman: But on the other
point of not being represented, has anything happened on that?
Mr Young: I think the argument
that LU and the Infracos would make is that they are involved
in different structures, but it has struck me that when we go
there—and one of the issues we were discussing, for example,
last week at the Health & Safety Council, and that is the
highest level within London Underground—a lot of the issues
related to lack of consultation, lack of involvement of our safety
reps, related to issues with Tube Lines or Metronet, and obviously
London Underground management then have to undertake to go away
and talk to them, et cetera. So it is bound to add in an extra
element of complication.
| 
