Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280-299)
MR SHASHI
VERMA AND
MR STEVE
BURTON
5 DECEMBER 2007
Q280 Clive Efford: Is that sufficient?
Mr Burton: We keep that under
continual review. At the moment, as I say, we check 16 million
passengers a year. We are looking at how we can improve targeting
the revenue officers. We are doing a lot more analysis of the
statistics and the travel patterns of people and we are starting
to target revenue officers, we think, in a more effective way.
We are doing a lot of marketing. It is arguable whether checking
tickets or changing people's behaviour is the most effective way
to deal with this issue. One of our big drives is to convince
people that fare-evading is actually an antisocial behaviour in
many ways. It affects our ability to invest in the network. So
we are doing a whole portfolio of things to do this. We keep the
number of officers under review. We increased them by 40 last
year and if we see it as an issue again, we will look at that
again.
Chairman: Mr Burton, if you can instil
moral values by posters, I think you will have an enormous audience
amongst all sorts of other institutions!
Q281 Clive Efford: TfL say—and
this is a quote—that it "has yet to reach the levels
of performance in this area," that is revenue protection,
"to which it aspires". You have more control over transport
services than any other local passenger transport authority in
England, so is this because you have just taken your eye off the
ball?
Mr Burton: No. I would say we
are doing a good job on this. I think there is a couple of issues
that we have identified going forward. One is, as I have said,
targeting where we put the resources. We can always do that better
and that is where travel information and passenger movements come
into play. The second issue for us is that there is a small powers
issue in the fact that our officers have no right to find out
people's names and addresses when they find them travelling without
a ticket. There is no legal power. We have got something in the
current TfL Bill which is going through Parliament which will
give them that power, because obviously one of the issues is if
you are not travelling with a ticket and you are not willing to
give your name and address then the only recourse to our officers
at the moment is to call the police in. We would prefer to have
the legal right to know someone's name and address. We have got
something going through Parliament at the moment and I think that
would improve our efficiency dramatically.
Q282 Clive Efford: Are there any
other powers that you think might be needed?
Mr Burton: Again, we certainly
keep it under review and one of the issues we have been looking
at is whether accreditation as PCSOs would be an option. It is
an option open to us under the new police powers which came in
through various policing Acts. At the moment there is not a clear
case for us to do it, but again we will be looking at the over
the next year or so.
Q283 Clive Efford: Is it a safe job?
Mr Burton: It is, I think. We
train our people in how to deal with potentially confrontational
situations. We train them very well in how to speak to people,
how to manage their safety on the network, and we get a relatively
low level of assaults.
Q284 Chairman: Are you asking for
extra powers, for example, to detain people or talk to people?
Mr Burton: Not at this moment.
Q285 Chairman: Not at this moment.
You mean you are contemplating it?
Mr Burton: We are not contemplating
that. That would be one of the things which might come with accreditation
as a PCSO. It is not part of our programme at the moment.
Q286 Chairman: It is not just a question
of your money, is it, Mr Burton? It raises all sorts of questions
about the roles of PCSOs.
Mr Burton: Indeed, which is one
reason why we are not considering in detail accreditation at the
moment. The power we are looking for is the name and address power
because we see that as a small step which may well make our officers
much more efficient.
Q287 Mrs Ellman: Is there any future
for people who do not like electronic systems and just want to
pay to travel?
Mr Burton: That is an interesting
question.
Q288 Chairman: All our questions
are interesting!
Mr Verma: You are asking a crystal-gazing
question here. From the work we have been doing around the future
of technology around ticketing it does appear that closer integration
with the financial payment system and closer integration with
mobile phone systems are things which are likely to happen very
quickly in the near future. Having said that, at this moment we
cannot see a way of eliminating magnetic stripe ticketing. There
will always be a market for some infrequent users of the system
who do not have the right currency, whether that is an Oyster
card, a credit card or a mobile phone, and as a public organisation
we have the obligation to carry everyone who shows up. In many
ways the easiest way to cater for people of that kind is to cater
for them through magnetic stripe ticketing, which is a technology
that already exists, it is tried and tested and it works relatively
flawlessly provided it is in small numbers. If it was in very
large numbers it would be a real problem for us, but in small
numbers it is something which I think is going to be available
for a long time to come.
Q289 Mrs Ellman: What are these numbers?
You make it sound as if in the world of the future somebody who
wants to pay cash for a ticket and go on a journey is going to
be seen as some kind of freak.
Mr Verma: 2% of people on buses
and 3.7% on the Underground still buy cash tickets, cash single
tickets. One day travelcards are also available on paper tickets,
which comprise another 9% of journeys on the Underground.
Q290 Mrs Ellman: What about the impact
of the National Concessionary Scheme, which is due to take effect
next year?
Mr Verma: I think in London, given
that we have the Freedom Pass, which allows pensioners to travel
across all of London, not just within their own local authority
areas, we have had a mini scheme running for many years. When
the English National Concessionary Scheme comes into force there
will be some people from outside London who would want to travel
on our transport services, and indeed there will be pensioners
from London who will want to travel in other parts of the country.
We do not think it is a major problem. There will be some increase
in traffic along that road, but it is not something which is not
manageable.
Q291 Mrs Ellman: Have you made any
assessments?
Mr Verma: We have made assessments
of the traffic that we would expect coming from the concession
scheme.
Q292 Mrs Ellman: What have you concluded?
Mr Verma: I cannot recite the
numbers offhand, but I can provide you with the numbers if you
are interested. The numbers are not numbers that we would get
particularly worried about carrying. It also is important to note
that the concession scheme, whether it is the Freedom Pass or
the English national concession, has a watershed hour, nine o'clock
or half past nine, depending upon the scheme. The real capacity
constraints that we face on our system are all before half past
nine in the morning, typically between 8.00 and 9.00 in the morning,
so we do not expect that this should provide any capacity problems
on the network. They will result in higher operating costs, there
will be more buses running around in the middle of the day, but
we do not expect this to cause further capacity problems over
what we have got today.
Q293 Clive Efford: How is the cost
of the concessionary travel scheme in London covered?
Mr Verma: It is covered by the
London councils under the London boroughs.
Q294 Clive Efford: So you pass the
cost on to local authorities?
Mr Verma: Absolutely.
Q295 Clive Efford: Is that not why
you are a bit ambivalent about the cost at the moment?
Mr Verma: I did not comment on
the cost. I was only commenting on the fact that carrying these
people is not going to be a problem for us. There is a cost to
it, undoubtedly. As I said, there is an operating cost of carrying
these people and we would seek to recover that. The point I was
making was that people sometimes get exercised about the fact
that this is going to cause capacity problems on the network,
but we do not foresee that happening.
Q296 Clive Efford: So if we have
lots of people travelling to London and using their national concessionary
card in the tourist centres of London, for instance—and
my local authority, Greenwich, is one of the biggest tourist destinations
outside central London—will you be calculating where those
cards are used within London and then charging those local authorities,
or will that cost be spread across London?
Mr Verma: We provide information.
We have a common deal with the London councils based on all the
London boroughs. We provide information to London councils which
enables them to apportion the cost between the London boroughs
and we will continue to do that.
Q297 Clive Efford: Based on what?
Mr Verma: Until a few years ago
it was based entirely on surveys. We now combine the information
from surveys with the information which comes out of the usage
of the Oyster card. One of the things to keep in mind about relying
upon the Oyster card data is that it is not mandatory to tap in
and out on National Rail and that is part of the cost that comes
through of the users of the Freedom Pass. So there is a number
of ways in which we cannot rely entirely upon the Oyster data
for travelcards, Freedom Passes, or concessionary passes.
Q298 Clive Efford: I am still not
clear. How in the future are you going to calculate how you are
going to recharge local authorities for use of the Freedom Pass
in the future?
Mr Verma: In the near future that
will remain something which we do with surveys until we start
getting the bits of data directly counted through the system.
Q299 Clive Efford: So are local authorities
which are likely to attract a high level of tourists who could
be using the Freedom Pass right to be concerned?
Mr Verma: Well, they are right
to be concerned in that they need to make sure that they have
enough funding from central government to pay for that.
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