Examination of Witnesses (Questions 79-118)
MR STEVE
GRANT, MR
BOB CROW
AND MR
TIM BELLENGER
9 DECEMBER 2009
Q79 Chairman: Good afternoon. Would
you please identify yourselves for our records.
Mr Crow: Bob Crow, General Secretary
of the RMT.
Mr Grant: Steve Grant, District
Organiser, ASLEF.
Mr Bellenger: Tim Bellenger. I
am Director, Research and Development, at London Travel Watch,
the statutory consumer body representing the interests of customers
in London.
Q80 Chairman: Thank you. Would you
say that safety is being compromised by London Underground and
Transport for London in an effort to reduce costs?
Mr Crow: If you look overall,
the makeup of the industry leads to the same situation we had,
basically, under Railtrack and before Network Rail brought the
infrastructure companies back in-house. What you have is a multitude
of contractors. Even though there is only one company now which
is in the private sector doing work for the Jubilee, Northern
and Piccadilly Line, there are a number of subcontractors and
agencies that live off those contractors doing work. When you
have basically more cooks in the kitchen than you need, then in
our opinion it is going to lead to a different kind of layout
for safety and certainly we believe that safety is being compromised.
What you need to run the railways is a bit like a ship really:
the captain is in charge and when he makes a decision it is filtered
through straightaway to the shop floor. Under the old London Underground
regime, the managing director would say change a light bulb at
Rickmansworth Station and the person would change the light bulb.
Now he has to ring a contractor up, who rings a subcontractor
up, who rings an agency up, which then rings a handyman up out
of the Yellow Pages to go and put in a light bulb.
Q81 Chairman: What has happened to
safety levels on the network since we last looked at this in 2008?
What is the record of what has happened?
Mr Crow: On staff being injured?
Q82 Chairman: Yes, staff or members
of the public.
Mr Crow: I think it has been constant,
to be honest with you. To be truthful, I could provide figures
of recorded instances where they have taken place. What is quite
clear is that when you have a number of processes in place—because
what you have is one overall policy from London Underground who
get their policies overall arching from Transport for London,
and then you have policies for Tube Lines and then you have policies
for all the stream of contractors who you have got out there as
well—you have a number of catalogues, basically, for staff
working for different employers, all doing the same job at the
end of the day and supposed to be delivering a service for London
Underground.
Q83 Chairman: Does any other panellist
want to comment on safety levels for either passengers or people
working in the system?
Mr Grant: Since the privatisation
seven years ago, immediately after there were a number of derailments.
My members, predominantly train operators, deal with the interface
between wheel and rail and these contractors my colleague Mr Crow
has talked about. Even as recently as a few weeks ago, with the
Jubilee Line upgrades, the communications between the managers
of London Underground and the managers of the contractors, subcontractors,
et cetera, broke down to a point whereby, on a recent weekend
where upgrade work was being done, there was no passenger service—again
major disruption to customers—and there were lives being
put at risk because of the breakdown in that communication. A
lot of the issues arising that my union gets are dealing with
those issues.
Q84 Chairman: Mr Bellenger, do you
have any observations?
Mr Bellenger: We do not have any
particular evidence that safety of passengers has declined since
the introduction of the PPP, but then you have to realise that
all sorts of other things are going along in parallel to the PPP
which may mean that safety is staying constant or may in fact
have reduced.
Q85 Chairman: What would you say
about the passengers' experience since PPP started? Has it become
a better or a worse experience?
Mr Bellenger: In one sense the
"Passenger has Paid the Price" for the PPP—as
a different acronym. Passengers are certainly experiencing a better
quality of service in some respects because the investment programme
is going in—and that is something we have always argued
for—but it is not necessarily easy to distinguish whether
the PPP is responsible for that because there are other things
that are being paid for as part of the investment programme which
are outside of the PPP. That means that you cannot necessarily
attribute wholly any improvement to the PPP or not. Certainly
passengers are paying the price at the moment in terms of the
additional costs that the PPP is currently experiencing. Because
of that passengers are likely to have to pay lot more money in
their fares in the New Year to bridge the gap between the amount
of money that Transport for London needs to pay out on the PPP
and the amount of money they have coming in, and they are also
paying the price in terms of disruption to the network, particularly
on the Jubilee Line, where the numbers of closures has got to
some unacceptable levels. We certainly believe that there are
other and better ways that such disruption could be planned and
also communicated to customers.
Q86 Chairman: What are those better
ways?
Mr Bellenger: To give you an example,
one of my correspondents was a regular user of the East London
Line. When the East London Line was proposed for a blockade, she
complained about the blockade but she knew about it six months
in advance and was able to plan her life around that blockade.
She has again contacted me now that we have the extensive Jubilee
Line closures—because she lives in that sort of Canada Water
area and she uses the Jubilee Line at weekends. The thing is that
she cannot plan her life properly now because she does not know
whether or not the Jubilee Line is going to be available, whether
she is going to have to use a replacement bus for all or part
of her journey. Essentially she is more dissatisfied now, because
she does not know what is going to come to happen on the weekend.
At least when she had a blockade, she knew that for four years
the East London Line was going to close and she could plan around
it. We have urged in our evidence to you and to the London Assembly
on their previous inquiry on this that Tube Lines and London Underground
look at long-term blockades perhaps as quicker way of delivering
the upgrade, so that at least passengers know, if they cannot
travel between Kings Cross and Hyde Park Corner, that they cannot
do that, but they have a set amount of time in which that work
is going to be completed.
Q87 Mr Hollobone: Mr Crow, if we
were to ask you how many people did it take to change a light
bulb on an underground before and now, what would your answers
be?
Mr Crow: One person, the same
as it was before.
Q88 Mr Hollobone: But you were indicating
that there are certain steps you have to go through now in order
to do that.
Mr Crow: Absolutely. I do not
suppose that the light bulb causes the big problems out there,
but certainly changing high levels of track components and refurbishments
of stations certainly do cause problems. With most of the companies
now concerned the first thing they do is run to see what their
contract says, more than what they used to, say, when the managing
directors was making an instruction do it.
Q89 Mr Hollobone: In its evidence
to this Committee the Department for Transport has justified the
PPP programme by saying that the costs that have been incurred
have been less than the costs incurred on the Jubilee Line extension
or the Central Line upgrade. They quote figures saying that with
regard to the Central Line upgrade cost overruns were up 30% and
significantly behind schedule—six years in the case of the
Central Line—whereas with Metronet, even though the costs
were, as we have heard, in the hundreds of millions, the costs
were in the range of 4% to 10% against the total value of the
investment. What is your response to that?
Mr Crow: If Metronet did so well,
how come they are not around any more? It must have been some
good business if they went out of business. The reality is that
the Metronet situation, when they talked about upgrades, was that
they were concentrating on station modernisation. That is where
they concentrated their efforts. I have to say station modernisation
is fantastic, it is nice to sit on a station and look at it all
day and say how nice and pretty a station looks, but the majority
of passengers that I speak to every day when I travel on the tube
want the train to come on time and they want to have a seat to
sit on on the train.
Q90 Mr Hollobone: In this dispute
between TfL and Tube Lines, where does the balance of responsibility
lie in your view?
Mr Crow: It is quite clear that
Tube Lines, for example, are the ones who have not carried out
the work they said they had done and which they should not have
said they had done. The reality is they are supposed to have finished
all the upgrades by the end of this year, and now we are talking
about upgrades to 2010 and in certain parts of the spring the
Jubilee Line being shut down for perhaps three or four days. I
am not a cynic but it is strange why the Chief Executive has left
the company if it is doing so well.
Q91 Mr Hollobone: If you had to split
the responsibility in percentage terms between the two—
Mr Crow: I am sorry?
Q92 Mr Martlew: The Chief Executive
is behind you.
Mr Crow: I thought you were a
heckler.
Q93 Chairman: Can we keep to the
questions.
Mr Crow: I am being distracted,
I am sorry, Chairman.
Q94 Mr Hollobone: If you had to split
the responsibility in percentage terms between Tube Lines and
TfL, would it be 100% Tube Lines and nothing TfL or would there
be a balance?
Mr Crow: The whole lot needs to
go to TfL. It is one system. We want a joined up system. If you
have Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly Line, it sounds nice—it
is three deep level tubes that they broke away for one contract,
and then they split the other two contracts up, which was the
sub-service lines, and then the other lines in three separate
contracts, and Metronet got the two contracts put together—but
they all have interfaces. The Jubilee, Northern Line and Piccadilly
Line, everywhere you go along that route, will meet somewhere
with the other contracts. The railways can only be run on the
basis of being joined up. It is one operation. You cannot have
a ship and then turn around and say that the engine room is being
run by someone else and the navigator is being run by someone
else and the people doing the food are someone else. It is all
on board together. That is why the railways have to be joined
up. They should be run democratically by Transport for London
and the people who run Transport for London should have a clear,
constant direction of line of running the system at the end of
the day by the Chief Executive of Transport for London. He or
she should be responsible for running that network.
Q95 Mr Hollobone: Do you think Tube
Lines is going the same way as Metronet?
Mr Crow: Absolutely, and the quicker
the better, to be honest with you. The sooner Tube Lines are back
in London Underground and we all have one London Underground system
together, then the passengers will have a better railway.
Q96 Mr Hollobone: How long do you
give it?
Mr Crow: It is not for me to say.
They have never shown us the contracts. That was left to all these
whiz kids who said they had it all right, but it looks like they
have got it all wrong.
Q97 Mr Hollobone: Do I take it Mr
Finch is not on your Christmas card list?
Mr Crow: I have nothing against
Mr Finch. He is a nice personable bloke, but obviously he has
found his place better in National Express than he has with Tube
Lines.
Q98 Mr Martlew: Obviously the Jubilee
Line has a very advanced signalling system and it will increase
the capacity. Has the agreement been reached between the Trade
Unions and London Underground on the operation of this and has
the work been done on the training of the staff? Has the decision
been taken or not how the training is going to be done?
Mr Grant: We have major issues
with London Underground on the training of staff. These trains
will eventually be totally automatic, like Victoria, but with
the upgraded system, as you say. The comparison was made earlier
between Central Line. When I was a driver I went through all that.
It was an off-the-peg system; it was not started from scratch
as this system is. Obviously any new system will have its problems
and we do have concerns over the length of training and the quality
of training. London Underground has had some good training over
the years in safety, which has kept down the numbers of incidents,
lost time injuries, deaths and accidents amongst staff and customers.
To answer your question, no, we are not happy with it and there
is major disagreement.
Q99 Mr Martlew: We have had evidence
from the Mayor and the Chief Executive that this was not a problem,
that it had all been sorted out. That is not the case, is it?
Mr Grant: From my point of view,
dealing with the train operators who are the trainers and the
managers who are the trainers and the staff who are being trained
specifically on the Jubilee Line, I could send this Committee
a whole year's worth of emails, complaints and concerns over the
training quality and the content of that training.
Q100 Mr Martlew: This will be to
London Underground.
Mr Grant: We work for London Underground,
yes, sir.
Q101 Mr Martlew: When you do have
the training on the line, does it mean that the line for some
of the time will have to be closed to the public?
Mr Grant: Tube Lines in this particular
case provide the trains and the signalling systems, and London
Underground provide the shutdown, or blockade as my colleague
here calls it. That training is then done for hands-on training
by drivers, but we are arguing over the way that is being done.
Just to slightly digress, on the comment about overruns, whether
it is for weekends or for six months does not matter; the most
annoying thing for the person concerned of Croydon, or whoever
the person was, is when come Monday morning the Jubilee Line is
not back up and running because of the overrun of the engineering
work. That causes even more major disruption to hundreds of thousands
of Londoners. It is my belief that it is easier for the companies
to pay the fine of the overrun and get the work completed and
of course the people of London are not compensated for that delay.
Q102 Mr Martlew: Mr Grant, you have
been very helpful. Do you think that the training will be completed
for the drivers in time for when Tube Lines say that the job will
be completed?
Mr Grant: In my view, no, sir,
because the argument is over the provision of the shutting of
the line to enable drives to be trained in the signalling system
that they wish to run.
Q103 Mr Martlew: Basically you are
going to have to close the line to train the drivers.
Mr Grant: Yes. In the majority
respect of physically driving, yes.
Q104 Mr Leech: Is the performance
of Tube Lines any better than Metronet from a passenger perspective?
Mr Crow: On what basis? Passenger
demands?
Q105 Mr Leech: No, the whole passenger
experience.
Mr Crow: The passenger does not
see Tube Lines as such. If the passenger gets on the train in
the morning or in the evening and there is a delay, it is London
Underground that announces that there is a delay because of a
signal failure here or because of a track defect there, but the
average passenger just wants to make sure that there are no delays.
Tube Lines do not make that announcement. I am not saying they
should make that announcement, because London Underground is responsible
for the operation of the railway, but London Underground have
no say whatsoever over that signal failure or track component
that goes wrong on the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly Line.
It has on the Metropolitan Line. It now has the responsibility
to say what is wrong. Richard Parry was here earlier on. If there
is a problem now on all the lines except for the Jubilee, Northern
and Piccadilly Line, the Chief Executive can just turn around
and say what has gone wrong. Now he has to ask his counterpart
in Tube Lines, who has to go through the entire programme down
to the bottom to find out what went wrong on that piece of track.
I would say that people are feeling very, very annoyed. Especially
at this time of year when people are Christmas shopping, the only
day they probably have off is a Saturday or a Sunday and they
are faced then with delays. Those people going to Wembley or to
the O2 are faced with delays for the concerts and circuses and
things they have on at weekends. It is causing massive disruption.
You only have to be around the East End of London, around Stratford
way, to see the absolute chaos that takes place with people trying
to shop on a Saturday and Sunday now when there is engineering
works.
Q106 Chairman: Mr Bellenger, is there
anything you would like to add on this topic of the passengers'
experience?
Mr Bellenger: For a start, the
lines are obviously different, and that has an effect on the ability
to compare like for like.
Q107 Mr Leech: Are you not able to
compare like for like when there are no works going on or when
there are works going on and comparing different lines, so comparing
one line which is run by Tube Lines where there is work going
on and one line when there was work going on when Metronet were
running that particular line? Have you done no work on that?
Mr Bellenger: We, as such, have
not done any work on that, but I think the thing to note is that
if you close one part of the system there will be an effect on
other parts of the system which may be run by the other contractor;
for example, if there is a closure on a Tube Lines part of the
network, then it may well have a knock-on effect on something
to do with that run under the old Metronet system. It may be quite
difficult to parcel up the blame between the two.
Q108 Mr Leech: If there is more than
one company running lines on the Underground it is very difficult
to recognise whether or not one is doing a better job than another.
Mr Bellenger: No. Because they
are different lines, there will be different specifications there
depending on the type of services provided.
Mr Grant: To be fair to Tube Lines—the
question is: "Is Tube Lines better than Metronet?"—there
are two examples I could give you in the affirmative. The axle
boxes on a Piccadilly Line train that kept going up in flames
have been replaced. The 7th Car Project on the Jubilee Line has
been delivered before target. There are two examples, but you
would have to look at the progress of Metronet, a collapsed company,
and the present Tube Lines trying to deliver the upgrade work
and closures.
Q109 Mr Leech: If there is more than
one company running different lines on the Underground, it is
difficult to assess whether or not that company is doing a decent
job in terms of passenger experience, because of the interface
between the different companies running the lines.
Mr Crow: Everything is different.
It is not apples and apples here. What you have is one company
trying to bring in on one line a signalling system, where another
company may not be bringing that signalling system in. It may
be that the station that they are repairing has problems because
it has a big drain going halfway through it once they start digging
up the concrete. It is very hard to put that into perspective.
The only way you would be able to do it is to see the amount of
passenger miles that the company is supposed to run and how many
they are delivering as a result of neglect of engineering delivery.
Q110 Mr Leech: In terms of the future,
whether it be in public ownership or private ownership, do the
three of you think it is better to have one operator for the whole
of the network?
Mr Crow: I do, yes.
Mr Bellenger: From the passenger
perspective, the passenger does not care whether there is a PPP
in place or a PFI or any other kind of contract. They want their
service to be delivered. They want a service which is safe, reliable,
clean, uncongested and, above all, open. They do not care whether
it is Metronet running the line or whether it is Tube Lines running
the line. Their contract is with London Underground and it is
up to London Underground to manage the relationship with Metronet
or with Tube Lines to deliver the service that passengers want.
Q111 Chairman: Does having more parties
involved in delivery make it more difficult for London Underground?
Mr Bellenger: It will always make
it more complex, yes, it will.
Mr Grant: Like Bob, I think it
should be one employer. I have gone from the GLA and Sir Horace
Cutler through to Ken Livingstone. We have had London Underground
with one person on the station called the Station Master; now
you have a supervisor, a group station manager, a junior manager
(trains). It is just more Chiefs than Indians. I do not care whether
it is a TfL or London Underground or one private employer, but
there needs to be one sole boss. Knowing customers, being a guard
for seven years myself, if a monkey ran down the track and stopped
and it was cheap, they would get on its back to get to the next
station. That is all they are interested in.
Q112 Sir Peter Soulsby: Obviously
Bob Crow and Steve Grant have argued that it should be reintegrated—in
Bob's case particularly strongly—into a publicly operated
entity, but until that happens, I was asking earlier about the
role of the PPP Arbiter and the way in which that might be developed.
I wonder if you have any views as to whether that is a mechanism
that could be made to bring more transparency and order into the
system as it is at the moment.
Mr Crow: The Arbiter at the end
of the day is a person who, in my opinion on this PPP, has to
decide if the contract is being carried out to the specification,
as laid down and given to London Underground before the PPP came
in? If you remember what happened was that the Mayor, who is now
responsible—not the individual, but the Mayor who is now
responsible—was handed the contracts and never had a chance
to see them. That is what the specifications are on. Now, as the
time evolves and we are into seven years, 14 years, 21 years,
28 years and 30 years, those contracts will start coming to an
end and new specifications will go in there, so the Arbiter is
going to have to decide if the laid down specification is being
carried out correctly by the contractor concerned, and if he is
not carrying out that contract then who pays for the lost time.
Either Tube Lines is going to pay for it or Transport for London
is going to pay for it. Really basically he is just the Arbiter
who is sitting there and weighing up whether the contract is in
favour of the one employer or Tube Lines who carry out the work
for them. There is quite clearly a massive difference now in the
amount of money that is owed between Tube Lines and TfL.
Q113 Sir Peter Soulsby: Does the
Arbiter have the power and responsibility to do what needs to
be done?
Mr Crow: Money-wise he has. There
will be different kinds of specification regarding safety and
one thing and another. Quite clearly the Arbiter has the power,
and really the death knell for Metronet is when the Arbiter says
that Metronet has to pay the money back. That is when they have
to liquidate.
Mr Grant: You asked if they have
a role in transparency. At the present time they are having a
role in negotiating between the difference between London Underground
and Tube Lines over the costs. Previously, in the last tranche,
London Underground and Tube Lines and Metronet, as was, used to
manage to resolve or work out their differences at many levels
of strata of the business between them. Now, whether it is because
there is more pressure from TfL on London Underground or whether
it is the demise of Metronet—and I am not a lawyer or accountant
or whatever—or whether London Underground has got more hardnosed
about the contacts, Mr Finch gave evidence earlier that they are
asking for variations to that contract and Tube Lines are trying
to renegotiate those contracts. Yes, he does have a role at the
moment. Whether that will continue, only time will tell. I am
not a foreseer either, but I do believe he has a present role
in trying to resolve differences. As Mr Crow said, the longer
they take for someone to bang their heads together and deliver
the services for the customers, as usual it will be them who keep
saying.
Mr Bellenger: Yes, there is a
role for the Arbiter. The Arbiter also takes account of the needs
of passengers. In all the big arguments that surround the PPP,
it is the passenger who is often forgotten. Certainly, yes, we
want to see the Arbiter given more power if he can do that for
the benefit of passengers.
Q114 Sir Peter Soulsby: Mr Finch
earlier suggested the model might be something like the Rail Regulator.
Do you think that is what is needed in this context?
Mr Bellenger: That might be a
way in which you could possibly look at that. The current PPP
Arbiter was in fact the previous Rail Regulator, and I believe
he developed the post in the same way that he did the Rail Regulator
post, so I think there is some scope there, yes.
Q115 Chairman: You have all been
very critical about the Public Private Partnerships. Is there
anything positive you have to say about them? Has anything good
been delivered? Do you welcome the investment that has come in?
Mr Crow: It is without doubt that
money has gone in the industry. There is no doubt about that.
You cannot hide the fact that there is new money in the industry.
The trouble is that it has not gone into delivering better services;
it has gone into those contractors that make up the consortium
that runs Tube Lines and Metronet. Basically they were more concerned
with station modernisation rather than more trains and better
quality. We are now seeing a situation where, as I see it, there
is a complete run down now of Tube Lines.
Mr Grant: I would like to see
someone like an Arbiter deciding that, after you and your colleagues
in this House decide how much money is going to be given to railways,
and leave them alone for a period of time because railways cannot
exist on short-term needs. They need to plan the advance stock,
they need to do maintenance. As I say, it is consistency that
the railways require. The only good thing about the privatisation
was the length of time the contracts were done: there was guaranteed
money put in without interference, albeit there is pressure now
on cutting costs, et cetera. But I have seen so many times in
35 years of working in the railway industry, this House promising
something, like Crossrail, and a new government or another government
or party getting in and changing that and not giving that consistency
to the industry.
Mr Bellenger: The investment programme
certainly has delivered an amount of benefits. I have to take
issue with that about stations. Stations are vitally important,
not only as the place where people travel to to get into the system
but, also, because London is a world city, if we have stations
which are run down and poorly maintained they give a very poor
image of our city. Certainly the investment in stations has been
welcome and long overdue and I certainly would not want to go
back to a situation as happened tragically at Kings Cross, where
so many people died simply because of poor systems and poor maintenance
and all those other things that contributed to that tragedy.
Mr Crow: On that last point, I
was not at all saying that stations should not be modernised to
the same effect they should be. I am saying that the money that
should be used should be used more on providing better train services
than putting the new colour tiles up on stations. Regarding the
fire at Kings Cross, it had nothing to do about the state of the
station; it was the running down of the escalators and the non
cleaning of the escalators that caused that fire there. There
is plenty of these stations that are turning into shopping malls
now rather than stations. There is enough shopping cities around
Britain for people to go shopping. Let us have railways as a railway
system and let us have shops as shops.
Mr Grant: And those stations staffed
too.
Q116 Chairman: Mr Crow, can you tell
us if any progress has been made on averting a strike on the Underground?
Mr Crow: Pardon?
Q117 Chairman: Has any progress been
made on averting a strike?
Mr Crow: Which strike is that?
Q118 Chairman: There is no strike.
Mr Crow: There are a number of
issues but not with London Underground at the moment. There is
a ballot going on with London Underground but there is no result
back for that. There is a dispute with one of the subsidiaries,
EDF, the French nationalised power company that now runs the power
for London Underground, to extract a profit out to give back to
its own station national company in France, which is an odd one
to understand. We do have a dispute with them. We do have a dispute
with Alston, another company, which subcontracts work from Tube
Lines on the maintenance of the trains on the Northern Line. There
are two disputes there coming up, but we hope to resolve them
very quickly, Chairman.
Mr Grant: We are not in dispute
with London Underground or Tube Lines.
Chairman: Thank you. Thank you very much
for coming.
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