08.04.16
TfL under attack from London mayoral candidates
Two London mayoral candidates have criticised Transport for London (TfL), with Conservative Zac Goldsmith promising to cut free transport perks for staff to pay for more police officers and Labour’s Sadiq Khan promising efficiency savings to pay for a fare freeze.
Goldsmith pledged to cut perks for TfL staff in order to fund 500 more police officers on the network, which he said were necessary for safety on the new Night Tube, in his crime manifesto, launched on Wednesday.
He said the police would be funded by TfL and that he would review areas such as the ‘nominee passes’ currently given to TfL employees to find the funding to cover this. The passes allow one other member of an employee’s household to travel on the Tube for free.
Goldsmith, MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston, said: “My Action Plan for Greater London will support the work the police do and ensure there are more officers around to do it – paid for without raising mayoral council tax.”
However, Manuel Cortes, leader of trade union TSSA, responded angrily to the commitment, insisting that the perks cost TfL “absolutely nothing”.
He added: “Zac Goldsmith is a playboy trying to play in politics. But London is not a playground. How dare this trust fund Tory think tube workers can be kicked around like a political football!”
Goldsmith also pledged to introduce more police contact points on the network, including in closed down ticket offices.
His transport manifesto includes promises to press the government to legally reclassify TfL as an essential public service, meaning that a strike cannot go ahead without 40% union support, in order to reduce the disruption caused by extensive London Underground strikes, and to empower TfL to recruit external Night Tube staff in order to extend the service to the District Circle, Hammersmith, Metropolitan and City lines, and ultimately the London Overground and Docklands Light Railway.
In a BBC interview on Tuesday, Goldsmith failed to name the Central Line stop after Tottenham Court Road (the correct answer is Holborn.)
In a speech on 30 March Khan, MP for Tooting and a former transport minister, said: “At the same time as fares have gone up, TfL has become more and more bloated.
“They simply haven’t had to make the efficiency savings that other parts of the public sector have had to in recent years.”
He pledged to freeze TfL fares until 2020, paid for by efficiency savings. He pledged to launch a review of TfL’s organisational structure on his first day as mayor, followed by a review of its business plan, and to put surplus land owned by TfL out to tender in order to build more affordable homes.
He also said he would restructure the TfL board to make it more diverse, saying that it was unacceptable that 13 out of the 16 board members are white men.
The London mayoral election will take place on 5 May.
(Image: Sadiq Khan and Zac Goldsmith during The London Debate with LBC and ITV News at The Union Chapel in London on 5 April, c. Daniel Leal-Olivas from PA Wire and Press Association Images.)