Transport for London Funding

Clive Efford Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Thomas]

I share my hon. Friend’s scepticism about the garden bridge. Like her, I wonder whether that money might be better spent. A whole series of projects in my constituency could use that £30 million well, and I want to draw the Minister’s attention to a couple of those.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

On the garden bridge, which no one has ever asked me for, TfL intends to build the Silvertown tunnel in south-east London to relieve congestion at the Blackwall tunnel, but it says that local residents will have to pay for it through tolls, though no other river crossing in London has charges. Perhaps the garden bridge should have an entrance fee, so that it can pay for itself instead of taking money away from vital transport links that are needed in the rest of London.

[Mr Thomas]

Rather than getting into the detail of what may happen with the garden bridge, let me say that I would prefer to see that money reallocated to a series of other existing and necessary capital investment projects. If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I think the priority is Harrow, but I am sure that he will be able to make the case for south London well.

I come back to the concern that the £3 billion cut in funding in the spending review and the extra costs from the sub-surface upgrade programme might put other investment projects at risk. The Piccadilly line refurbishment is particularly important for many of my constituents who live in Rayners Lane, South Harrow and Sudbury Hill. Will the refurbishment programme for that line go ahead as planned? There has been much speculation about when, or if, the night tube will go ahead. Perhaps the Minister can give us an indication of whether it is at risk of cancellation or substantial delay as a result of those cuts. In the Minister’s intervention, he raised a point about fares revenue. The upgrade of the four lines in the sub-surface upgrade programme would have generated extra fares revenue that will now be lost, as more passengers will not be able to be carried until much later. Some estimates suggest that that could be as much as £270 million lost.

In the eight years in which the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) has been Mayor of London, fares have rocketed. Some of my constituents, such as those who travel from West Harrow on the Uxbridge branch of the Metropolitan line, have seen a 60% increase in the cost of travelling into central London. My constituents and others who live in outer London and use the tube regularly have been treated as a cash cow by the Mayor of London for too long. I am concerned that the loss of that £3 billion may increase the pressure on the Mayor, and/or future Mayors, to raise fares still further.

I am also concerned that further job cuts on Transport for London’s network, which are now inevitable, will further compromise the safety and security of passengers, including my constituents. TfL operational staff fulfil crucial operational functions as well as many safety-critical roles such as managing peak flows of passengers and handling emergencies. On the tube, DLR and Overground, adequate numbers of staff are needed to identify and respond to emerging crush situations.

Adequate numbers of staff are required to limit fare evasion, too, which is rocketing—it is up to £61 million a year following a reduction in staffing levels. I pay tribute to Greater London Authority Labour colleagues, led by the excellent Val Shawcross, Navin Shah and Len Duvall, for that information. Visible staff help to deter and detect crime, including people preparing for or engaging in acts of persistent serious crime and even—God forbid—terrorism. Staff also reassure passengers during tense periods such as now, but staffing is at its lowest level in recent history and Government cuts make it look likely that it will drop further.

Under plans for staff cuts at stations, Leytonstone station, which currently has four staff in peak periods, will be reduced to two members of staff—a 50% reduction at a station where there has already been a worrying terrorist incident. That is just a small indication of the worry that further job cuts, driven by the major cut in Government funding, might force on us.

I understand that London Underground Ltd now plans to cut a further 838 front-line staff positions from normal traffic hour operational levels. New staffing levels have apparently been derived from so-called business need schematics formulae, which do not incorporate the need for security checks or other operational needs. As a consequence, staff are required to meet the demands of security checks and will have to be removed from their allocated customer service positions for sizeable portions of their shifts to do so, leaving their areas unstaffed and effectively unmonitored on occasion. That is a concern. Will the Minister be willing to review with Transport for London’s managing director whether the loss of those front-line staff is a sensible way forward and whether alternatives might be found?

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) on securing this important debate. I start by associating myself with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) on the cruise liner. I will not go into detail because I do not intend to speak about that, but I entirely agree with his points.

I, too, want to be parochial and I will talk mainly about the proposed Silvertown tunnel in the context of TfL’s funding. I have long called for a solution to the problem of traffic congestion on the approach roads to the Blackwall tunnel. It is a daily environmental disaster and occurs when queues of traffic build up, particularly at peak times, causing a huge environmental problem of air pollution in that part of our borough. The topography of the area means that a lot of pollution collects in the river valley, and having stationary traffic stuck there for long periods just adds to the problem. That traffic will not disappear. It needs to go somewhere and the problem needs some relief. There are no alternatives. We do not have the London Underground in south-east London beyond North Greenwich station and people rely heavily on surface and suburban rail services, which are already at over capacity so we need to increase capacity there. I will come to that later.

In many circumstances, people are forced to drive. That applies particularly to residents of the boroughs of Greenwich, Tower Hamlets and Newham, for which the Blackwall tunnel is the nearest river crossing. People have to use that crossing to get across the river, so we are seeing a significant impact on people’s daily routine because quite often they are delayed and cannot predict when they will be able to get through the tunnel. In addition, many businesses lose time and money because of the traffic congestion. We need to deal with the traffic congestion at the Blackwall tunnel and we need a third bore, but dealing with the issue by building a road crossing alone will not be sufficient.

We have been offered buses by TfL, and we will take the buses. They have buses in other parts of London, and of course we want more buses. However, the equivalent of a small city has been built in Docklands. We have seen massive expansion not just of housing, which will continue to grow, but of businesses and leisure, and more and more people want to go north and south on the eastern part of the Thames corridor, rather than on the traditional route, like the spokes of a wheel, served by suburban rail that goes in and out of central London. Without increasing significantly public transport links that go north and south across that east Thames corridor, we will congest even more the central London transport system, because people have no choice, if they want to use public transport, other than to go in and then out.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is always good to give a Northern Ireland flavour to a debate on London transport. The hon. Gentleman referred to using more buses. I, too, encourage people to use more buses, because if more buses are bought, they will come from Wrightbus in Northern Ireland, so it is always very good to have that.

[Clive Efford]

I cannot think of a better reason to want more buses. To get even more parochial for a minute, I want to put in a plug for TfL finally to deal with the issues with my local services, on which my constituents have been campaigning. I am talking about the B16 and 178 buses through Kidbrooke. Those issues must be resolved; we are not accepting no for an answer, and we welcome the moves that it has made already on the B16.

The 132 bus runs from Eltham to North Greenwich, and when I became a Member of Parliament I campaigned for its introduction. TfL came to my office to meet me and said, “There’s no demand for such a service.” It was to provide a public transport link along the route corridor of the A102, the Blackwall tunnel approach road. Finally, as the Olympics approached, we got an extension of the 132 bus route down to North Greenwich. It was a single-decker bus and it quickly filled up, so a double-decker service had to be introduced. That service is now often oversubscribed and passengers are left behind at the terminal where the bus starts—at North Greenwich—such is the increasing demand from people for public transport links along the route corridor of the A102, which connects with the A2 and my constituency of Eltham.

A road crossing, therefore, will not be sufficient: we need to have the DLR. If TfL is not going to build a DLR link, there is no point in building the Silvertown link, because it will just become as congested as the Blackwall tunnel is now. People will have no alternative to switch to—in the large numbers that we need them to switch—if we are to protect that route from becoming congested again in the future, just with more cars. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West pointed out, the DLR has in recent times increased its usership significantly—by more than 50%. It has gone up from a few million passengers, as my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse said, to nearly 100 million passengers a year. That shows how effective it can be, so a DLR link from Silvertown to North Greenwich—that is then brought down the route corridor of the A102 to places such as Kidbrooke and Eltham—will have a significant impact by changing people’s choices of the transport method that they use to get across the river in that part of the city.

We cannot allow traffic to grow, and I accept that some form of tolling will be needed, but no one else in London pays to cross the river by their local bridge. I do not see why my constituents should have to pay to cross the river when no one else in London does. If TfL says that the only way to fund schemes in the future—because of the cuts to its budget—is to introduce tolling, I say that it has to be fair to my constituents, who in recent years have watched billions of pounds being invested in the London underground, which does not come anywhere near where we live. We accept that it is a major contributor to London’s economy and is vital—no one disputes that—but the comparison between the investment in other parts of London and that in outer south-east London does not stand up to scrutiny. We have bus services, but other than that, TfL spends precious little on investment in that part of London, so asking for—no, demanding—a DLR link as part of the scheme is just asking to be compensated for the lack of investment in previous years.

If people in my area are to be asked to pay a toll to pay for the river crossing, we should toll every river crossing in London and make everyone pay to cross the river, because that is the only fair balance that we could strike. I see the Minister’s eyebrows going up as he thinks, “Actually, there might be a point there. We might be able to make some money.” It is true that we have sat by in south-east London and watched money being spent on the London underground, while getting precious little—

[Mr Goodwill]

rose—

[Clive Efford]

I have a finishing time in order to allow the Minister time to respond, but if he will be brief, I will give way to him.

[Mr Goodwill]

I just point out that those who pay the congestion charge might argue that they are already paying to use the bridges and perhaps would not be thankful to be double-charged.

[Clive Efford]

They might well, but there are bridges beyond Vauxhall. I can point all the bridges out to the Minister if he needs me to do that; I can name them all. We need the Silvertown link, but it cannot be built without the DLR.

I want to move on to talk about a site in Kidbrooke, Henley Cross that is owned by TfL. TfL is definitely trying to maximise its income from that site, but we need such sites, which are in public ownership, to be used to provide local services and vital affordable housing where possible, not just sold off to the highest bidder. I would like to put in a bid to TfL to consider that site in relation to the Kidbrooke regeneration and the need to identify sites for secondary schools in the borough of Greenwich. Henley Cross is situated between the motorway—well, the approach road to the Blackwall tunnel—and the railway. The site is unsuitable for people to live on, but it would be suited to other uses. Perhaps some sort of land swap could be arranged with the Kidbrooke Village regeneration and a school could be built where it was intended to build a Sainsbury’s supermarket. I urge TfL to sit down with the London borough of Greenwich and with Berkeley Homes, which is doing the development, to consider that option, rather than cramming housing on to the site, which is unsuitable because of its location.

Finally, I want to turn to TfL taking over the running of suburban trains, which are vital for my constituency as it relies entirely on suburban trains as the major route into London because—as I said—we do not have direct links to the London underground. If that is to happen, TfL needs to start planning ahead now. At peak times, trains that run through my constituency—through Eltham, New Eltham, Plumstead and along all those routes—are heavily oversubscribed. They have so many passengers they have PIXCs—people in excess of capacity. We need to increase capacity on those lines. That means that when the Thameslink scheme is completed and the new rolling stock becomes available, the current Thameslink rolling stock must be made available to Southeastern, which wants to purchase it, so that it can increase capacity on those vital services in south-east London.