TfL (Funding and Station Staffing)

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

As we have heard, 3.5 million journeys are made on the tube every day. Millions of Londoners use the tube every day, and, next to housing, public transport is one of the most important issues for ordinary Londoners’ health and well-being. Londoners have been fortunate: under the visionary stewardship of Ken Livingstone, first as leader of the Greater London Council and then as Mayor of London, millions were invested in London Underground, to do up stations and for new services—notably the Overground line, of which I am a happy user every day. I pay my respects to the people who staff Haggerston station. I congratulate Sir Peter Hendy, whose stewardship of London Underground in good times and bad has been exemplary. The way he delivered and kept London moving during the Olympics has been noted on all sides. Perhaps one day a statue will be raised to him—by public subscription, of course, not paid for by taxpayers.

Until now, I should have said that Transport for London has been able to withstand the worst that Boris Johnson could try to do to it; but now it is proposed, in one fell swoop and without consultation, to close every single ticket office. I listened to the explanations read from the Transport for London briefing of why that is a good idea; but they sounded like the views of people who do not use the underground. People who use it will have seen the queues outside ticket offices every day, particularly on a Monday morning. What are the people who queue up going to do? People who use the underground will know how often the machines do not work or gobble up money; they will understand that even in a relatively small tube station such as Westminster, there are hundreds of tourists whose first language is not English, who need someone to talk to.

It is all well and good to come to the Chamber and read out the Transport for London briefing; we are talking about the realities of London Underground, and the reality for the people who must use it, whether they are regular commuters, people from out of town or the thousands of tourists who throng through tube stations in zones 1 and 2 every day. As the House has already heard, the millions of London commuters whose fares are being ratcheted up do not understand why they are paying more to travel when the level of service may well come down. It is not enough to say, as Transport for London does, that it is because so many people now use Oyster cards. We need to think about out-of-town business, the elderly and disabled, and tourists, and weigh up the promises that there will be more staff on the stations to help commuters.

The first thing to consider is how commuters see the proposal and how much hostility there is to the closing down of every ticket office on the network. Many members of my family have worked in transport, and I would always argue that London Underground is only as good as its staff. Those staff have in good and bad times shown London Underground exemplary loyalty and a deal of flexibility. On 7/7, they showed how brave and committed they were. What are they being given for all those years of commitment—for building the underground service that still serves Londoners so well? The answer is up to 1,000 job losses and on top of that, and in my view worse, a drive to employ more agency and casualised staff. We are moving away from secure, stable jobs that offer a lifetime career to casualised employment. As a general point, I deplore the hollowing out of London’s economy through the replacement of stable—and, yes, unionised—jobs with casualised agency workers. That cannot be in the interests of a stable society and stable employment in London.

I am a regular user of London Transport services and I bow to no one in my respect for what it has achieved, particularly under a Labour leader and then a Labour Mayor—and I am an admirer of Sir Peter Hendy and all his work. However, passengers and staff oppose the cutting of every ticket office without consultation. All the polling shows that the majority of passengers are unhappy. Boris has yet to explain, certainly to London MPs, how the proposal can possibly improve the service. We know that more and more people are using Oyster cards and that Ken Livingstone introduced a smaller programme of closures when he was the Mayor, but now we face the elimination of every ticket office on the network. That cannot be right. I shall fight the closures on behalf of ordinary Londoners, staff and a London that works—a stable community that offers jobs and life chances to its citizens. That is the only kind of London that has a future in the 21st century.

[Andrew Rosindell (in the Chair)]

I ask hon. Members to keep their contributions to three minutes from now on, so that everyone gets a chance to speak.