Transport for London Bill [Lords]

Debate between George Galloway and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 16th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[George Galloway]

It was indeed a PPP, not a PFI—that alphabet soup is frequently jumbled in my mind. However, my hon. Friend is absolutely correct. If we had had proper scrutiny at the time, rather than the dragooning of Labour Members into supporting the Treasury position, it would have been exposed far earlier.

With the new clauses and amendments, and with the arguments made this evening, we have tried to expose folly on a potentially even larger scale. My hon. Friend’s speech was truncated rather ham-fistedly—if the promoter of the Bill will forgive my saying so—such that it did not achieve what the promoter wanted; it just made my hon. Friend, our expert on these matters, sit down, but we are still discussing what he was proposing. And this was after only one hour and 10 minutes. His argument was forensic. As I have often opined in here, Government Members do not like it up them—some of them do, that is true, but the promoter of the Bill did not, and it was because arrow after arrow of logic and forensic examination from my hon. Friend was hitting home that the attempt to close down the debate was mounted.

“Mind the gap” is the rubric to remember. This is all about the gap in funding from central Government to Transport for London and closing that gap through the disposal of public assets. I said earlier in an intervention that on these matters left-wing thinking has moved on—even such left-wing thinking as that personified by my hon. Friend. We are not against making non-performing public assets perform in one way or another, although, as my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North pointed out, we do not want them performing in such a way that they can never again be used to perform the purpose for which they were originally intended, which in this case, of course, is to provide transport for London—the clue being in the name. In other words, we do not want land disposed of in a way that Transport for London can no longer control, so that assets are lost for ever. We are not against making public assets perform, if they are not necessary now—or perhaps even for many years and decades in the future—but we have certain conditions, and one of them has to be transparency.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

New clause 1 does not actually require anything other than publication of information about non-operational assets that may be considered for any future activity or sale. Does the hon. Gentleman not find it extraordinary that the promoter of the Bill, and apparently the Government en masse, are opposed to the publication—no more, no less—of the information?

[George Galloway]

I can think of only one reason why they would be so opposed—public outrage would result. I am absolutely sure, in respect of the Earls Court development, to which I am about to turn, that had the public been properly informed about its development, public opposition to what in many respects is an act of vandalism would not have permitted the development—or at least the political cost would have been much higher.

On the subject of transparency, the promoter of the Bill is simply wrong. He said he was against a list because it would be too expensive, but then, in the same breath, he said that there was a list, and he prayed in aid the existence of a Greater London assembly. However, the assembly’s budget committee, no less, told the Committee—the House of Commons—that it had had to go to law, through freedom of information searches, to force Transport for London, which nominally it is supposed to supervise, to give it any information at all. So transparency is definitely not the middle name of Transport for London, and as long as that is the case, a suspicion will linger that grand theft auto is the game.

We have a right to say that if a public authority—in this case, Transport for London—is to get into bed with the private sector, the bed partners should be reputable and transparent and located here in Britain and paying tax in Britain. We know that in the case of Earls Court that is not true. Why do companies locate in the Channel Islands? Because they prefer the climate, or because they prefer the opaque nature of taxation matters there? Surely we all know, given what has happened over the past few years, exactly why these cowboy developers locate themselves as far from public scrutiny, media scrutiny and the rest as they possibly can.

I said that I would turn to Earls Court and I shall, but I notice that the brother of the Mayor has just left the Chamber. I had wanted him to be here when I said this. Forgive me, I have to say it: if public authorities and elected figures are going to play fast and loose, potentially, with large sums of public money, it is crucial that the public have trust in that institution or those public figures, but I do not believe that that trust exits when it comes to Transport for London or the current Mayor. I can speak ill of him now, but perhaps not in the new Parliament, should he be elected—no doubt you would be on your feet, Mr Deputy Speaker, and telling me to sit down. However, I do not believe that the conduct of public affairs by Boris Johnson over the past five years, or four years—of course he is going to continue breaking a promise in both offices—or the conduct of Transport for London—

[George Galloway]

I stand corrected, Mr Deputy Speaker.

That leads me to my last point. The Earls Court exhibition centre was a particular favourite of mine—I declare that interest: I have skated in it, I have shopped for my ideal home in it, I have listened to Bob Dylan in it several times. It was an act of vandalism to have it closed, but even worse was the loss of hundreds of TfL jobs—skilled jobs, real jobs, jobs that most Members have no idea how to do, jobs where men and women make things and fix things. Those jobs were cleansed out of central London. That was an absolute outrage.

Even worse than that is the fact that hundreds and hundreds of affordable homes were cleansed from Earls Court to be replaced by apartments so lavish and so expensive that even Members of Parliament could not afford to live in them, let alone the local people whose housing stock was devastated at a stroke. That was all done with virtually no public scrutiny or accountability, and certainly no offer was made to other public authorities for the use of this land, as was the case prior to legislation in the 1980s, as my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North said.

It really is an outrage—but it is, we fear, a sign of things to come. If this new clause is not passed and these amendments are not taken on board—no concession has been made from the other side—we fear that a sweetheart relationship between TfL and the Mayor, any Mayor, will exist to the detriment of the railway workers and of the bus workers whom I was proud to represent here in Parliament for many years as an MP sponsored by the Transport and General Workers Union. Local people, whose homes are razed as a result of these sweetheart deals, will be disadvantaged. What will be prejudiced most of all is the strategic need to keep London moving smoothly, economically and cheaply for the millions who depend on public transport.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I am pleased to speak in this debate, and I must say that I find the performance of the sponsor of this Bill utterly extraordinary. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) spoke for an hour or so and took many interventions. He put on the record many serious concerns about the Bill and took interventions quite happily from anyone and everyone. The hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) then moved a procedural motion to prevent my hon. Friend from continuing his speech. That procedural motion was, unfortunately, carried. The sponsor then spoke for the briefest possible time—about 10 minutes, taking two or three interventions—and said no more. The Minister has absolutely nothing whatever to say, yet there seems to be a determination on the Government side to prevent us from having a proper debate about new clauses 1 and 2 and the other amendments in the group.

I find it utterly extraordinary that the sponsor of a Bill that has huge implications for transport infrastructure developments and the people of London—4 million of whom use London underground at its busiest times every day, with many more using buses, overground interchanges and so forth—has so little to say about the crucial aspects of future planning and the possible disposal of assets. I think it is utterly extraordinary, and I would have thought that Transport for London would have briefed the hon. Member for Harrow East a bit better or got somebody to promote the Bill who was serious about promoting it and showed some proper knowledge and concern about the subject. The hon. Gentleman should be utterly ashamed of himself for his performance today. If he believes in this Bill, he presumably has something to say about it and presumably has some knowledge of its contents. It is not good enough to come here, mutter a few words and say, “I am the sponsor of this Bill.”

I hope this Bill does not pass. I hope we do not achieve the end of this Bill in this Parliament. Sadly, under parliamentary procedures, it can be transferred to the next Parliament. I hope to be here in the next Parliament, and I will continue my defence of access to public transport for the people of London and of their access to the assets that have been built up so carefully and so diligently by public servants of London Underground and later Transport for London. Whoever takes over the promotion of this Bill—the hon. Gentleman might no longer be with us after the next election—will, I hope, be somebody a bit more diligent than him in understanding its contents. I find what we have gone through thus far to be utterly unbelievable.

There is nothing very dramatic in new clause 1 that the Bill’s sponsor—perhaps he did not have a chance to read the new clause—could not have accepted or agreed to. It says simply:

“Within 3 months of…Royal Asset, TfL shall publish a list of non-operational assets, held by itself or a subsidiary”.

What possible problem could there be from that? It goes to say that TfL

“shall publish each year a list of non-operational assets that are under consideration for development where steps towards such development are planned to commence”.

We all have a right to know about publicly owned assets. Any self-respecting organisation should publish those assets. Local authorities have to publish them and do publish them, so what is so different about Transport for London in this respect?

--- Later in debate ---

[George Galloway]

A railroad.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Of running anything actually, but particularly a railroad, as my friend reminds me.

Something else that

“may be charged by a TfL subsidiary without the consent of the Secretary of State”

is, as sub-paragraph (m) states,

“property related to the use of land for commercial letting”.

That makes me very worried, because if it is a building that has been let our leased out by TfL, possibly at a very high rent, and it decides to sell it off and cash in on it, then the public income and the capital value are lost, and at the end of the lease the capital opportunity of doing something else with that building is also lost.

My local authority, the London borough of Islington, tries not to sell property. It would much rather maximise the income from it, but maintain the capital, so that it is its for the future and for future use. [Interruption.] Does my Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) wish to intervene?

--- Later in debate ---

[George Galloway]

Just before the hon. Gentleman concludes—and being mindful of your stricture, Mr Deputy Speaker—is not the point that this is a Bill to sell off the family silver, as Harold Macmillan famously put it, and we can only sell off the family silver once?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The stewardship of public assets is very important. As someone who believes in public enterprise and public endeavour, I have to concede that the London Passenger Transport Board was established under a Tory Government in 1933. Lord Ashfield was its first chairman and he did a fine job in promoting its development. So even then, in the depths of the recession in the 1930s, there was a consensus that the public ownership of assets mattered, and he stood up against a lot of private interests to achieve that. Let us preserve what we have got, and recognise that the future inevitably is very unpredictable.

I came into parliamentary politics at a time when London’s population was falling and bus and tube use was falling. I remember the then director of London Underground telling me how there were going to be fewer trains and fewer passengers and how LU was thinking about which assets it could get rid of because it did not need them. I cautioned against that, saying that it was a counsel of despair. I said that we needed more people on trains and buses and that fewer people in cars would lead to less congestion. That big public debate happened in London, and we moved into an era not of road building but of rail development and other improvements. London became the first capital city in which public transport usage started to go up; others have now followed.

I ask the Bill’s promoters to think more carefully about what they are doing and to think more carefully about the precious asset that they have and about how they can develop and protect it. I thank the Minister again for his preparedness to engage on the issues that I have raised tonight. I am really grateful to him for that, and I hope that we can make some progress. That is the kind of engagement that we would like to see on the Bill, instead of this peremptory refusal even to discuss the serious concerns that have been raised by a number of Members this evening.