TfL (Funding and Station Staffing)

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on securing this important debate. He is a tenacious advocate for better public transport and was right to say that London Underground’s quality of service is now under threat.

There are two closely related issues in the debate, and I would like to begin with the question of station staffing levels, because the staffing reductions on the underground weigh heavily on the minds of many Londoners who rely on current levels of customer service to undertake their daily journeys. Of course, that is to say nothing of those Londoners whose jobs are at risk.

Every passenger may experience inconvenience if staffing levels are reduced. How many of us have come across faulty barriers or ticket machines, but have known exactly where to find help? How many of us knew where to go for advice when a service was cancelled, especially late at night? Clearly, it was the ticket office. Just yesterday, I arrived on the platform down at Westminster to find services disrupted, so I could not travel by tube and needed a refund on my Oyster card. I knew that that service would be provided quickly and courteously by staff in the ticket office, and of course it was.

Such experiences are common to us all, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington set out very clearly, we know that Boris Johnson’s plans to close all ticket offices and cut 17% of station staff will hit disabled passengers particularly hard. These are passengers who Transport for All has warned could face new barriers in trying to travel to work, to see friends and family and to get out and about in the capital. According to Transport for London’s own equality impact assessment, customers with dyslexia will be particularly affected, as that is

“a disability that remains hidden when”

people are

“using a ticket office, but would potentially become known when”

they are

“requesting assistance at the ticket machine.”

If stations are left unstaffed, perceptions of safety will be damaged, discouraging some groups of passengers in particular from travelling. TfL’s own equality impact assessment states:

“Concerns about crime and antisocial behaviour tend to affect the travel patterns of women, BAME”—

black, Asian and minority ethnic—

“Londoners, younger people and…those on lower incomes more…than other groups”.

A number of my hon. Friends have described some of the circumstances that demonstrate exactly how important tube workers are in keeping stations safe and feeling safe.

Let us be clear. This is not a carefully managed, gradual transition to new working practices. All the ticket offices are due to close next year. That suggests that it is driven by a political timetable. These proposals are about McNulty-style cuts to the underground instead of putting passengers first. I well understand why my hon. Friends the Members for Derby North (Chris Williamson), for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) and for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) are worried about the implications for their local rail services. When almost 1,000 station staff are losing their jobs, it is simply not credible for the Mayor to say that that will not lead to any reduction in passenger service and safety standards.

[Chris Williamson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is also a matter of trust? I say that because the Mayor is on record as saying in March 2010:

“This Mayor takes his promises to Londoners extremely seriously. Every station that has a ticket office will continue to have one.”

He made that solemn pledge; he could not have been clearer. This is a matter of trust, is it not?

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. I would say that the Mayor has now lost any credibility that he might once have had on this issue. Not only did he make those comments in 2010 but in his 2008 manifesto he was unequivocal:

“We will halt all such ticket office closures immediately.”

I know that the Mayor has had a high-profile falling-out with the Deputy Prime Minister, but perhaps he should have some sympathy with him, because he was photographed signing a petition that called for an end to

“the closure of station ticket offices”

and the reopening of

“those which have already been closed.”

In a particularly florid turn of phrase, the Mayor said at the time:

“Consider the threat has been lifted, annihilated, vaporised, liquidated, exterminated, removed and obliterated as of now”.

He later said to Assembly Members:

“The first and most important point to make is no ticket offices will be closed...They are not going to be closed...The answer to the number of ticket office closures is nil”.

On the very same day, a leaked TfL report revealed that closures were indeed being planned, and in November we had confirmation that all ticket offices were to be shut, so Boris Johnson began as the Mayor who said that he would save every ticket office and he will finish as the Mayor who closes every one of them.

There are other long-term considerations that have to be addressed, including the future of London Overground which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) rightly said, is an excellent service. Services and stations on the West Anglia lines are due to be transferred from Greater Anglia to London Overground next year, and commuters on those lines will be hoping that the promises made on investment and improvements in service quality will be upheld. As the Campaign for Better Transport has powerfully argued, the highly visible improvements that London Overground made in 2007, which included putting more staff on stations, have improved passenger satisfaction, driven up revenue and transformed the image of many local services.

As Ministers help to oversee the transition of the lines, will they satisfy themselves that this round of job losses is not the first step towards returning to the poorly staffed, poorly maintained and threatening stations that characterised the old Silverlink franchise? If this Minister can give that commitment today, this question must surely apply: why take that approach to the overground but not the underground?

Unfortunately, recent relations between the Government and the Mayor’s office do not give us cause to hold out much hope for the future. Several of my hon. Friends have raised concerns about TfL’s funding. The current dispute between the Treasury and the Mayor reflects poorly on both parties, but as Labour Members understand, ordinary Londoners are the ones set to pay the price.

I will give some background. David Goldstone, TfL’s chief finance officer, told London assembly members that

“the Mayor made the decision about the average”

increase

“across all TfL services being at RPI…at that time we understood the travel cards would have the national RPI-plus-1 formula applied. The Chancellor then announced that national rail would be at RPI.”

This has left TfL with a budget shortfall of £13 million to £14 million a year, and the late application of fare rises this year—a result of the confusion between Whitehall and the Mayor’s office—means that the bill could rise to £20 million in 2014. There is an apparent refusal by Treasury Ministers to fund that hole in the Mayor’s budget, and that has naturally led to suspicions that personality politics may be at work.

Can the Minister provide clarification and say whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer informed the Mayor of London that he intended to restrict fare rises to RPI before the announcement was made? Will the Treasury fund the shortfall, and if not, what estimate has he made of the impact on TfL’s services that cuts of this value could have? Is he in contact with the Mayor and the Treasury on this matter, and what representations has he made to them? I hope that the Minister will address those questions and the questions raised by other hon. Members, but the truth is that there are enough questions on this issue and these plans to fill a much longer debate.

With fewer staff available to manage congestion during peak periods, it seems likely that overcrowding will start to have a greater impact on operational performance. Violent crime is unfortunately on the rise on the underground network, and visibility will be reduced, as up to 17% of station staff are set to lose their jobs. Staff will be carrying more expensive equipment as they replace ticket-office functions, which could make them targets for abuse and theft. Of course, the staffing reductions will be much higher at some stations, raising the prospect that individual members of staff could be left in unsafe situations, with little flexibility for back-up, particularly when there are problems on the lines.

However, it does not seem that the Mayor or TfL have planned for these problems, nor does there seem to be an awareness of the practical challenges that unattended ticket machines and barriers pose. We all know that that is not infallible technology and that without constant supervision, disruption can soon mount up for passengers. I am concerned that passengers will not necessarily be able immediately to find staff to help them if they are not in the location where they should be able to find them.

Although most of the matters we have discussed today are the responsibility of the Greater London authority, there is an important role for Ministers in assessing the impact of the planned cuts, clarifying the position on the £20 million black hole in TfL’s budget and ensuring that this chaotic situation never arises again, because Londoners deserve better than this.