Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
Greater Greater London Authority London Authority London Assembly
Minutes of the meeting of the London Assembly held on Wednesday,
6 September 2000 at 10 a.m.
In Room AG16 at Romney House, Marsham Street, Westminster
Present:
Trevor Phillips (Chair)
Sally Hamwee (Deputy Chair) Jennette Arnold
Victor Anderson Tony Arbour
Richard Barnes John Biggs
Louise Bloom Graham Tope
Brian Coleman Lynne Featherstone
Roger Evans Toby Harris
Nicky Gavron Meg Hillier
Samantha Heath Andrew Pelling
Jennifer Jones Elizabeth Howlett
Eric Ollerenshaw Bob Neill
Angie Bray Darren Johnson
Valerie Shawcross
16jul00version 1 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
00/50 APOLOGIES
Apologies for absence were received from Len Duvall and for lateness from Nicky Gavron, Roger Evans and Bob Neill.
00/51 MINUTES OF MEETINGS HELD ON 24, 27 and 28 JULY 2000
The Minutes of these meetings were confirmed as a correct record subject to the following amendments:
24 July 2000
That Graham Tope and Elizabeth Howlett be recorded as attending the meeting.
Minute 35/00 - replace "group" with "party" in the last line of the first paragraph.
That the Deputy Chair be given authority to approve the correction of various typographical errors in the minutes.
28 July
Resolution 3 (3) (iv) to read:
To obtain Leading Counsel's opinion where necessary on all of (i) to (iii) above.
Resolution 3 (3) (v) to read:
To act and instruct the relevant Chief Officers to act, on Leading Counsels' advice including recruitment based on that advice.
00/52 CHAIR’S BUSINESS
With the agreement of the meeting, the Chair deferred consideration of the minutes of the previous three Assembly meetings until the end of the proceedings, and announced the intention to allow two urgent items:
(i) Notting Hill Carnival
The Chair introduced the matter of the Notting Hill Carnival by referring to the deep concern over the events that took place there over the weekend of XXXX. He invited the constituency member, Angie Bray, and the Chair of the MPA to make statements.
Angie Bray, on behalf of the whole Assembly, offered the families of the two people who had been murdered, Members’ deepest condolences and, reflecting also on the fact that there had been a number of people wounded in other incidents, extended 16jul00version 2 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
members’ sympathies to them as well. She spoke of the development of the Carnival from small beginnings to its present status as an international event, and a testament to the dedication of the local community, the local Council, the Police and others.who have worked with and to get it going. It had, however, become a target for street crime, leaving the local community to pick up the tab at the end of the event. Angie Bray expressed the hope that the Mayor’s inquiry would take a serious look at getting the event right for the future. Further, she expressed the hope that the local Council and the Police would be used in the inquiry.
In conclusion, Angie Bray asked that the inquiry be undertaken quickly, as preparations were imminent for the 2001 Carnival.
Toby Harris echoed the condolences to the families of the two people who had been murdered, and recognised that the problems at the Notting Hill Carnival reflected the sheer volume of numbers involved and the scale and success of the event. He recognised that the vast majority of those who went had a very happy and enjoyable experience.
Toby Harris found it entirely helpful that the Mayor had agreed to set up an inquiry, and hoped it would be broad ranging and speedy because of the early need for decisions about the arrangements for 2001.
He outlined some of the issues which he believed the inquiry should consider and hoped that it would involve Angie Bray herself as the Constituency Assembly Member for the area concerned and a representative of the Police Authority as well as the Police Service.
Toby Harris concluded with the confirmation that all concerned wanted there to be a Notting Hill Carnival and for it to be the happy event that most people experienced this year, but the prime concern must be public safety. That had to be the overriding objective, and he was confident that the Mayor’s inquiry would produce proposals which would enable that to be fulfilled in future years.
The Chair stated that, in the discussions held over the weekend, the question of the Assembly membership of the inquiry was raised and the conclusion was that the constituency member concerned should be invited to be a member of that inquiry and that the inquiry would report very quickly within the space of six weeks or so.
(ii) Title of GLA Members
The Chair reminded everyone that the abbreviated suffix for Assembly Members was GLA and not other variations such as LAM which had been used in some instances by the media.
00/53 DECLARATIONS OF INTERESTS
There was none.
00/54 TRANSPORT
16jul00version 3 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
The Chair welcomed the following to the meeting:
Dave Wetzel, Deputy Chair, Transport for London Richard Smith, Director of Integration, Transport for London Derek Smith, Managing Director, London Underground Mike Strzelecki, Director of Safety, Quality and Environment, London Underground Tony Maguire, Director of Communications, London Underground Mark Watts, Mayor’s Policy Adviser on Transport
The Assembly also had before them paper from Derek Smith on safety on the Underground (Attached as Appendix A to the minutes).
The Chair invited Dave Wetzel and Derek Smith to make opening statements which would be followed by questions from Assembly members.
DAVE WETZEL
Thank you, Chair. When I first got the invitation we discussed the legal requirements. I understand that had I refused to come today, I would have been facing three months or three years in jail and a massive fine. Talking to Trevor on the phone, he said no it won’t be anything like that, it is just the stocks in Marsham Street and the people throwing the tomatoes. So I am here.
Much as I want to, I cannot tell you what will be in the Mayor’s transport strategy because as you know it has not yet been published for consultation. So all I can do is first of all thank you for the invitation and I welcome the chance to take part in your democratic process and to give you some idea of my personal vision for transport in London.
My first feelings are an impatience for change. I think London has suffered too long and I actually am very keen to see that things do change and change dramatically for Londoners and for all visitors to London as well. I think what the Labour Government has done in creating the GLA and then creating Transport for London under the Mayor gives us all a marvellous opportunity to improve London’s transport system. If we do not all grab it with both hands and make the most of it, not only will Londoners not forgive us, but I think history would not forgive us.
My view of transport is first of all that I want to see as little transport as possible. I actually want to see local communities flourish, where people can enjoy local jobs, local libraries, local hospitals and use their feet to get around whenever they can. I want to see us use more things like video conferencing and tele- working so that some journeys become unnecessary. I want to see good facilities provided, particularly for pedestrians and cyclists, to encourage people not to have to use energy consuming transport systems. But having said that, I want London to have a world-class public transport system. We are a world- class city and at the present time, our transport system lets us down in more ways than one. I want to see our system safe and of high quality. I want people to actually choose to use public transport rather than have to sit in their car. 16jul00version 4 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
Steve Norris told me the story the other day of a Tory Government Minister who was caught in a traffic jam and he decided to use the underground. I do not know how true it is, but he said what is an underground. Anyway when he got down to the platform he was asking which car was the restaurant car. I think it does make a difference if you have people like you and me and Ken that use public transport actually responsible to Londoners for trying to deliver a good a public transport system.
I also want a system that is frequent, reliable, integrated, environmentally friendly and economic, both in terms of fares for the individual and its operating costs. I was going to include predictable but of course I realise that the system we have got now is predictable. My journey here today was predictable. I got off the Piccadilly Line train and on to the District Line. It was only on the District Line that they announced that there were trains queuing to get into Earls Court station and there would be some delay. Same old story. But I want a system that people actually do not talk about in the pub. I have never been in a pub and heard people say “do you know, this morning I switched on the tap and lovely clean drinking water came out." You expect it, it happens and I want our transport system to be like that.
Personally, and I am not speaking on behalf of the Mayor or Transport for London, I would like to see a free fare system and not have all the trees chopped down in order to provide people with bits of cardboard and all the chemicals produced to make bits of plastic and money wasted on administering fares and we could get rid of a whole host of crime in one go. Nobody would be prosecuted for not paying their fares. I would like to see public transport paid for by taxation on land values. We have just built the Jubilee Line and the land owners on the whole length of the Jubilee Line are rubbing their hands in glee as their land values go up because of our efforts. The same thing happened when Nigel Brokes and I actually came to an agreement to go to Government to build the Docklands Light Railway. The first thing I said to him is "I suppose you are going to get all your chums out now buying land along the lengths of the route because it is obvious, once you plan to build a light railway in Docklands it is going to influence land values" and of course it did. That is what happened with the Victoria Line in the ‘60’s and the Metropolitan Line whenever that was built out into the shires. So we should not just be creating those land values, but collecting them and putting that money back into the public transport system and into other essential services.
We need to use the river. We need to integrate our taxis so that people see taxis as a part of the commonwealth of public transport. I want to see car clubs so that people can actually live a life without a car, but if they have got an essential journey and they need a small van, they can hire it from the car club. And if they want to influence somebody and take out a sports car then they can hire that from the car club as well.
We are very keen to build new lines and the Mayor sees public transport capital projects as one of his priorities. Regarding roads and road safety, 10 people per day, about 3,500 per year, are killed on our roads each year. If that was 16jul00version 5 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
happening because of fumes coming out of drains, The Sun and the media here today would be demanding action be taken. But because road accidents are scattered all over the place, people just seem to accept it as if it is an act of nature. We do need to address the whole question of road accidents and improve our road safety. I am not ideologically opposed to any new road building, but I would only support any new roads that help with regeneration, help with road safety, encourage bus use, pedestrians and cyclists. I do not believe that we can road build our way out of the traffic problems of London. If we were to adopt the solutions of the 1950’s and the 1960’s, London would just grind to a halt because we all know that new roads generate more traffic and it is not the answer to the problems that we face here in London.
DEREK SMITH
Thank you Chair. We welcome the opportunity of coming along here today to address the GLA and respond to questions because as you know, although we are currently accountable to Central Government, next year we will be part of the Mayor’s portfolio and we will be coming here regularly I have no doubt.
Let me just give some background. I am the Managing Director of London Underground and I am accountable for the performance and the safety of the tube network. I have some additional tasks as well which is to see through the Public Private Partnership to whatever its conclusion might be and to ensure that there is a smooth transfer of the tube to Transport for London next year at the due time. I was appointed in 1999 and since then I have restructured the tube into four publicly wholly owned companies. I have also appointed a new team of directors and your Chair referred to them. On my left Mike Strzelecki who is responsible for safety, quality and environment systems within the underground. On my right is Tony McGuire, who is the Director of Communications. Because we have a huge communication task with our customers, with Stakeholders and with the 18,000 people who work on the Underground network.
I have also reconfigured the senior and the middle management of the Underground and we have begun the long and arduous task of creating a tube system which is concerned about the needs and expectations of all its customers. Now we know what our customers on the tube want because we researched it and it is not rocket science anyway. They want it to be fast. In the central area the tube remains by far the fastest means of getting about. But they want other things as well. They want it to be integrated because people do not just use the tube for their journeys. They have to use a mix of modes to get where they want to go. It needs to be safe and welcoming and that is a high priority. It needs to be dependable. Now what I mean by dependable is a form of consistency, that we are meeting the expectations of customers in terms of their journey experience and most of all they want it to be reliable. We are better at some of those things than others. But we certainly wish to and intend to improve our game. 16jul00version 6 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
I have set the tube the task of making our customers believe that we care for their journey. What I mean by that is if we are achieving those things that I have just said about fast, integrated and simple, safe and welcoming, reliable, dependable, then people will believe that we care for their journey. If we do not achieve those things, then they will not. To do so, our performance and our approach to customers will need to change very radically and become much more consistent. We will need not only consistently reliable assets, but staff who are well trained and well motivated.
You have received from us a short note on the approach to safety in the tube. Responsibility for the tube safety now and in the future remains with London Underground. That is the public sector company that is responsible for all the train and station services to customers. London Underground, in terms of the law, is the infrastructure controller and the responsibility for effecting discharge of that duty is mine and that also will remain in the future. Now by any standards the underground is a safe network. As can be seen in the paper that was circulated, our risk assessment showed that it is 11 times more safe than it was 1992. The risk of fatality on the network is 1:186,000,000 journeys. In terms of security rather than travelling safety, it is three times more safe to be on the tube, although it may not feel like it, than to be on a street in London. Nevertheless, there are things that we need to do about safety in the tube because saying the tube is safe is never enough. Complacency is safety’s great enemy and it undermines it. So we have embarked upon an overhaul of our safety systems and practices borne out of a need to do so, not only for the Public Private Partnership but also a recognition that our safety practices on the ground can and must improve. In a sense it is all part of that consistency equation to which I referred to earlier.
We, the new management at London Underground, face an enormous challenge. It is not just the task that is created by the ever growing demand. We are now approaching an average of, on a normal work day, about 3 million people, 20 million journeys a week. But we have also got the task of taking an organisation, resented by many of its customers because they have little option but to use I, and raise performance in terms of reliability and consistency. To do so will take a huge commitment from all of us in terms of energy, time and indeed the mone. It will take large sums of money and it will take a while. Now if we commit ourselves to that, and to the grind of doing it, and it will be a grind, then we can succeed. But you cannot expect instant results. Results will come over time.
I should just add one small thing to that statement. There has been a certain amount of press speculation about changing the "roundle" on the tube. We are not and we have never had any intention of doing so. Now the "roundle" has been with us nearly 100 years and is recognised world-wide as one of the most potent brand symbols. Anyone seeking to change it would spend a lot of money, tens or hundreds of millions and probably want a test of their sanity.
CHAIR
Please ask your questions to Mr Wetzel and I am going to start with the Chair of Transport Policy, Lynne Featherstone. 16jul00version 7 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
LYNNE FEATHERSTONE
Thank you for coming here today and sharing your vision of transport in London. You highlight that Londoners are impatient for change and indeed that is undoubtedly the case. But I think a concern that I have particularly with regards to the policy of congestion charging for example is that the impatience for change on the Mayor’s part might lead to an inappropriate timetable for its delivery. Londoners need change so what can you do to improve transport? Can you deliver those improvements in public transport? Can you actually deliver prior to any congestion charging coming in? I welcome the personal vision, but what I had hoped for was an understanding of your role as a Vice Chair of Transport for London. How does the structure work? Lastly whether we will have access to the papers and be allowed to attend those meetings of the five business boards that are set up underneath the main board for Transport for London?
16jul00version 8 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
DAVE WETZEL
If I answer the last point first and that is they will not be public meetings. We did invite you as GLA members as individuals to come and sit on those boards, and for whatever reason, only one of you has seen fit to accept and that is Nicky (Gavron). She is coming on to our Integration Board. If you want to know about particular policy items that are being discussed at that level, then if you approach me I will do my best to give you that information. But for the first time ever, theboard that is controlling London Buses and some time next year the Underground as well, the Transport for London Board, will meet in public and is doing so and will continue to meet in public except for commercially sensitive items.
LYNNE FETHERSTONE
We were invited to take part, but many of us felt that there should be a division between the executive role and the scrutiny role, and therefore we should not take part. We are not on the boards but I do think that most of us would like the right to attend those meetings and certainly have the papers from them. We are Assembly members.
DAVE WETZEL
I will take your point back to my colleagues on Transport for London and it is something that we will discuss and consider and I will reply to you.
On the other matters as regards my role. I am a non-executive Vice Chair. I Chair the Management Board which sits below the main Board and to which the other Business Boards report. You have got a structure in the document that I gave you on page 2 that shows the relationships and although it does not include the Business Boards, if you look at the job titles of the individuals then they more or less represent the Business Boards that have been created or are in the process of being created. The Business Boards then report to the Management Board which I Chair. The Standing Orders state that I sign all Chair’s actions and in my absence, we have got other members, including Ken Livingstone, who can sign Chair’s actions. I am full time at Transport for London and I use my time to, for example, introduce equal opportunites. To try to create customer first culture rather than what I seem to have inherited which is a culture of "we know best" and the customer and others just have to listen. We need to be an organisation that listens to our customers, that listens to the client groups around us and tries to meet as many needs as possible. In doing that, obviously you please some people and upset others. I have held joint meetings with directors and trade unionists to try and create a culture of togetherness. I think it is very important that we kick off the way we intend to go on and I do not want our organisation to be an adversarial organisation. I want it to be one that works on the basis of co-operation and values every person within the organisation whether it is the person doing the vitally important job of picking up the litter at bus stations or whether it is the person who sits round the Board table.
LYNNE FEATHERSTONE 16jul00version 9 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
Can we go back to the first part of my question, which was whether within the proposed time-tables for delivering congestion charging you can actually deliver improved public transport for Londoners. I think Londoners are very frightened that unless [public transport improves in advance of congestion charging, they will have the worst of both worlds. They will not be able to get onto public transport and they will be charged the fees if they use their car.
DAVE WETZEL
I am not avoiding your question, I was just working backwards because that is the way my mind works. So expect a lot of buses to be running backwards next week! On congestion charging we have brought Derek Turner who can answer specific technical questions about the timing and things like that. As regards public transport, we are determined to improve public transport in London. This needs investment and it would have been easier if the Government had given us more of our money in Year 1 rather than Year 3. We do need to spend more money both this year and next year so our budget is going to be very, very tight. But nevertheless we are making changes and we want to use bus priority particularly, to improve buses. I have a vision of a cashless bus where no fares are collected at all on the bus in order to speed it up. We are looking at ways this might be implemented . This is something that I have actually changed my mind on in these last few weeks because originally I wanted things like one day travel cards and one day bus passes sold on the bus because of the nonsense of having to go to a shop and miss your bus while you are getting the ticket that you want to use on the bus. I am now convinced, because of the assaults on drivers for piddling amounts of cash, and because of the delay time at bus stops while drivers collect fares, that it is essential that we bring in more conductors and eventually get rid of cash collection on buses altogether.
Regarding bus priority, there is already the London Bus Initiative to improve a whole range of bus routes. I am also very keen to look at the terms and conditions of drivers. There is a huge shortage of licensed drivers operating buses in London. There are plenty of people with licenses but they tend to be doing all sorts of other jobs, not driving buses because of the poor conditions and pay. We are looking at basic things like making sure there are toilets at the end of a bus route, (something that people seemed to have neglected) and consulting with the trade unions on how we can improve their working conditions.
CHAIR
Can I just say Dave, you seem to have some difficulty answering Lynne’s core question. Are there circumstances in which you would advise the Mayor not to bring in congestion charging because public transport had not improved to your satisfaction?
DAVE WETZEL
16jul00version 10 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
I am determined that that situation should not arise and so that advice would not be necessary.
CHAIR
Are there circumstances in which you imagine you would give that advice? Or have you simply decided congestion charging come what may?
DAVE WETZEL
I have decided that public transport will be improved. The Mayor and others will actually make the final decision on congestion charging. But if you have a specific question about the time-table...
CHAIR
It is a very simple question. Can you see circumstances in which you would say to the Mayor public transport is not good enough to fulfil your pledge that public transport would be improved before congestion charging is brought in?
DAVE WETZEL
If there was some catastrophe on public transport, then yes, the answer has to be yes. But I do not envisage any great catastrophe. We are going to improve public transport in line with what the Mayor and Londoners need. We cannot go forward the way we are at the present time, with just more and more cars coming into London. Queen Victoria could travel quicker across London in a horse and cart I was going to say, but I do not suppose she ever travelled in a cart, than we can on a bus today. We have got to improve it and we will improve it.
JOHN BIGGS
I would like to explore your ability to answer questions about the services you are going to provide a little further. It seems to me it is very easy for you to say that Derek Smith is the "wicked witch of the west" and that as soon as you come in everything will be fine. I am not convinced he is the wicked witch of the west but that is obviously an opinion you are free to hold. But the question it begs is similar to what Trevor and Lynne were asking, how are services actually going to be improved by you when you are in charge of them and if I could ask four specific questions. The first is, as I understand it the background to congestion charging is that you want to reduce car use in London by 15%. Now that requires a pretty enormous change in the way that people travel to work. Can you tell us in a few sentences how you are going to set the ball rolling towards people seriously considering using buses which they quite often do not consider using at the moment, with confidence in the future?
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The second question is about municipalisation of bus services. In your opinion, is municipalisation the best way of securing improvements in bus services in London because the evil capitalists who are running them at the moment are too busy lining their pockets and playing golf to actually take people on the buses. Is that your view?
The third question is about the incident the other day on the Central Line when it broke down and clearly things aren’t satisfactory. Clearly none of us were satisfied when Dennis Tunnicliffe said that London underground services were about as good as they were going to get in an interview earlier this year. I would like to hear Mr Smith’s comments on that later on. But what do you think you could do in the next couple of years to change the Central Line services so that people do not get stuck in it for two hours, do not need hospital treatment and have a decent quality of service?
The final question is about your will to control your Chair, which is, with apologies to Val Shawcross, the Hungerford Bridge question. Hungerford Bridge has clearly got a problem and clearly needs additional money, but as I understand it, the Mayor of London has announced that money will be made available. We haven’t yet worked out where it comes from, but a substantial chunk of it is transport money. Now if that money is being spent on the Hungerford Bridge, which I would like to see rebuilt, it means that there will be money not spent on other transport schemes and can you tell us what those will be and how you are planning for that?
DAVE WETZEL
The first point is how to do we improve public transport and get the 15% car use reduction. I have got no problem with people owning cars. Actually I have one myself and in London we have a lower car ownership than Paris and yet we have a much higher car usage than Paris. I think the major reason for that is because the public transport system in Paris is a lot cheaper and it is a lot better than it is here in London. We are not going to wave a magic wand and change everything over night. You cannot reinstate decades of investment neglect in the public transport system in a few short years. We do have major plans, capital plans for improving the public transport system and the building of the Jubilee Line shows what can be achieved. But, of course, it was achieved at a price and the price was that maintenance on other sectors of the tube system were actually neglected in order to pay for that. So money was diverted because the Government would not put in enough fresh money. Now this Government has committed itself to putting in fresh money and my only complaint is not that we haven’t got enough, but about the phasing of the money. It is leaving us desperately short in this year and next year. We can improve things like integration of public transport. How many times do you hear “last night I stepped off a train at Richmond and just saw the bus disappearing down the road”. Let me say I disassociate myself totally with the comments you seem to have credited to me about Derek Smith. I am very impressed with Derek Smith. He uses the public transport system that he operates. He got rid of his chauffeur driven cars a long time ago . He is a new fresh face in the Underground and he is doing his best to get through that 25 miles of permafrost that exists in any bureaucracy, but particularly the underground bureaucracy. He is doing this in order to create a climate of change and I support what he is doing. It is unfortunate that he has inherited a system that has suffered from this lack of investment and I think it is very unfair of you to try and put words into my mouth. 16jul00version 12 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
We have ordered 140 new buses for the streets of London. That is an important way of improving the quality. They are low floor, wheelchair accessible buses. That access is important for everybody. It is not just for wheelchair users, it is for travellers with their luggage, it is for shoppers with their shopping bags, it is for somebody like me who has just had an operation on his knee and it is much easier to get on a low floor bus than some of the other buses. It means getting getting on and off more quickly and spending less time at the bus stop. People get off the bus quicker and there is therefore a lower dwell time at bus stops. It seems the Police are not particularly interested when you look at their targets in enforcing bus lanes . I know the passenger users committee now called LTUC has actually written and commented on that fact, but if they are not interested in policing the streets and preventing cars from using our bus lanes and cars do not stop at bus stops, then we actually have the powers to do it ourselves.
On municipalisation of bus services London Buses actually had a difficult situation where Harris Bus collapsed and it brought in the administrators and worked with them during the earlier part of this year. Then, in March I think it was, they actually created East Thames Buses to take over Harris Bus and we were depressed by the number of public complaints and complaints from trade unionists about the service so we have appointed a consultant, who was a former Managing Director of one of the London Bus subsidiary companies to do an investigation for us. His report will be with us in a couple of weeks. But one of the things that he alerted me to was the fact that we were haemorrhaging our staff because the staff didn’t think London Buses was in it for the long term. So I issued a press release to make it absolutely clear that we are running East Thames in the long term. There is a long term future for the staff and that has helped dramatically with recruitment and retention of staff.
JOHN BIGGS
Can you give us a yes/no on whether you want to remunicipalise the London Bus services and then perhaps you could give a three line answer to the Central Line question.
DAVE WETZEL
That wasn’t the question you asked me. But the answer to that question is 'yes' but we have got better things to spend our money on than buying loads of buses and depots from the private sector and I am happy that we work with the private sector. Quite honestly, companies like Stagecoach today are providing one of the best services in London.
JOHN BIGGS
Can I ask just one final question of Mr Wetzel which is a follow up to his counter about my comments about Mr Smith. My recollection is that when a Northern Line train ran backwards for a mile or so, the Mayor of London attributed this to the conduct of the 16jul00version 13 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
"jokers who run London Underground". Now will he disassociate himself from those comments?
DAVE WETZEL
I will disassociate myself from those comments and earlier you quoted Dennis Tunnicliffe and I have had a meeting with Dennis Tunnicliffe and I intend to meet him again, and one of the points he made to me about that article in The Standard was what he was saying that London Underground on its best day is as good as it is going to get. Well I want us to make every day its best day.
JENNEY JONES
I am quite concerned about some of the safety issues do to with the privatisation of the tube but I was hoping that other people here would pick up on those and I thought I would just go for two of the things that you have actually mentioned in your presentation. That is road safety and reducing people’s need to travel. You probably know there was a Metropolitan Police report survey done recently that showed that where drivers were actually able to get up to the legal limit of 30mph, they actually completely ignored it and some were caught doing more than twice the legal speed limit. What sort of measures are you going to develop to combat that sort of thing?. The second issue is what sort of input will you have on the planning process to actually make people realise that reducing the need to travel is even better than ploughing millions into improving the travelling arrangements?
DAVE WETZEL
Policing is the answer to the speeding enforcement, as indeed it is to other road enforcement measures, particularly to help our buses get through with people not using our bus lanes and our bus stops. I am examining ways forward with Toby Harris. There are three choices it seems to me. One choice is that the Police allocate a sensible percentage of their budget on street enforcement which has been reduced over the years and is much less than other major cities and that they do that voluntarily or we do it through some sort of contract similar to the Red Route Contract that Derek Turner introduced. A second option is that we do create our own traffic warden type force. A third option is that we use the British Transport Police.
Initially I was being told that you can only use British Transport Police on the streets within one mile of a station. So I was intending to designate every bus stop as a station. But I am now advised that the Act does actually give us powers to use the British Transport Police in furtherance of the activities of Transport for London. So that means that we could have our own police force on the streets of London. We could not afford to do that in the next two years, that is for sure, and whether it is necessary or not or whether it is the perfect option, I am not sure. I share with Toby the view that if there is a major incident, you want the Police to be able to take their officers who are working on traffic off to work on to the major incident whether it is a crime or whatever.
16jul00version 14 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
But what I complain about is when they do it 365 days of the year and not just three or four days a year.
Planning decisions are a little bit outside my remit but wherever I get an opportunity to speak and meet decision makers, I do urge them to actually think about the effects of the planning decisions they are making. Particularly places like Croydon where they are putting in huge car parks in new office buildings, that does not help us and it is also disingenuous when we have just spent millions on a tram for Croydon that they are still allowing these huge car parks. I am not just picking on Croydon because there are other boroughs that do exactly the same thing. It does seem to me that somehow when a health authority decides that it is going to close local hospitals and just have one big general hospital and expects everybody to travel to it, it benefits their budget. But they should be paying the petrol for the people that come by car and the bus fares for the people that come by bus, and then maybe then they would make different decisions about their local hospitals.
BOB NEILL
Would you describe yourself as a world-class Transport Manager?
DAVE WETZEL
No I am not a Transport Manager. I am an ex-politician.
BOB NEILL
On the basis of your appointment by the Mayor, we might think you are still a politician and that is the basis that you are here is not it? You are simply here as the Mayor’s political acolyte.
DAVE WETZEL
I am a non-executive member of the Transport for London Board. I do not manage Transport for London and in fact we are seeking world-class managers through our advertising process which included the New York Herald Tribune and we are already long listing for those posts and hopefully we will be making appointments shortly and they will be, I am sure, excellent appointments. Those are the Managers. Those are the people that are going to be paid to operate the system.
BOB NEILL
Your presence as a salaried and full time executive answerable only to the Mayor means that these world-class managers are likely to have to answer to you. Do you think your presence is likely to assist in the recruitment of world-class managers to run London’s transport system? 16jul00version 15 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
DAVE WETZEL
I am not just answerable to the Mayor. I would not be here this morning if that were the case. I am not the Transport for London Board. The Transport for London Board is a mixture of academics , trade unionists, business people, transport enthusiasts, people with disabilities and people like me who have come from a political background.
BOB NEILL
What do you think you have learned since 1985 when you were last responsible for Transport in London?
DAVE WETZEL
I have learned that transport for people with disabilities is a human right and the GLC thought that by providing Taxicard and dial-a-ride we were meeting 90% of the needs of people with disabilities. That is not the case and I was very impressed when I was Director of DART by a comment from a middle aged women who as a young person went to Vancouver with her wheelchair and used a public service bus for the first time and described how different it was being able to travel on a vehicle that everybody else uses. So that is certainly one of the most important things. I introduced the first scheduled wheel chair accessible bus route in London, possibly in the UK, when as Leader of Hounslow Council we introduced the H20 service. I think that is probably the most important thing that I learned since 1985.
BOB NEILL
There are a few more questions but I will keep them very short. I understand what you said about your interest in disability but beyond that, in what respects has your philosophy towards transport changed since 1985, if at all?
DAVE WETZEL
It has changed quite a lot, particularly on the question of congestion charging. In the 1970’s and 1980’s it was called road pricing but that is torn out of my vocabulary now. My attitude has changed a lot. I used to feel sorry for the poor guy in his Cortina in those days who couldn’t afford to pay the congestion charge. I do realise now that it is something that we should be looking at. It is not the sole answer but it is a part of a total armoury that any good transport system should have in a major city.
BOB NEILL
Do you still believe in a £50 congestion charge? 16jul00version 16 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
DAVE WETZEL
Yes I do actually.
BOB NEILL
That is a serious answer is it?
DAVE WETZEL
No it is a bit of a joke and I said it on TV as a bit of a joke as well.
BOB NEILL
You see that concerns me. Here you are running this world-class operation. When are we to know when you are joking and when you are being serious?
DAVE WETZEL
I think that is for your judgement and your perception. I joked about some things but I am very serious about improving public transport for London.
BOB NEILL
One final short point. Will you make all the circumstances regarding the acquisition of the former Harris operation which is now East London Buses, particularly the financial terms, the details of any liabilities or debts which may have been taken on by London Buses Limited available to members of this Assembly and will you at some point consider how you reconcile the long term operation by London Buses Limited of a bus operation with their position as a regulatory body? Have you considered that and will you make those matters public?
DAVE WETZEL
I will seek advice about letting out commercial information into the public sector and come back to you on that. As regards the latter point I think it is very unhealthy that the people who are running East Thames Buses are the same people that blow the whistle and impose penalties on all operators, including East Thames if they do not deliver. At the Transport for London Board meeting this coming Friday, I will be suggesting an alternative structure in which we create - I do not want to use the word a Chinese wall because it is more than that - a different structure so that the operators of East Thames actually report to the main Bus Board and not to London Bus Services Limited which is the company that has to regulate all the tenders and meet the private companies that operate those tenders and impose the penalties.
VALERIE SHAWCROSS
16jul00version 17 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
I hope you would agree that even a humble politician running an organisation does actually have a responsibility to make sure there are proper systems in place and the thing I am most interested in at the moment is the issue of safety. You talked about changing the culture within an organisation and I hope it is obvious that safety is not just a question of investment of cash and equipment. It is also about training standards, about competencies of staff, about the culture and the motivation within the organisation. What plans have you put in place to make sure that during what I think will be quite a risky period for any organisation, a transition period, that you will be achieving 100% safety culture within Transport for London. Do you have a timetable for doing that and do you have performance targets that are going to bring assurance to people in London that you are completely on top of the need to make sure this organisation is going to be safe in the future?
DAVE WETZEL
I agree with what Derek said: you cannot achieve 100% safety. Even if you stay in bed all day you are not guaranteed you are not going to die in bed. But we need to go for as safe a system as we can practicably afford. I want us to have a safety audit done of the parts of Transport for London that we are already responsible for, like the river services, the buses, the Public Carriage Office, Street Management and the other parts of Transport for London. I have already spoken to Derek and indeed others about this. There are lots of consultants in this field but we want to be sure that we choose one that is applicable to our needs and can deliver. So we want to do a safety audit as we proceed and that would include the Underground when we get control of it. We are creating a Health and Safety Committee at Transport for London and I am trying to recruit the best outsiders available in the safety field as well as people from within Transport for London’s own resources. One of the things I am looking at, and have not yet discussed with Ken, is the possibility of one very senior appointment responsible for safety and nothing else. We have got all these outside agencies, like the Health and Safety Executive, who have their role but safety has to be owned by the Line Managers and by individuals and dare I say, by the customers on our system. The sort of people that throw tin cans on to railway lines are not particularly concerned about safety. Safety is something that all of us has to own and I agree with you, that it has to be 100% part of the culture. It is not easy to achieve. It will be done by training. It will be done by rules and regulations and hopefully it will be done by recruiting the sort of people to Transport for London that share our vision. Our vision is, and I have made it my number one point when I talked about vision, the first thing for a world public transport system is that it must be a safe system.
VALERIE SHAWCROSS
The first thing that I hear is that you are in the business of auditing which is about checking what is wrong at the moment and you are not using the existing information and documentation. There is quite a lot of information coming from the Health and Safety Executive. Have you met the Health and Safety Executive?
DAVE WETZEL 16jul00version 18 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
No. I have spoken to Stanley Hart on two occasions but that has been on the telephone.
ROGER EVANS
Just to carry on the whole safety discussion. Since those leaks from the Health and Safety Executive, people have been very concerned about underground safety. Can you tell us precisely what were the criticisms of the Health and Safety Executive?
DEREK SMITH
Chair I think this is really a matter that might be addressed to me rather than to Dave since I am responsible for underground safety.
CHAIR
Can we take that one when we come to Derek Smith, which we will do in a few moments.
MEG HILLIER
I have not got a handle on what is actually going to change for my constituents and for Londoners between now and April. I note that the last time you took on a job similar to this as Chair of the GLC Transport Committee, I was just starting secondary school, so I do recognise that you have many more years of experience here. But I do want to be able to go my constituents and say this is and this and this is going to be happening at this time to London’s buses and London’s underground. If you cannot tell what you are going to be doing between now and April, then why are you complaining about the funding package and the drawdown that the Government settlement has given you?
DAVE WETZEL
I have not gone into detail because I was told I was limited by time. But I have already mentioned bus priority which is an important part of improving bus services. I have mentioned ticketing and our desire to get fare collection off of the buses in order to speed up buses. Speeding up buses is important in terms of existing users but it also makes the bus service much more attractive.
MEG HILLIER
With respect Chair, we have heard this before. What I am saying is when are you hoping to get these things done by? You know, just an idea. Is it going to be months, is it going to be weeks, it is going to be years? We are talking about improvements before congestion charging is introduced and yet we have no idea of time table. I have
16jul00version 19 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000 got no handle on when I can go back and say to people living in Hackney, you are going to get a better service on this route because of these changes.
DAVE WETZEL
On East Thames buses I can guarantee that by three months time they will be getting a better service on their routes because that is the one service that I am directly responsible for. On the others, we want to improve it and we are doing it through changing contracts. We are introducing quality incentives into the contracts. At the moment, the way the contracts are written, the bus operator gets the same money for sending out whether they send out five buses at five minute intervals or five buses all at the same time. As long as they complete the bus mileage they are just measured by quantity and they are not measured by quality. What I am encouraging is the use of computers and Automatic Vehicle Location so that you can have better control from the depot by inspectors or staff (they do not always use inspectors these days) to make sure that services are properly spaced and not bunched together which is inevitable with London’s traffic conditions. I want fewer cuts in services because of lack of staff and will do that by things such as improving the pensions. Already staff have been given passes for the whole of the London transport system instead of just on their own bus operator. We need to look at their wages, their salaries. By doing that we will improve bus services.
MEG HILLIER
A long time is what you are saying?
DAVE WETZEL
No, not necessarily. It will be as quick as we can possibly do it. But things like wages you have to negotiate with trade unions and that does not happen quickly. We have only had control since 3rd July.
ANGELA BRAY
You have touched on the problems with the way you contract out bus services at the moment and I am glad to hear that you have got ideas about changing that. Is not the nub of it, that at the moment when you organise your contract the money all goes to London Transport or Transport for London or whatever and there is no incentive for the bus operator to actually run the buses in such a way that they actually pick up passengers because the passenger money goes to you. Would it not be better to organise the contracts so that they are awarded to the company that pays you the most to run the buses and then give them the incentive to pick up passengers by allowing them to keep more of the fare money. Because as I understand it, it is actually advantageous to run your buses empty as it.is cheaper in terms of petrol useage You are right to say it should not be about bus mileage, It should be about carrying passengers but the way to motivate the bus operators is by making it more important for them to actually pick up the passengers because they keep the fares.
16jul00version 20 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
DAVE WETZEL
At the moment there is two types of contracts: the Net Cost Contract and the Gross Cost Contract. The first is like if you hired a coach to go to the seaside, you pay the coach operator and you might then charge members of your club £6 or £7, you collect the money and you keep. So that is one type of contract and that is the most familiar one at the moment. The other is where the operator puts a bid in to us and says I need this level of subsidy or indeed I will pay this level of money to operate the route and I keep all the fares and the revenues from travel card, Freedom Pass etc. It is considered by the professionals that the latter contract does not deliver and they want us to move back to the former contract. But within that former contract we are making the changes that I mentioned earlier in terms of quality of service. The interesting thing is if you compare London to the rest of the country, London is the only part of the country that has got this regulated system. As long as you have got an operator’s license and you go to your local traffic commissioner and get permission to operate a scheduled route then you can operate and you charge what fares you like and you take all the risks. The only revenue I think you get from the public purse is for social routes. That is usually late at night and on Sundays or for Pensioner’s Passes etc. But in London in 1986 when I stepped away from London Buses we were operating, do not quote these figures, something like 150-160 million bus miles per annum. Today in London under the regulated system we are actually operating around about 220-230 million miles. So the quantity of buses in London has improved dramatically under the regulated system and I actually welcome that regulated system. I think it is the right way forward. I have asked exactly the same questions that you have asked about why we do not give some incentive to the operator and they can then spend money on advertising themselves and all the rest of it. What we have found is that when the 70p and the £1 flat fare came in, patronage went up.
CHAIR
I would like to move on to Derek Smith now and I am going to start with Lynne. But I think I will move around the table after that. Lynne Featherstone
LYNNE FEATHERSTONE
I have four basic questions. They are all on safety because I think safety is the key issue particularly with regard to what has recently happened and the letter from the Health and Safety Executive. When the news broke, I think what was particularly frightening to me and the general public I imagine, was that there eleven issues raised originally and furthermore in the latter of the 7th August from Stanley Hart he says that eight months later, nine of the eleven remain outstanding”. I would like to hear an explanation which I have not had to date as to why nothing was done on the nine of the eleven issues.
On shadow running and the Public Private Partnership in terms of safety he also writes in this letter and I quote “further disquieting aspects since shadow running commenced have been the distancing of London Underground from responsibility from network wide issues where co-ordination from the central duty holder is essential. My point is that Londoners want a safety structure to ensure that accidents do not happen in the 16jul00version 21 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000 first place. S safety structures that ensures accidents are prevented or says who will pay compensation if they dohappen. So and this follows on much from what Val Shawcross was saying, what are you doing to create and address the creation of a safety culture supported by a safety structure which ensures that accidents do not happen and that safety measures are adhered to. How do you maintain a safety culture in a fragmented situation? My question relates to those two main central issues. One is on the shadow running. How you are going to address the safety culture and the second one is on why was there no action on nine of the eleven issues?
DEREK SMITH
If I might I will take that second question first. I am going to ask Mike Strzelecki to speak to the first question because he has been in detailed discussion with the HM Railway Inspector about those matters.
The approach that we have taken in relation to the private/public partnership is to say to ourselves if you create more companies, therefore you create more interfaces. If you create more interfaces you create more handoffs. You therefore have to be able to manage those safely and if we did not believe that in putting into place the Public Private Partnership that we could also have a safe rail network then we would advise the Government that it should not be done. Now what we do for that is as Lynne has pointed out, we have to articulate a safety case and that is a legally demanding safety case which has to be accepted by the Railway Inspectorate. We also have remedies and they go all the way from insisting that they take corrective action to taking action at their expense if necessary through, in the end, if there were gross breach to causing their company to be wound up and sold. So we have remedies within the Public Private Partnership to do that. Now you are absolutely right, you have to have a safety culture that causes the company to ensure that accidents do not happen rather than investigating after accidents have happened. We already have a deeply embedded safety culture. There have been huge improvements in safety in the underground since Kings Cross. But what we have done in moving towards the Public Private Partnership and shadow running the four companies is to expose elements within those companies where the safety culture was inappropriate or improperly embedded. In other words, there were people in those companies who have been until recently, who have been undertaking work, not in accordance necessarily with our rules or our procedures which require safety to be 100%. So we are undertaking a root and branch review in order to ensure that we change our systems and procedures associated with managing safety in the underground and improve further its safety culture. This is not a one off thing. It is actually a continuous process and it goes hand in hand with improving other aspects of the underground’s management and its overall performance. But safety has our attention every day and in the relation to the Public Private Partnership it has our attention because the safety case ultimately that we draw up must be accepted by the Railway Inspectorate on behalf of the HSE if the Public Private Partnership is to go ahead. So we work daily and hourly with our regulator on matters such as this and the letter that you have seen on August the 7th in which we are going to refer to in more detail now is a letter which concerned expressions of concern by the Railway Inspectorate about programmes which we both knew were in hand to make improvement. Some of which had fallen behind timetable.
16jul00version 22 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
MIKE STRZELECKI
On the issue of the nine outstanding actions that hadn’t been totally cleared when Mr Hart wrote that letter, what Mr Hart was doing was escalating the issues because a more junior manager with whom he had discussed the issues with in November, he didn’t feel was making quick enough progress. So what he did was write to raise those issues. Now let me be very clear there had been action on all of them but they were not all closed out. There were still things to do on nine of them. I met with Mr Hart and some of his team after that letter arrived to go through exactly where we were on all those issues. Some of which were new and we are finding new issues all the time because, as Derek has already explained, the culture that we have, while dramatically improved from what it was after Kings Cross, needs yet further improvements. It is my job along with Derek and my colleague directors to drive that forward and we have started that process. We are deliberately exposing the issues along with help from our trade union colleagues who have been very helpful and responsible on this to make the improvement. If you do not know what the problems are, you cannot fix them. If you do not expose the problems in fairly blunt terms, you cannot address them. We have started, and we discussed this with the Railway Inspectorate during the latter part of last year, and early this year in some depth before we got going, the best way of doing this. Because if you do not get to what causes the problems and only treat the symptoms, the causes will remain and the problems will recur. We started intensive work using external specialists to help us where necessary on analysing what the root causes of those issues were. We have completed the root cause analysis. We are now putting in place a programme of fundamental changes where we judge them to be necessary to make the kind of step change and improvements in safety culture of London Underground that Derek has just spoken about.
LYNNE FEATHERSTONE
When you expose issues why were they not exposed before? Those issues were there, why were you not looking for them? When you say the letter originally went to a junior member of staff, then actually that says the whole system is flawed. Because if a junior member of staff is not dealing with something adequately, you should know about that way in advance of someone having to write eight months later to ask what has happened.
MIKE STRZELECKI
I cannot explain why Mr Hart waited that length of time. It is interesting that he attended a meeting on the 21st July this year where he raised all these issues and got satisfactory answers. It is not quite clear to me why he then wrote again, only a few weeks later. Yyou have to get the issues into proportion. The underground is a very safe system; it needs to be safer, but overshooting the stopping mark for a train driver is not a problem that will cause major accidents. It is a bit like going over the white line at traffic lights by a few feet, which can be dangerous.
16jul00version 23 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
LYNNE FEATHERSTONE
What they say is that then the driver does not have sight of the TV screens that show when passengers are on safely and when doors are shut.
MIKE STRZELECKI
Let me be clear. I am not in any way at all condoning these deficiencies. What I am saying is that these deficiencies have to be taken out. We deal with the high potential risk as priority, and we are doing that and that is how we consistently reduce the risk profile of the underground system. It is not totally safe. I cannot say that it is totally safe. There are risks in any activity. Any transport system, any type you care to think of, people unfortunately end up having accidents and either dying or getting serious injury. I cannot think of a transport system anywhere, of any type, that is perfectly safe. We have a good safety record. We are improving it. We do that by exposing the issues we are dealing with. That is our responsibility and that is what we are doing.
ROGER EVANS
We have gone into some of the details there. Perhaps I can raise a specific case with you. Say, a new train blows a fuse at Liverpool Street, thus trapping two other train loads of passengers behind it for several hours before we can get those people out, is that actually a safe system? Is that something we should be concerned about and the travelling public should be concerned about?
DEREK SMITH
Not a new train, a 10-year-old train, not a fuse, a set of circuit breakers, caused by 3 breakdowns in traction current on the whole of the Central line and the loss of centralised control – a huge disruption to it all. In fact, the people who were on the spot took all the precautions to ensure that the customers were as safe as can be in that circumstance. I very much regret the fact that all those people were stuck down that tunnel for so long. It must have been very uncomfortable and I also regret the fact that many other people on the Central line were deeply disrupted for the rest of the evening, but in fact the circumstances around that particular problem were such that it was very, very difficult to couple the second train to the first and either move it or de- train the people and, because of the curvature of the track, quite impossible to couple the third train to the second. So we tried to move the train first, that is the first breakdown train. We tried then to shunt it but couldn’t couple it. We got it close enough to move the people out of the second train, through the first, onto the platform, and then we got the third as close as we could, which was 50 yards, to the second, to get the people out of that. As you can appreciate, there are more than 1,100 people in a loaded central line train at that time of the evening and they are running at 2 minute intervals and I am afraid it took a very considerable amount of time. We also took steps of course, in terms of safety, to ensure that people, when they got out of those trains, had access immediately to emergency services and that they were given plenty of water where they were dehydrated, but I do regret it as an incident.
16jul00version 24 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
ROGER EVANS
That is a specific incident. Now on the same line we have a signalling system which is newer than the trains and that took a lot of time and effort and disruption to install, yet it breaks down regularly and the system has to be suspended while it is sorted out. Is that a safe situation or do my constituents on the central line have something to be concerned about there as well?
DEREK SMITH
The central line signalling on most of its length, works on the basis of automatic train operation. This means that it is indeed very safe. It is not as reliable as we would wish it to be and we are working with the suppliers, Westinghouse, to ensure that it becomes more reliable. The installation of automatic train operation, which has been going on in recent months, has caused further breakdowns as the new equipment there is commissioned but you will see over time that the central line will become progressively more reliable and therefore, any congestion on trains and particularly on stations, we hope, will diminish. Nevertheless, the East-West routes in London are, in themselves, deeply congested because of the increasing demand.
TOBY HARRIS
I want to move away from safety and I apologise for that because I think it is an important discussion, but, I may not get another opportunity. I want to ask about two elements. One is about information to underground passengers. Dave Wetzel gave us an example in his presentation earlier about not knowing when you change trains, about disruption on another line. On a more simple issue, why is it so rarely possible for information about disruption in the system, going on at the bottom of the escalator, to be conveyed to passengers who are arriving at the top of the escalator or have not yet bought their tickets? And why is it so difficult to give any indication about the likely duration? You must know or your staff must know whether this is a major incident which is likely to mean that things are going to be disrupted for 20 minutes, half an hour or much longer, or whether this is actually a minor hiccup which is going to last about 5 minutes. You have these situations where an announcement is made and you see passengers trying to weigh up whether it is worth leaving the train and try another route or just wait in the hope that it is resolved earlier. Why cannot better information be provided to underground passengers.
My second, unrelated point, is about the cleanliness of the underground system. I assume that the fact that there are no rubbish bins is because of fears about bombs. Why is it that on some stations it is possible to hang a transparent plastic bag for people to put rubbish in but not in others? Is it because in those stations where people hang the plastic bag they are breaking some underground rule and are just doing it because they are innovative and sensible or, if it is not permitted why it is not permitted and if it is permitted, why does not it happen in all underground stations?
DEREK SMITH 16jul00version 25 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
Information first of all. I share the views about information. I know how important it is to our customers. Our information delivery from our assessment of our customer satisfaction is improving and is at its highest level ever at the moment, but I recognise that it is not good enough. There are several reasons for that. There is technology. At the moment we are installing a new fibre optic network for trunk radio on the whole of the network which will enable trains and stations and line control in a very flexible way to communicate with each other and that will mean we will have information available within stations very quickly to be communicated to customers before they make their journey and while they’ are on the platform. The second reason is people. While some of our staff I think behave superbly in terms of delivery of information to customers, there are others who appear more reluctant to provide the information that they have to hand, and this is what I meant earlier by saying that we needed consistency and motivation among our people. The two need to go together. The technology and the people, to deliver the information. The third element is more difficult. Toby referred to duration. We do not always know the duration of incidents. The Liverpool Street incident is a classic case where nobody had any idea at the start, even though we throw a lot of management and technical resources at it, it was going to take us that long to sort it out, and other occasions may be more straight forward. As we get the technology to be able to convey more accurate information to people at real time, so that they are in control of their journey, then I think that we will be able to give people better information about what might happen, about the duration of delays and what alternatives are available to them, to make their journey..
On the question of cleanliness, we, like you, are very concerned about cleanliness on the tube. We know that the provision of a free newspaper which has certain real benefits for customers, has added to the amount of litter on the network and that customer appreciation of cleanliness is not increasing at all. In fact, they are telling us it is getting slowly worse on most lines and we intend to take some rapid steps to deal with that. We are not allowed, as Toby says, to put receptacles on stations for security reasons, although we have sought to experiment with some see-through receptacles to see whether they would work and we do believe there’s a large difference in security need of Central London Section 12 deep tube stations and those which are perhaps out in the suburbs. So, we do not have a programme, to answer your question about the plastic bags, of putting plastic bags on the station yet, but it appears some of our staff have got the idea that it would be a good idea and are experimenting already. We do not want them to do that. We need to have security clearances first. We do think, however, that with some more intensive work, some day-time litter clearing and some better cleaning facilities on stations, for example, many stations do not have electricity or water access for people to clean platforms, then we will be able to raise the overall status of cleanliness of the lines.
One thing we do know is that, when we have put on new train fleets and cleaned them properly, customer appreciation improved hugely. We have increased the cleanliness index on the Northern line by 9 points in the last 6 months, so where we have intensive effort, it can pay off.
TOBY HARRIS
16jul00version 26 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
Can you just clarify for me again what you said about not having access to water and the cleaning arrangements because that did sound to me extraordinary and what exactly are you going to do about that?
DEREK SMITH
Many of our stations are very old and, traditionally they have not had water points because water of course and electric railways do not go very well together, nor power points at platform level to enable power cleaning of platforms. So a lot of the cleaning has had to be done by hand, quite literally, in the Victorian manner in which it was originally intended. We aim to put that right by ensuring that, over time, we install both power and, where we can do so safely, water.
JENNY JONES
I would like to get the chance to ask a couple of questions on safety. Privatisation of the railways actually caused huge problems for passenger safety and can you really be sure you have learned those lessons? My second question is, if the law on corporate manslaughter is tightened up, as it looks possible, who is going to be the person in London Underground who is going to be held accountable?
DEREK SMITH
Can I deal with the second question first of all. As directors, we would all have responsibility if there were an issue of corporate manslaughter but the prime responsibility would be mine. I am the infrastructure controller. I will stand in the court. Mike Strzelecki will answer the first question.
MIKE STRZELECKI
On the issue of what you called privatisation I think we need to be very clear. The Underground is not being privatised. The Underground operation, control of safety, signalling, train services and station services remains in the public sector as does the ownership of the assets and infrastructure. The assets and infrastructure are leased to the private sector companies when they are finally chosen.
JENNY JONES
I am sorry, this is not really the thrust of my question. The thrust of my question is, how are you going to learn the lessons from the disasters which we have had on the railways which were caused by the same sort of process that is happening now to the tube? They are going to be leased out on 30 year terms or given in perpetuity – it comes to the same thing. Can you answer my question about public safety?
MIKE STRZELECKI 16jul00version 27 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
We are going to ensure public safety on the Underground because we are responsible for it and we do that in the manner that is described in the paper that Derek Smith submitted to Members and, as he described earlier, through the safety cases and the regime for both encouraging safety performance improvement from those infrastructure companies which is built into the contract, and for penalising poor performance and us stepping in where necessary if their performance is inadequate. Now the reason we have designed the Public Private Partnership contracts in that way is because we too are aware of certain deficiencies in the national rail regime. There is also good safety performance improvement on the national railways as well and the actual record, although I am not in any way responsible for it, actually shows improving safety performance. That does not mean that disastrous accidents cannot happen on the railway. They can, they can happen on our railway and that is why we take so much to analyse the risk and put in extra mitigation measures as controls to reduce those risks. I have to emphasise, they are still there. We work to make the risk as small as possible. Again, Derek Smith’s paper describes how we do that. Those processes are mandated by law. The law applies of course to London Underground but it will also apply to the future private sector owners of the infrastructure companies. They have a legal obligation as well as a contractual obligation to do what I am saying.
BOB NEILL
I imagine it is implicit in what you have said, that the actual question of the end ownership of the network is irrelevant, I think you agree that that this is demonstrated by the recent derailment on the publicly owned Paris Metro which could have been very much worse had it not been for other circumstances. I think we would be at one that public ownership is no guarantee of safety any more than private ownership is a risk. Would you also agree that there has been significant improvement since the Fennel Report in 1987. My recollection is that the Fennel Report was very critical of the safety regime which had existed before then, including the fact that there had been very little investment in safety equipment and procedures in the period prior to 1987 and that that, funnily enough, included the period 1981-1984. My recollection is correct on that point is it not?
DEREK SMITH
If I can take the first question, the Paris Metro is a very safe system with a good safety record and I think that the incident that occurred last week shows that on even very well run systems things can happen and they can injure or potentially be fatal to people in numbers. As far as Fennel is concerned, I am afraid that pre-dated me a bit. There have been, without doubt, huge safety changes and improvements as you would expect in 14 years. In fact, Mike Strzelecki was around at the time of Fennel and can probably give you a better feel for it.
MIKE STRZELECKI
I would agree with everything you said concerning that period and, having played different roles since the Kings Cross disastrous fire, I can also inform the GLA that, in 16jul00version 28 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000 my view, there was not just under investment in safety, there was under investment in the underground system. We are dealing here with many, many decades of under- investment and under-maintenance of the country’s tube system in London and those problems, as Derek said in his opening statement, will not be resolved easily or quickly and that is why we take safety so seriously, because it is such an old system that is in dramatic need of investment which is what the Public Private Partnership is designed to bring in.
BOB NEIL
Whatever the rights and wrongs of Public Private Partnership it follows from what you say that it is a bit rich for people who had responsibility for the tube network from 1981- 1984 to be jumping up and down on every television programme that is available, running stories about safety when, in fact, it was worse during that period.
CHAIR
I do not think it is reasonable to ask the London Underground Managers to answer for others. You have made your point. John Biggs.
JOHN BIGGS
I am the chair of the other transport committee of the assembly – as you may know, we have created two because it is such an important issue – and I am the chair of transport operations and mine is an operational question relating to the incident on the Central line the other day. As I understand it, if the Central line was built tomorrow, it probably would not meet the standards of the safety regulators and so on because it does not have good evacuation routes, it does not have good ventilation and so on. Not only was it traumatic for people who were stuck on those trains, but it struck a chord with many other people who have experienced extreme discomfort on the underground. The questions that come to mind are, is it really safe? Should we not treat it as if it was a new railway and be guided by current modern safety standards? Secondly, were the evacuation procedures adequate? Thirdly, there are questions about the conditions down there and I think there are two aspects of that – one is the levels of overcrowding and whether we should ration the number of people who use those trains. I do not want that to happen but clearly if there are too many people on the trains then that does raise safety issues, and the related points about air quality down there and whether we can introduce air conditioning of some kind to make life more pleasant for people.
DEREK SMITH
We certainly would not build the Central line as it is today if we had the opportunity to build it again but if it were not safe we would not run it today either. So we do believe the Central line is safe, even though the conditions for the people down there, at that time, were very, very unpleasant. We have extremely well developed and well 16jul00version 29 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000 practised evacuation procedures because we deal with so many people every day on the Underground network, and we do have to get them out of relatively small holes in the ground if there is any difficulty. We are, in fact, the experts at dealing with large numbers of people and their evacuation. I will give you an example. After the tragedy at Ladbroke Grove last year, many trains were stopped at Ealing. We took over the management of Ealing station from the national rail system because we were the people who knew how to manage the numbers of people coming through there, which increased by a factor of 7. So, again, I would not be complacent about it but we are good at it and we know what we are doing, even though conditions on the Central line particularly, are very, very tight, because of the high volumes using it both morning and evening.
We have an approach to trains where we say that they can be “crush loaded” which is very, very unpleasant indeed. It means you literally cannot move but it does not impinge upon safety per se; it just means your journey is a very unpleasant one to bear and why many people seek not to travel at those times. If we were to limit the number of people travelling on the Underground we would of course create other safety risks. People would have to use other transport modes which might not be available to them, there might be difficulties at street level because we would have to control access to tube stations, like we have to do to some of them now, and therefore there might be a public safety question on the streets rather than anywhere else.
Air conditioning is something that we have been examining. The problem about air conditioning is that in deep tubes and the Central line is a deep tube part of the system, it is technically very difficult to put air conditioning in because the trains are very small and you have to carry the equipment somewhere. Air conditioning has a heat output and therefore you have to disperse it which means we would have to take ventilators up into the street and then, of course, you have got to air condition the stations. The technical obstacles to air conditioning on the sub-surface railway are less significant because the tunnels are larger, they are nearer the surface, the trains are larger and therefore can hold the equipment more easily. We are looking at the first of our train fleets which is to be refurbished, which is on the District line, and is the one we are looking at hardest to say whether that should be air conditioned or not. My own view, for what it is worth, is that in recent years public attitudes have changed substantially. If you can now go and buy a small family car at marginal additional cost, and have air conditioning in it, then our customers expectations have changed fundamentally and therefore we must tackle the question of air conditioning very positively.
JOHN BIGGS
I welcome your comments on air conditioning and I think it is an issue that is going to run and run until it is resolved. Where I think I would take issue with you is on the acceptability of what is called crush loading. I accept the comments you make about people having few alternatives, but I think crush loading may be acceptable – it sounds a pretty ghastly process anyway – if you can guarantee you are going to be from A to B in 2 minutes but if you are stuck, then it clearly is not and it does raise serious questions in my mind about safety.
16jul00version 30 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
MIKE STRZELECKI
We have a very sophisticated risk assessment system under which we look at all the interconnected risks on the underground and the potential accidents scenarios. Those are the multiple fatality, multiple serious injury potential accidents and we examine through a process I will not bore the GLA members with, very, very systematically the risk and the necessary controls through which the risk of those accidents and their terrible consequences are reduced. We have looked at the issue of the number of people on trains and the need for evacuation extremely carefully. We continually review it as well and we also change our control measures as our traffic grows, as Derek has described earlier. I can assure the GLA that the underground is a very safe transport system and that we are working hard to make it even safer and that covers every form of safety risk that can arise.
LOUISE BLOOM
Still thinking about safety but possibly from a slightly different angle, how much do you feel that the adversarial relations between the trade unions and Transport for London are going to affect health and safety and, is Public Private Partnership likely to exacerbate that adversarial relationship?
DEREK SMITH
I do not accept the premise in the question. In fact the trade unions, of necessity and within the law, have to be very deeply involved in the whole aspect of safety and supply to us safety representatives who articulate questions and concerns on the behalf of staff and advise the management on safety questions that are seen on the ground. So, we share an agenda on safety. We probably do not share an agenda on the Public Private Partnership and the trade unions there have made clear their views that they oppose it and they would wish the whole of the Underground to remain in the public sector. However, we regularly meet with the trade unions about these matters. We air our differences and our views. We understand where each other are coming from and I think the general tenor of relationship between the Underground and the trade unions would suggest that we are working reasonably well and closely together.
ELISABETH HOWLETT
I too have concerns about safety but what I want to ask Mr. Smith is under 3.1 in your report. Now I have nothing against privatisation but what I am concerned about is the report states you are now shadow running the future specification. Right, well, let me tell you that since September my line which is the District line has certainly been most uncomfortable and I would not like to think that I, as one of your customers, and my constituents, are going to be stuck with this specification because quite clearly the frequency of the trains has reduced. We are literally like sardines, no matter what time of the day. I watched, in the middle of the summer on very hot day, a girl I could not get to because of the crowd, faint. The crowd was such that the bodies around her kept her upright until some men realised that she had fainted and helped her off at Victoria. I am really very concerned about this and we are, as Mr. Wetzel says, impatient for change but we are impatient for change for the better. So what I wanted to ask is, is 16jul00version 31 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000 the rabbit now out of the hat and are we going to have a reduced specification, of reduced frequency and reduced comfortable travel on the underground in the future under this Public Private Partnership?
DEREK SMITH
No we are not and to use your analogy, in the case of the District line, the rabbit has either a very uncomfortable or wet feet. There are huge track problems on the central part of the District line which have manifested themselves over the past 6 to 7 months, partly in the Blackfriars area where there is periodic flooding from the Thames, but mainly around the Gloucester Road area where the track bed there has shown signs of crumbling and very urgent work has had to take place to shore it up which is why you had the desperate experience of there being speed restrictions and the limitation on the number of trains that were able to run through that section. We, in fact, have the District line just about back up to speed but our maximum we can run on the District line with the current signalling and with the interleaving of the District line with the Circle line, in the centre part of the network, is 30 trains per hour – one every two minutes. Of course on the branches the frequency is always rather less.
What we have specified within the Public Private Partnership is that the private sector is incentivised to improve the service on the rail network, both in terms of it is availability and, eventually, in terms of the capability of the assets to put more trains down them. So, over time, the contract is established in such a way that you will see an improvement out of the investment. Investment is also front-loaded, so the private sector is required to put in more money than we have been doing hitherto.
ELISABETH HOWLETT
During the Wimbledon fortnight, you were able to run lots and lots of trains; it was very comfortable for the residents getting up to London. If you can do it in the Wimbledon fortnight, why cannot you do it for the rest of the year?
DEREK SMITH
At that time we were in fact running a special service down that section of the line for Wimbledon. Overall, and I stress “overall”, the demand we have from Wimbledon and the need to link those services for the most part into the rest of the District and Circle means that there is a finite restriction on the number of trains that we can put down to Wimbledon. If we try to put too many, over time, we wreck the central service.
SAM HEATH
My questions relate to the platform/train interface. I hate jumping over the gap and I do understand that the gap is not going to be changed under Public Private Partnership but how many accidents do you have as a result of falling down the gap? You may not know the answer to that but perhaps you could let me know – how important is it that we make sure that the driver can actually see all parts of the train so that if someone 16jul00version 32 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000 has fallen down between the platform and the train the driver just does not move off? That is my concern about overcrowding and my concern about people overshooting and I do have a great concern about the gap. And the other question is, about the interface.
DEREK SMITH
Ideally, on a metro you have a straight platform and regrettably on our metro many of them are not. What I would say about this before handing over to Mike, is that what we call the platform/train interface is the largest risk on the network because, of course, customers are passing over it all the time. We have assessed very carefully the risks associated with it and we have taken steps, as far as we can, to mitigate them. Bank is a good case in point though, because it is very difficult to see what we can do there. The platform bends so acutely because the railway is bent around the vaults of the Bank of England.
MIKE STRZELECKI
Could I just answer your point that the number of incidents at the platform/train interface, which is more than just the gap. We have, at the moment, about 1,100 incidents a year. That is not just people falling down the gap. This is not 1,100 deaths, this is 1,100 incidents, precursors of potential accidents and we have had, for a number of years because it is our top event risk, a mitigation programme in place and we are trying out and testing lots of different measures to reduce that risk to people. I have to say, on any transport system, people have to take personal responsibility for their own actions as well as us, the operators obviously, providing a safe infrastructure and assets and staffing but it is not totally without risk. The other thing to point out is that we will continue to look for different ways to mitigate that risk, even as the Public Private Partnership progresses. Within the Public Private Partnership contractual structures, up front, each infrastructure company, private sector owners, have to bid a fund for unknown future safety improvements. Now the size of that fund is under discussion but for each infrastructure company, at the moment, the figure we are talking about is £200 million over each period of the contract which is 7 years. So we have made provision for the things that we cannot currently foresee and made provision so that the funding is there to pay for them. So we will continue to look for reasonably practical ways of making the underground safer, as required by the Health and Safety at Work Act.
SAM HEATH
I understand people on the street are responsible for their own safety but if you are in a crowded tube train, you cannot prevent yourself from stumbling an that is why we do rely on you.
DEREK SMITH
16jul00version 33 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
I would agree with that. People do rely on us to make sure that they are safe. They do have that responsibility but we have a responsibility to them and we must fulfil it and maintain it.
BRIAN COLEMAN
I was delighted earlier on to learn that Lord Harris actually used the Underground. Having seen his taxi bill I found that somewhat of a surprise! But, Chair, I was tempted to ask my question as to why was the Northern line was such a disgrace at 9 o’clock this morning but that is not my question. My question is, has the investigation concluded on the Northern line train which rolled backwards through Chalk Farm Station? If so, do we know what the conclusions are and is that report going to be made public and when?
DEREK SMITH
The conclusion of the investigation will be later this month. We will first of all examine it within London Underground and whatever comes out of the investigation in terms of proposals will go to our Board. We certainly intend that the results of our investigation are made public because it is a matter of public concern.
BRIAN COLEMAN
When is that report going to be made public?
DEREK SMITH
After it is been to our Board so I would expect it towards the end of the September.
VICTOR ANDERSON
What scrutiny process is there going to be for the safety provisions in the Public Private Partnership bids? Will detailed information on the safety proposals and the bids be available to us here?
MIKE STRZELECKI
The scrutiny process for the bids for the infrastructure Public Private Partnership contracts is quite intense and will be independently scrutinised as well by her Majesty’s Railway Inspector as part of the Health and Safety Executive. That is their role, on behalf of the public, to scrutinise the safety aspects, so while I and members of my team will be looking very carefully at those bids, with respect to safety and perhaps it is worth saying very briefly that the bidders are taking the issues very, very seriously indeed, which I think is very good news, the HSC will be responsible for the scrutiny of whether the bidders’ proposals are satisfactory and we will have to demonstrate that to them.
16jul00version 34 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
VICTOR ANDERSON
That sounds like an assessment process entirely in private. It seems to me, because of the importance the public attach to safety, that there should be an opportunity for the Assembly or perhaps on the Transport for London board to consider these issues in public.
DEREK SMITH
I have to say that was not part of our original plans because we thought that if we are using the independent regulator, the Health and Safety Executive through the body of the Railway Inspectorate, that therefore we would be able to bring together all the aspects of the public-private partnership and have their safety recognisably and properly addressed. I do think that, as an Assembly, that you would want to receive a report on all aspects of the public-private partnership and not only the outcome of our deliberations as to the suitability of bidders, but why we have come to those decisions and perhaps that would be a way of approaching this.
VAL SHAWCROSS
Just getting back to the management of safety, recently there has been a number of safety incidents which seem to be as a result of management failures. There was the incident of the 200 drivers who no longer had licenses – I think that was on the Jubilee line . There were incidents of the communications failings, system failing and there was no adequate backup or spare parts available in July – that was quite a major incident . You currently, I understand, are being prosecuted as a result of an unannounced HSC visit to a station where they found men working on the line. Now we do take the point about equipment and investment but I think but these are management issues. What I want to know is, what do you do from a staff disciplinary point of view when there is a severe failing of management of safety issues? What do you have to do to get sacked? How badly do you have to fail the public on a safety issue to get sacked within London Underground?
DEREK SMITH
If I use one of the examples that is been sited, if you take a gang of men on the line when the traction current is on and you do so knowingly when you have received already specific, written instructions which you have signed for, that you must not do so, you get yourself dismissed because it is certainly gross misconduct. So any gross breach of our safety procedures undertaken knowingly, by managers or staff alike, will lead to disciplinary action, and if it is gross misconduct this almost certainly mean dismissal. But that is not the management story in total. You rightly say that, when there are deficiencies in safety, they are, in the end, matters for management. They have to be. Some of the matters that you have raised around this table have been about the safety culture, the safety process, the safety systems that are installed in an organisation such as London Underground. Well, those are our responsibilities and those are what we are seeking to improve. So, in the end, it always comes back to management.
16jul00version 35 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
CHAIR
Gentlemen, thank you very much indeed. Dave I will give you a couple of minutes if there is anything you would like to say to us at the end of this session.
DAVE WETZEL
Yes, just briefly. I think it is been a useful experience, certainly for me, coming here, and I think maybe next time we could allocate more time or perhaps meet in a smaller venue. Perhaps we could meet the two transport committees and spend more time so that you get more time to develop your questions and certainly more time for me to develop some of the answers; I would appreciate that. There have been comments made about me and my attitude towards London Underground’s management. I genuinely feel that London Underground’s management and staff are operating what is generally a shabby system that they’ve inherited to the best of their abilities and I think we should all recognise that. We at Transport for London want to operate on an open and co-operative basis, not just with yourselves but with the wider public and with other agencies like the boroughs and the train and bus operating companies. If you as individuals or as a group want to come over to Transport for London and see what we are doing and enquire on an individual basis, I will always be happy to set aside time to see you and I will make sure that our officers do the same.
There was a question asked about our time tabling on things and I suppose my answer really is that Rome was not built in a day. Recalling what happened from May 1981, my first experience at having overall responsibility for transport in London, this is a much better experience. The government has designed a much better system than the GLC used to operate. It was a nonsense that the GLC had every yellow line in London and every pedestrian crossing going across my desk. A complete nonsense for a strategic authority and trying to have any relationship with London Underground was like pushing a balloon or a lump of jelly - you never saw a positive outcome whereas this is a much closer relationship for the Transport for London Board than the old GLC Transport Committee ever had. But looking back to May 1981, I just noted here quickly that it took us 11 days to increase bus services by 1 million bus miles per annum. We did that by taking off an overtime ban that had been imposed previously. It took us 6 months to introduce Fares Fair after consultation. It took us 2 years to introduce the travel card which still exists today, 3 years to introduce taxi cards for people with disabilities, 4 years for dial a ride, 5 years for the night time week-end ban which came in two days before the GLC was abolished and 6 years for the Docklands light railway which came in a year after we were abolished and not all the things that we wish to do are going to be achieved in one period of 2 months. It is our intention, as a Board, that we will make major improvements and I look forward to working with you Chair.
CHAIR
You can be sure of that, David and let me just make a couple of very brief points. It is refreshing to hear that there is actually a criticism of the GLC by somebody who as on it. I was also rather struck, I do not know if Derek needs to be worried about this, but the expression of confidence struck me rather like football chairmen’s expressions of 16jul00version 36 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000 confidence in their managers! Anyway, there are two things which I think we need to pursue now. One is the flow of information from Transport for London. I think we may want to have some clarity on one or two points that have been raised here. That of course is something I hope you will discuss with Lynne Featherstone and John Biggs. I think members will also be concerned about the point you made very early on in this discussion about the access to Transport for London Board and the business boards themselves. I think the view is that organisations within the GLA family should be accessible to GLA members and I think that we would like you, in your discussions with your colleagues on Transport for London, to address that question and I would be grateful if, when you have had a chance to consult colleagues on that, you could write to me. I think, and I am with the Mayor on this, that there should be no secrecy in this organisation. Thank you very much gentlemen for your time.
Meeting reconvened after a break
00/55 CIVIC FORUM
CHAIR
We are happy to welcome Sean Baine, Member of the Mayor’s Advisory Cabinet, is Chair of both the London Voluntary Service Council and the London Civic Forum Development Team,
SEAN BAINE
Thank you very much for inviting us today. When we first got the invitation it was suggested that we could come along with others who were involved in the various consultation processes that were being set up, both by the Mayor and by yourselves. We rather welcomed that because we think is quite important that the Civic Forum is put in the context of all the other things that are going on within the GLA in terms of how Londoners are engaged in the processes of the GLA. The Civic Forum tends to get somewhat isolated and not get put into context in terms of all the other things that are going on, so we would welcome a debate with other people involved in the consultation process about where the Civic Forum fits into it. Now I understand that was not possible for various reasons and so you have us, the Civic Forum.
What I would like to do is very briefly just say where we are at with the Civic Forum. I am not going to explain again what it is, as I think we have met all of you in your various groups to talk about the Civic Forum. I just want to say very briefly where we are at the moment and just say a little bit about where we think the Civic Forum fits into the various consultation processes that are taking place at the moment. As of now the Civic Forum has a membership of over 600, and from our point of view it is 600 organisations who want to be involved in the GLA, and we think that is an incredibly positive figure. Our target when we launched was 500 and we have beaten that. Our target by the end of the first year is to have 1,000 members, and I think we will easily reach that. This is a very positive expression from organisations within London, and I would always emphasise that the Civic Forum is an organisation of organisations rather than individuals, but to have that many organisations showing an interest I think is 16jul00version 37 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000 incredibly positive. You will have had the invitation to our launch later this month on the 21st September, and I hope a whole number of you will be able to come to it. Following that we will then go into the formal processes of elections, to elect a Council for the Civic Forum and to appoint staff.
We have received money already from SRB, from the Lottery, from charities, and as people will know we are in the process of negotiating with the Mayor and the GLA about what support there might be there, but we would hope to have a staff team in place, and the whole thing up and going on 1st January next year. That is just very briefly where we are at at the moment. In terms of what the Civic Forum is for and what it is going to, at the moment as far as I can identify within the GLA there are 4 streams of consultation going on. There is a Stakeholder process being organised through the Mayor. There is the John McDonald process, although that is time limited. There is your own Reaching Out exercise, which we would like to talk to you about and to know more about, and also there are the consultations around the statutory strategies which a number of your committees have had timetables for. So there is over the next 4 years an enormous amount of consultation going on, and the question is where does the Civic Forum fit into those processes. We think very much that the Civic Forum does not particularly fit into the Stakeholder process because the Stakeholder process in essence is a series of bi-lateral relationships between a number of interest groups and the Mayor and the Mayor’s office, as we understand it. We see our role in the Civic Forum as being to try to broker and engender partnerships across Stakeholder groups.
So the whole idea of the Civic Forum is that you have the private sector, you have faith communities, you have black communities, you have a series of institutions, education institutions, health institutions and so on, and we see our role as very much one of trying to move across those various stakeholder groups to create partnerships that can actually add value to the process. I think a number of pieces of work the Civic Forum might carry out will come out of the policy work that is going on, for example from the Policy Commissions, or might come out of working with the Assembly on issues that you are involved with, which would ask for and benefit from some sort of cross-sectoral approach. The Civic Forum wants to take a partnership approach to tackling certain issues in London that demand that sort of approach.
The second thing we would see the Civic Forum doing is being a sort of centre for local democracy in London. A centre that explores different ways in which people can get involved in the workings of the Greater London Authority. There are lots of ideas around at the moment about E-democracy, lots of ideas around about youth and youth parliaments. Lots of ideas around about how people might get involved, and I think there is an advantage of having if you like an offshore organisation that is actually monitoring what is happening in terms of engagement and actually promoting different ways in which people can get engaged in the workings of the Authority. So those are the two areas that we would emphasise that we would see the Forum working in. One is partnership working, exploring issues that might come up from yourselves, might come up from the Mayor, we might be asked to look at various things, or might come up through the membership of the Forum and secondly being a general centre for local democracy in London.
JEANETTE ARNOLD 16jul00version 38 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000
How are you different to any lobby organisation, to any business quango that exists? What would I say to someone on the bus tonight to Waltham Forest, having met you here today, to explain what are you going to do for them that an organisation like the Black Londoners Forum is not going to be able to do.
SEAN BAINE
I think that the issue is about the value you get by bringing together the various sectors that make up what we call London civic society. In terms of the Forum itself here are 5 constituencies within the Forum, there’s a private sector constituency and we have 50 or 60 businesses and other people who have joined the Civic Forum already. There is a voluntary sector constituency, a faith community’s constituency, the Black Londoners Forum which has a slightly different relationship than the other constituencies, and then there’s one that we are calling Public Institutions, which at the moment is primarily education institutions, but also could be health bodies. I think the advantage is of looking at various issues that effect London by bringing together players from those different sectors, that is the value of the Civic Forum. If we go back to London Pride Partnership, that was the value of the London Pride Partnership, it actually looked at transport issues, at housing issues and brought together the wealth of experience that you get from the different sectors in London and looked at policy issues in the more integrated fashion between the sectors, that is the value that I think the Civic Forum brings.
JEANETTE ARNOLD
Let me try and make it simpler. Are you saying that you would then embark on an enquiry or a piece of research and that you would then feed that back to your constituent organisations, or would you feed it into the GLA. I am trying to determine the what, something of substance?
SEAN BAINE
Those two things that you have said are exactly right. An issue would be defined as something that the Civic Forum is asked to look at by the authority in its different guises or it was determined by its membership. They would then work through the issue and produce some sort of statement or position statement, which would look to be a statement that could be supported by all sectors of society in London, and then that would be presented to the relevant bodies which might be the Assembly, the Mayor or whatever, so yes it would work in that way.
JEANETTE ARNOLD
Can I just confirm what I think I’ve heard you say. You are saying that by working through your cross-sectional structure you are going to be bringing an authority to that 16jul00version 39 Greater London Authority London Assembly – 6 September 2000 piece of information that you would share with the GLA? Is that what would be an outcome?
SEAN BAINE
Yes, absolutely.
JEANETTE ARNOLD
The difficulty I am having is to understand how your structure would work, I do not know if that is been amended, maybe you could tell us a little bit about that, because you know I am not being rude but there seems to be more chairs involved here than in any other body in London, and I am just a bit concerned that you will spend so much time talking within this structure, that you will have very little time to look outwards, but I would like you just to give us an up date on that structure. You talked about the Black Londoners Forum, and within all your documentation you are saying that one of the areas that the Mayor has asked you and your committee to pursue is the engaging of the black and ethnic minority communities in London, but your structure has the Black Londoners Forum as an appendage rather than core to your structure, I do not really understand how that is going to work?
SEAN BAINE
In terms of the second part first, in a way the Black Londoners Forum, and the Civic Forum have developed in parallel at the same time, so as we were developing the Civic Forum the Black Londoners Forum was also being developed. Someone from the Black Londoners Forum sits on our development team and we have a very close relationship with them. They are an independent body, and as an independent body will elect people onto the Civic Forum Council which is slightly different from the other four parts of the Civic Forum. I do not think the structure is particularly complicated. There are 5 constituencies. Each of those 5 constituencies will elect people once a year onto a Civic Forum Council that will then make the decisions. I am not anticipating that the Civic Forum Council will operate by voting, because we will have lost the game if we have to operate by voting. It will operate by consensus and they will elect a small committee to manage the day-to-day business. That in essence is the structure, which I think is not a very complicated structure.
JEANETTE ARNOLD
The information that I have got and again it maybe that you have got new information shows that you are making great play about the gender balance on your structures, but what about disability or black and minority ethnic communities. You talk about gender but nothing else within this outline that I have got.
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SEAN BAINE
The position in terms of black and minority ethnic communities is that through the Black Londoners Forum they will be guaranteed a fifth of the places as of right on the Civic Forum Council. Other constituencies might also elect black people. On disability we have not put anything in specifically apart from the fact that disability organisations would probably join the voluntary sector grouping and would elect representatives through that. It is much more difficult to say in terms of disability that there has to be some sort of quota system if you like which is much easier to operate on a gender basis in terms of the electoral colleges, but we would certainly expect disability to be heavily represented within the Civic Forum Council.
RICHARD BARNES
This must feel like, a bit like an interview, and given how much you are asking for it is perhaps worthwhile. I represent an Outer London borough, and London is far greater than that bit which is delineated by the Circle Line. How are you going to ensure that your membership actually represents people from Bexley and Hillingdon and Outer London, and it is not just the same few from Inner London?
SEAN BAINE
I think that is a legitimate point, we should be doing an analysis of the 600 people who have joined already by geography and I think that is something we will do, and I take that on board. I think there is a very strong move, certainly within the voluntary sector at the moment and through things like London Borough Grants to do much more for Outer London. I cannot give you an absolute guarantee in the sense that it is an open body and who joins joins, but what we have been doing is look at the membership and try to identify places where there are gaps. We will now in the light of what you have said have a look at it in terms of geographical balance, and that may then mean targeting for example CVS’s or Chambers of Commerce in the Outer London Boroughs to ensure that they are involved and that they get the members involved as well.
SALLY HAMWEE
Congratulations on what you have done so far Sean. I am sorry that none of our group will be able to be at the launch. Please do not take that in any way as a message. You talked about the numbers of members, and you have also put this in the context of all the consultation which is going on within this building. Have you identified gaps in your membership that need to be filled, and secondly in responding to consultations or indeed in any of your work, how are you going to be able to speak in any representative way for what is an enormously wide membership, or are you not intending to work in that fashion?
SEAN BAINE
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In terms of gaps in membership what we have done is to look at the membership that has come in, and clearly the primary response at the moment has been from the voluntary and community sector, and they are by far the largest part of the membership. However, what we have then done is specifically to target the other members, so for example through London First and the London Business Board a special letter went out and that is already bringing in people from the private sector. We are working with the faith communities and that has started to increase the number of people coming in from the faith communities, so we do very consciously look at our membership base and try to see where it is deficient. I think the point that was made there about geography is actually a very relevant one that we will look at as well, and the second question about speaking in a representative way. To me the Civic Forum, as I said is about adding value, and about getting partnerships together. Where these partnerships can speak with one voice it seems to me to be a powerful voice and one that ought to be heard. There will be a number of occasions where civic society cannot speak with one voice, and in those cases it may be that what the Civic Forum is about is merely engendering the debate and not actually coming to a common view about anything, and at the end of the day obviously it is back to yourselves as politicians and to the Mayor to make the decisions at the end of the day. There may be some things where we just say here’s a series of views, or 2 views or polarised views, over to you. There will be other ones where we would say over to you but actually there is a pretty strong view on this and we have brought people together. And not just a pretty strong view we have actually thought of new ways of doing things, It is much more important that actually people looked at particular issues and came up with innovative ways of actually solving them.
JOHN BIGGS
I simply want to know how much money you are after from the Assembly. Does the assembly have any money to give?
CHAIR
What do you want Sean. How much do you want?
SEAN BAINE
At the moment conversations are going on with officers in the Mayor’s office about the overall budget. The current position is that we are looking at an overall budget of something like £250-300,000. We have already had money from SRB, the Lottery, City Parochial Foundation, BT and so on, and we were hoping that we would get from the authority around 50% of that sum of money, so we are hoping for somewhere between £100,000 and £150,000.
CHAIR
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I know that you will be talking probably to a group that Sally and I are involved in here, and other colleagues here, and I am sure that this discussion is going to carry on, but thank you for this initial briefing on what you are doing.
00/56 MOTIONS
There were none
ANY OTHER URGENT BUSINESS
There was none
The meeting ended at 12.36pm
……………………..Chair …………………………………….date
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