Tag Archives: Gareth Bacon

Latest Political News in London and Beech Street Closure

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This is the news that might have some impact on transport and political issues in the capital:

The former Conservative Leader on the Greater London Assembly (GLA), Gareth Bacon, has been elected as a Member of Parliament for Orpington and hence is stepping down from the GLA. He was forceful in challenging the Mayor on his policies. The new Conservative Leader will be Susan Hall who from following her on twitter and meeting with her, I judge should be just as forceful if not better. See  https://www.glaconservatives.co.uk/susan-hall.html for more information.

Because Boris Johnson has opened a new Parliament, he has made changes to some ministerial appointments. Included in that is the appointment of Chris Philp, MP for Croydon South, as Minister for London – that’s in addition to his role at the Ministry of Justice. This is what he had to say in the Evening Standard:

“Londoners are sick of Sadiq blaming others for his failure to deliver — there is no excuse for housing starts in London falling at a time when they have been rising in the rest of the UK and when billions of pounds of public money have been provided for housing.

I am deeply concerned at the delays and cost over-runs on Crossrail and of course we all need to work together to clamp down hard on knife crime, as well as its underlying causes.”

Mr Philp described himself as a “Londoner born and bred” in the article and added: “With more than 300 languages spoken in London alone, it’s bursting with diversity which we must embrace.”

Sadiq Khan has already accused him of having an “aggressively partisan attitude” so that should get him off on the wrong foot with the new Minister which he needs to persuade if his plans are to get anywhere. That includes more money for London which he has been asking for, particularly for transport, when the national Government policy might now be just the opposite with more money going to the North as a reward for voting Conservative. He also wants to grab more power in a number of areas which I doubt the new Government will be keen upon. Sadiq Khan is like a lot of Labour politicians in that he thinks more money is always the answer when in fact mismanagement of his budget is the real problem. More information on Chris Philp is present here: https://www.chrisphilp.com/about-chris/

Now that we have a Conservative Government with the ability to put through legislation without endless debate we might even see a reform of the GLA and the Mayor’s role which are both sorely needed. That would be rather like Mrs Thatcher putting Ken Livingstone out of business by disbanding the Greater London Council (GLC) in 1986. Unfortunately the Labour Party put in the current structure of a directly elected Mayor and the GLA (which is purely a talking shop) in 2000. Reform is sorely needed as the Mayor is unaccountable to anyone and acts like a dictator. His transport policies are destroying London and imposing enormous costs on the public – for example he has just announced a rise in the GLA precept in Londoner’s Council Taxes. Financially his regime is a disaster and crime is totally out of control.

London does not need populist Mayors such as Ken Livingstone or Sadiq Khan who simply seem to want to ensure they get re-elected. We need someone with both management and financial experience, which incidentally Chris Philp certainly has from my contact with him on financial issues. He should be a good Minister for London as he has always appeared to me to be highly intelligent.

Other London news that was widely reported was that the City of London is pushing ahead with a scheme to close Beech Street to all vehicles other than zero emission ones. This would apply for all hours for all days from next April, and to all vehicles with a few exceptions.  Beech Street runs under the Barbican and has very high pollution as it is effectively a tunnel with no ventilation. The City Corporation is also proposing to put in later two zero emission zones around the Barbican estate and north of Fenchurch Street.

One thing the new London Minister might care to look at is stopping London boroughs and the Major or London from introducing regulations and taxes which are contrary to national regulations without his consent. The Beech Street restriction is unnecessary, unreasonable and the minor air pollution problem in that road could have been solved by other means.

Roger Lawson

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drivers_London

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The Cost of Khan

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Gareth Bacon, leader of the GLA Conservatives, has published a very interesting document entitled “The Cost of Khan”. It supplies a half-term report on the regime of Mayor Sadiq Khan and the negative impact he has had in certain areas (crime, planning, parking, housebuilding for example). In essence he suggests one of the key problems is financial mismanagement.

Of particular interest to our readers will be his comments on the activities of TfL (Transport for London) and the budget for that organisation. It covers:

  • Cancellation of new tube trains for the Jubilee and Northern Lines that would have provided much needed extra capacity. That might have saved £600 from the TfL budget but that’s desperately needed after Khan’s expensive promise to freeze public transport fares which cost at least £640 million in foregone revenue. Even that promise was only partly kept.
  • The pay of executive staff in TfL. The number who are paid more than £100,000 p.a. increased by 25% last year so there were 576 such employees. Is the Mayor really cutting the flab out of TfL budgets as he promised to do?
  •  The “T-Charge” which was introduced last October and will cost Londoners £23 million a year despite the Mayor’s own Impact Assessment saying it will have only a negligible impact on pollution (and that has been borne out by real data since).
  •  Nominee passes which you may not be aware of are highlighted. These allow TfL employees to nominate family members and anyone who resides in the same household to obtain free travel. Even flatmates qualify! There are 39,884 people who are nominees and the cost might be equivalent to £32 million in lost revenue per year.

Those and other reports show how the Mayor has been so wasteful of financial resources with the result that he is desperate to raise money from the T-Charge and the ULEZ charge which will impose major unnecessary costs on Londoners. In the personal view of this writer TfL continues to be a massive and very expensive bureaucracy which is unaccountable to the public. It formulates transport policy that will increase the bureaucracy and then does public consultations designed to get the right answers. TfL needs major reform but the Mayor does not seem to have it under control.

The “Cost of Khan” Report is present here: https://www.glaconservatives.co.uk/uploads/1/1/7/8/117899427/final_cost_of_khan__2_.pdf

Roger Lawson

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drivers_London

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TfL to Lose £1 billion per Year

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 “TfL expects £1bn deficit by next year”. That was the headline in an article in today’s Financial Times. Apparently they have seen an internal email written by finance director Patrick Doig that the organisation faced an operating loss of £968 million in 2018/19 which he said was “clearly not a sustainable position…”. The deficit in the current financial year is expected to be £785 million this year which shows how rapidly its position is being eroded.

There are several reasons given for this erosion in their financial position – the Mayor freezing public transport fares (estimated cost £640m) did not help, but the big problem is falling revenue from users. Both bus and underground journey numbers have been unexpectedly falling.

Is this because more people are not travelling, e.g. doing internet shopping and working from home? Or is it because they have chosen to travel by bike (usage is growing), or find it is as cheap and a lot more comfortable to call Uber? Or perhaps it’s because some London residents are selling up and moving to the country with house prices peaking in London, or returning to homes in the rest of Europe. Perhaps those French, Polish, Romanian and other residents are worried about their future after Brexit? Perhaps they just got tired of life in London, unlike Dr Johnson who did not have to suffer the mediocre standards in TfL’s public transport provision.

The Mayor has only recently published his Business Plan for the years to 2022/23 (see this article: https://freedomfordrivers.blog/2018/01/17/tfl-business-plan-mayor-sadiq-khan-wants-more-money/ ). But you can see exactly why the Mayor is so keen to raise as much as £300 million from Londoners via the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) charges. As we have said before, the ULEZ is about money, not about improving the health of the population or cleaning up London’s air.

A comment in the FT article was by Gareth Bacon, London Assembly Conservative Members, who said there was now “serious cause for concern” about Mr Khan’s “cavalier” financial stewardship of TfL.

Roger Lawson

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drivers_London

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Is Khan Trying to Kill the Private Hire Industry?

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Gareth Bacon, leader of the Conservatives in the London Assembly, has published a revealing article on the policies of Mayor Sadiq Khan under the headline “Is Khan trying to kill the private hire industry – or is he just incompetent”. It suggests that Khan is pursuing short term flashy policy gimmicks but he is hampered by his election promise to freeze public transport fares. This means he is “scrambling around to make savings and raise money”. One victim of this is the private hire (minicab) industry where proposed increases in license fees are astronomical. This could force hundreds of mid-size PHV operators out of business.

The costs for larger operators such as Uber will rise enormously – as much as 102,500 per cent the article suggests. That’s assuming they even manage to retain their license which is under threat.

The recently published Mayor’s Transport Strategy indicates he wants us all to walk, cycle or use public transport as it’s more “healthy” than getting in a car or PHV. So his tactics are certainly consistent if nothing else. He not just wants you to stop owning and driving a car, he wants you to stop using private hire vehicles and taxis also no doubt.

But like all good politicians, he is not proposing a simple ban, but attacking them indirectly by raising their costs and getting tough on licensing conditions.

The full article is here and it’s well worth reading:

https://www.conservativehome.com/localgovernment/2017/11/gareth-bacon-is-mayor-khan-trying-to-kill-the-private-hire-industry-or-is-he-just-incompetent.html

Roger Lawson

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drivers_London

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