Labour accused of dirty tricks over 'threat to Freedom Pass'

The party is pushing allegations that Boris Johnson or Brian Paddick would jeopardise the free public transport scheme.

The Standard has obtained a copy of a leaflet sent out by Labour's London Assembly candidate for Havering and Redbridge, Balvinder Saund.

Headlined "Pensioners and the disabled in Redbridge must defend the Pass," it says: "Be warned that the Freedom Pass is under threat, should a Tory or Lib-Dem Mayor get into City Hall on 1st May."

Mayor Ken Livingstone has himself claimed at least twice that Mr Johnson will attack the Freedom Pass. In remarks to pensioners at the Middle Park Community Centre in Eltham last Tuesday, witnessed by an Evening Standard reporter, he said: "Boris will come under pressure from Tory councils to scrap it, pressure he cannot resist."

In a video-streamed interview with a blogger, Dave Cole, at the launch of his transport manifesto last month, Mr Livingstone said: "I don't believe he [ Johnson] will keep the pensioners' free travel as it is."

Mr Johnson has promised to "guarantee" the Freedom Pass. However, even if he wanted to harm the pass, he has no power to do so. The pass is provided and paid for by the 33 London borough councils and the Mayor has no control over it.

It has been at the centre of an ongoing row between the boroughs, represented by London Councils, and the Mayor.

The scheme is run and funded by London Councils but Transport for London decides how much the organisation must pay.

London Councils claims that since TfL was formed, the annual cost of providing the tickets has increased by more than 50 per cent to £216 million, which the organisation's transport spokesman Daniel Moylan has described as a "stealth tax" that could jeopardise the scheme.

There were also claims Mr Livingstone's campaign has been running a scare campaign by telephone.

A spokesman for the Johnson campaign claimed that Labour had in the past few days begun mass telephone canvassing, telling elderly voters that the Tory candidate would scrap the Freedom Pass.

"We have always had a trickle of voters calling in to the campaign headquarters asking whether we are going to scrap the pass," he said. "But on Thursday of last week it suddenly went ballistic. We took 80, maybe a hundred, calls from elderly voters that day and each day since worried we would scrap the Freedom Pass. We have had three people answering the calls full-time."

The spokesman said the Johnson team had asked the callers where they were getting their information from. "They told us they had been called by people working for Ken Livingstone," he said.

Mr Johnson said: "We have had hundreds of calls as a result of the poison being spread by the Mayor, sometimes from his own lips.

"It is a measure of the Mayor's desperation that he is being driven to frighten elderly people. The Freedom Pass is 100 per cent guaranteed under a Johnson mayoralty."

The Ken Livingstone campaign and Labour refused to deny they had issued leaflets or telephoned voters claiming that Mr Johnson would threaten the Freedom Pass.

A spokesman for the campaign said: "Boris Johnson has refused to deny press reports that he would appoint as chair of TfL Daniel Moylan, a Tory councillor who has described the Freedom Pass as a 'stealth tax'." He added: "Accusations of dirty tricks are ludicrous. Ken Livingstone's campaign does not and has no need to carry out dirty tricks, as Boris Johnson's appearances on Newsnight, Question Time and other debates give far more convincing reasons not to vote for him than anything we could achieve."