Morning:
14°c
A report by the London Assembly's Transport Committee on the state of the Underground will do little to raise passengers' mood. It draws attention to the likely effects on Tube services of a funding crisis resulting from the collapse of the failed maintenance consortium Metronet and rising costs. Passengers can, it seems, bid farewell to any hopes for cooling systems during the summer, refurbished stations or greater numbers of lifts and escalators. They can count themselves lucky if the signalling upgrade on the Piccadilly line and the commissioning of new trains goes ahead, which would increase capacity on this overcrowded line by a quarter.
As the respected, departing head of the Underground, Tim O'Toole, says, completing the work on these projects is a "high wire act".
The problem with the Piccadilly line is that Tube Lines, the remaining private sector consortium responsible for maintaining and upgrading part of the network, has found that the cost of work on the Northern, Jubilee and Piccadilly lines would amount to £1.4 billion more than it budgeted for. It is locked into the Jubilee and Northern line upgrades, which means that the Piccadilly line improvements are at risk. But as Mr O'Toole says, maintenance work, and increasing capacity are of basic importance and must take priority over other improvements. So, other elements on passengers' wish lists, such as congestion relief, will suffer.
Tube Lines is the company responsible for the Piccadilly line but much of the Underground's funding crisis is attributable to the collapse of the other, spectacularly inefficient, private sector consortium, Metronet, with debts of £2 billion. Passengers are paying a heavy price for the failure of the Government's public private partnership, or PPP, which was foisted on London by Gordon Brown as Chancellor. The Mayor, Boris Johnson, has argued that since the Government imposed PPP on the capital, it has a moral obligation to pay for it.
So it does. But there is more to the case for the Government to meet the Tube's funding crisis. Mr Brown's response to the downturn has been to increase capital spending to boost the economy. That should include London Underground.
Heavy-handed
THE head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, has quite rightly taken a serious view of the way in which officers behaved when they arrested Barbar Ahmad, who is accused of raising funds for terrorism, in 2003. As a result of civil action brought by Mr Ahmad's family, the force is to pay him £60,000 for the assault to which the officers subjected him. Sir Paul has also ordered an immediate investigation into why it was that the officers refused to give evidence at the High Court hearing about Mr Ahmad's claims of abuse. This was unacceptable.
The behaviour of the officers, including the use of a dangerous headlock, accompanied by religious abuse, would be troubling even if it had taken place in the wake of a terrorist attack. But it did not. Neither was it proved that Mr Ahmad resisted arrest though the officers may have feared that he would. As his brother pointed out yesterday, "this abuse took place not in Guantanamo Bay or a secret torture chamber, but in Tooting". And here, every citizen, even those accused of offences related to terrorism, has the right to decent treatment from the police. Sir Paul is right to take the matter in hand.
A milestone
Today we learn that, for the first time, a major British company is to have a black chief executive, when Tidjane Thiam, from the Ivory Coast, takes over at Prudential. The move augurs well on the company. But we shall have reached real racial equality when this news is regarded as something we can take entirely for granted.
