Ministers to discuss Tube crisis

Tube passengers hoping for better times ahead

Prime Minister Tony Blair is due to meet the chancellor and deputy prime minister to discuss the crisis over the future of the London Underground.

His meeting with Gordon Brown and John Prescott on Monday comes after the capital's new transport commissioner Bob Kiley delivered a damning verdict on the government's public-private partnership (PPP) plan.

Implementation of the PPP would be unsafe, inefficient and prohibitively expensive

Bob Kiley

Mr Kiley said talks about modernising the Tube have ground to a halt because of the Treasury's unwillingness to shift from the plan.

He warned that PPP would prove more expensive and less efficient than simple government funding of the necessary investment in infrastructure - which he estimated at £500m to £700m a year.

'Wizard of Oz'

In a report compiled for London mayor Ken Livingstone, Mr Kiley said his proposals for modifying PPP had been rejected following intervention by the Treasury.

He said the government had also gone back on an agreement made earlier this month.

Bob Kiley: Daming verdict on PPP

Mr Kiley painted a picture of Mr Brown as "the Wizard of Oz", pulling the levers behind the scenes to control Mr Prescott, who is officially leading the talks.

The commissioner - called in by Mr Livingstone to turn around the Tube, after his success with similar networks in New York and Boston - said what Mr Brown envisaged was essentially privatisation.

He said: "The 'fatal flaw' is simply that the public will own the system but not control it.

"The result is a divided management structure that will leave the public managers with no practical means of effectively operating the transport system or ensuring the safety of its millions of daily customers.

"In short implementation of the PPP would be unsafe, inefficient and prohibitively expensive."

'Visible improvements'

Earlier Mr Kiley told the BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme that if he was allowed to start work on the Tube, he could make visible improvements within two to four years.

But he hinted that if the government failed to budge from its opposition to a unified control of the system, he could walk away from the whole situation.

Mr Kiley said it was agreed on 2 February that Transport for London and London Underground would have "unified management of the Underground" and the commissioner would "take the lead" in making this happen.

But he said that on 14 February he attended a meeting with government representatives who told him the private sector must control the three new companies being set up to provide and maintain infrastructure for the Tube.

This situation was said to be "non-negotiable".

Mr Kiley said he believed further talks under the 2 February agreement would be "fruitless".