Yesterday evening, this report by Dan Milmo went live:
Boris Johnson has urged the government to intervene in a funding dispute over the London Underground after alleging that the network's struggling contractor, Tube Lines, will pay out £1.1bn in secondment fees to its shareholders. The London mayor has asked the transport secretary, Lord Adonis, to approach Tube Lines's owners and pressure them to forgo their fees for the next seven-and-a-half years...According to Johnson the co-owners are due to receive a profit of about £400m from these fees by 2017, out of a total of £1.1bn since the controversial PPP contract began in 2002. The mayor's transport authority, Transport for London, is facing a £400m funding shortfall in payments to Tube Lines over the next seven years and Johnson cited the management fees as an appropriate solution to a financial crisis at TfL. Alternatively, Johnson said, the government could provide the funds through the taxpayer.
This morning, I was drinking coffee with a certain professor in Kingsway's Caffe Nero. We were approached by a rather worried-looking man. He said hello to the professor, reminded him that he was "from Tube Lines" and explained that he was just leaving for a meeting with the PPP arbiter, Chris Bolt. You'd have looked worried too.
