Shaun Bailey accuses Sadiq Khan of wasting nearly £10bn of TfL cash
Conservative London mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey has today accused Mayor Sadiq Khan of wasting nearly £9.6bn in Transport for London (TfL) finances since 2016.
According to Bailey, the failure to deliver the Crossrail rail link on time has cost £5.2bn, while pensions have drained £828m from TfL’s finances over the period.
A freeze of Tube and bus fares has cost £640m, while fare dodging has hit it for £400m.
He also lists executive payoffs, disruption on the Woolwich ferry, and the failure to deliver the Rotherhithe bridge as other costs.
In a statement, Bailey said: “Sadiq Khan has been in control of TfL for nearly five years. It’s time he took responsibility.”
“Now, after racking up £9.56bn in wasteful spending – he’s blaming coronavirus for the fact that TfL’s bankrupt. Sadiq Khan needs to stop playing the blame game. He needs to take responsibility and get a grip on TfL’s finances.”
A spokesperson for Khan said: “These are fantasy figures and the Tory candidate is once again taking Londoners for fools.
“Sadiq has been clearing up the Tories’ financial mess on Tfl and before the pandemic hit, he’d reduced Tfl’s deficit by over £1bn. The only reason TfL needs money now is because fares went down 70 per cent during Covid-19.
“The Tory candidate and his government now want to punish Londoners – by extending the Congestion Charge to the North & South Circular, hiking fares and raising taxes. Only Sadiq is standing up for London.”
The claims come with Khan in the process of negotiating a new financial bailout for TfL from the government.
Khan has asked for just shy of £5bn to keep the network running for the next 18 months. A previous support package of £1.6bn signed in May to propel up TfL throughout lockdown is understood to have run dry.
The coronavirus pandemic has hammered the country’s transport operator, with passenger numbers plummeting due to lockdown and restrictions on travel.
Last week PM Boris Johnson accused the Mayor of bankrupting the operator even before the coronavirus crisis struck.
Khan hit back, claiming that Johnson had told a “blatant lie”.
“The PM has lied to the House of Commons,” Khan said on Twitter. “Before Covid I was fixing his mess at TfL — reducing the deficit by 71 per cent since 2016. Covid-19 is the sole cause of TfL’s challenges.”
The spat came after it was reported that the government had threatened to take TfL under its control if Khan did not agree to a number of stringent conditions.
These include extending the congestion charge zone, hiking TfL fares by more than one per cent above inflation and the introduction of a new Council tax precept to pay for the network.
Khan slammed the measures as “draconian”.