Filed under: Life Under Boris
Medway campaign poster on Boris fantasy island
The debate over airport expansion in London has rightly concentrated on the plan for a third runway at Heathrow and its potentially damaging environmental consequences. However, for the citizens of east London, a more immediate concern is the noise and nuisance caused by flights into City Airport following Newham council’s decision to give planning permission for an increase of flights from 80,000 to 120,000 a year. So I was pleased to move a motion at last week’s Mayor’s Question Time which called on Boris Johnson to show leadership on the issue by initiating a review of the impact of flights into City Airport. The motion received cross-party support and was passed unanimously by the London Assembly.
The depth of local feeling on this issue was made clear at the Mayor’s “Environment Question Time” event in Ilford in January, where I was on the platform as chair of the London Assembly’s environment committee. During contributions from the floor, speaker after speaker complained about the disturbance suffered by those living under the City Airport flight path. In reply, Boris told the audience that he felt their pain, but unfortunately there was nothing he could do about it. The planning authority in this case was Newham council and he had no powers to intervene.
But Boris’ expressions of regret were the purest hypocrisy. Under his predecessor, there was a clear and robust policy on City Airport expansion. Ken Livingstone’s administration had urged Newham council to reject City Airport’s application for an increase in flights on the grounds of environmental impact and noise. If the council did not agree to this, the Mayor’s position was that the government should call in the application and convene a public inquiry, and that the Government Office for London should prohibit Newham from granting planning permission pending a decision by the Secretary of State.
One of Boris’ early decisions as Mayor was to overturn this policy. In July 2008, in a letter to Newham council, he paid tribute to “the contribution London City Airport makes to London’s world city status, and the benefits the airport offers to the City and Canary Wharf”. In light of that, he continued: “I offer support for the expansion sought by London City Airport…. I shall therefore be writing separately to the Government Office for London, withdrawing earlier objections, and confirming my support for the current proposals.”
So while Boris was bidding for popular support by opposing airport expansion at Heathrow, he was giving it the green light in east London. To cap it all, Doug Oakervee, the architect of the Mayor’s plan for a new airport in the Thames Estuary, has declared himself unavailable to defend that proposal before the environment committee, suggesting that Boris’ fantasy island is dead in the water. The Mayor’s lack of any coherent strategic policy towards airport expansion in London is plain to see.
Published in Tribune, 5 March 2010
March 5, 2010
The Economist has just published an article (“Ordeal by Water“, 20 February) based on Policy Exchange’s proposals for an expansion of commuter transport on the Thames. The author would have been advised to cast a more critical eye over the report on which the article is based, along the lines of Adam Bienkov’s well-informed post on the issue.
The Policy Exchange report, entitled At a Rate of Knots, asserts that the current Transport for London (TfL) subsidy to Thames Clippers amounts to a mere 14p per passenger journey compared with 33p for buses. This struck me as an unbelievable claim, since an earlier report by the London Assembly, London’s Forgotten Highway, had quoted a TfL figure of 69p. So I tabled a question about it to the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.
The Mayor replied that the most recent monthly figure from TfL is 56p per passenger journey, four times the level of public subsidy claimed by Policy Exchange. He explained the discrepancy between the two figures on the basis that it was “likely that the Policy Exchange figure has been arrived at by dividing the TfL contract payment over the whole of the Thames Clipper operation, i.e. both the supported and the commercial elements”.
In other words, Policy Exchange got their sums wrong.
I take the view that there is much scope for the Thames to play a greater role as a transport highway – but as a means of moving freight rather than passengers. This would have a positive environmental impact by reducing the number of HGVs passing through London. However, if the case is to be made for increased public subsidies to underpin a large-scale expansion of passenger transport on the Thames, it requires more than a dodgy dossier based on faulty arithmetic.
February 22, 2010
I was pleased to see that Monday’s Evening Standard carried a report of Boris Johnson’s decision to allow the closure of the GLA’s offices in Delhi and Mumbai, which were set up by Ken Livingstone to promote the capital’s interests in one of the developing world’s largest and fastest growing economies.
Hopefully other sections of the media will take up this issue, because it is an important one for Londoners and for the capital’s business community in particular. As the Economist recently reported, the developing countries have grown in global importance economically due to their having escaped the worst consequences of the recession. So it’s vital that the Mayor should play an active role in promoting London in India.
I’d heard rumours that the GLA’s India offices were no longer functioning, so I tabled questions to Boris about it at Mayor’s Question Time last month. In a written reply he admitted that the offices in Delhi and Mumbai have not been staffed since last year, although he hadn’t bothered to inform Londoners that this was the case, and we would still be none the wiser if he hadn’t been challenged over it at MQT.
Boris’s vacillations and u-turns over the issue of the GLA’s international offices have been a sight to see. During his mayoral election campaign he initially condemned the offices as a waste of public money and said he would shut them down. In a December 2007 radio interview with Nick Ferarri, he was asked: “Would you continue bureaux in Venezuela, Delhi, Beijing and everywhere else? Yes or no.” Boris answered emphatically: “No.”
This went down well with anti-Livingstone journalists like Andrew Gilligan and Nick Cohen, and with parochially-minded Tory councillors lacking any concern for London’s strategic interests, but the business community recognised how damaging the closure of the international offices would be to the capital.
At a business hustings in March 2008, organised by London First, Ken Livingstone went onto the offensive over this issue. He told the meeting:
“The greatest challenge facing London businesses is globalisation, and therefore maintaining London as the most international and diverse business city in the world. To meet this challenge London has to build its position not only in traditional markets, such as the US, but in the huge new markets of India and China.
“Nothing therefore more clearly symbolises the difference between myself and Boris Johnson for London businesses, and the future of our city, than my opening offices to promote London in the US, China and India and Boris Johnson’s pledge to close down all offices promoting London abroad.”
The following month the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry announced that they had commissioned a ComRes survey of 238 London businesses which found that 67 per cent of companies said that the GLA should have offices in India and China to promote trade and inward investment into London.
Peter Bishop, LCCI international trade director, was quoted as saying: “These figures demonstrate that London firms are convinced of the value of operating these overseas ‘business embassies’. Strong business relations with the emerging economies of India and China are vital for the capital’s economic growth, creating jobs and attracting investment and tourism.
“In 2006 India was the second largest investor in London and Indian tourists outnumbered those from Japan. The London Chamber of Commerce hopes that all the candidates for next month’s mayoral election will take note of these results and pledge to keep these offices open.”
Faced with this opposition, Boris backed off and changed his line. In an interview with the Ethnic Minority Business Group (UK), he stated: “Whilst we fully endorse the representation of London overseas, we are also committed to reviewing the GLA’s offices abroad to ensure that London is getting maximum value from the money being spent on them. This review will be conducted as part of our larger investigation of the GLA and its agencies’ financial expenditures.”
Boris’s promised review was launched in May 2008, shortly after his election victory, and was headed by his then deputy Ian Clement.
At the time, Boris told the Standard: “We have started the process of considering which of the Greater London Authority’s international offices perform a useful strategic function and deliver value for money…. We will consider the role of the Indian and Chinese offices in encouraging inward investment and business opportunities for London. We are eager to get on and review the international offices’ role in increasing foreign investment and employment, delivering value for money and ensuring London takes full advantage of emerging international markets.”
London’s business community lobbied heavily for the offices to be retained. In a submission to Boris’s review the LCCI stated:
“Closing the offices in India and China as part of a cost-cutting exercise would be short-sighted and send entirely the wrong signals to potential investors and importers in two of London’s most important potential markets. The GLA may save £1 million, but it is London firms that may ultimately end up paying a much higher price. If the Mayor is not out there promoting London, someone else will be promoting New York, Paris, or Sydney instead.”
The review was supposed to be completed by autumn 2008. However, as is often the way with Boris, he missed the deadline and the results were not announced till the following January, when a press release from the Mayor reported that “the review found the rationale for London to have offices in key emerging markets is fundamentally sound”.
Boris’s press release quoted Ian Clement as saying: “It is absolutely essential given the current financial crisis that we do everything within our power to promote the capital in major markets around the world to ensure London emerges strongly from the downturn.
“We have taken a serious look at whether taxpayers’ money is being spent wisely and how to get the best possible deal for Londoners. The review has found that the GLA’s offices do play an important role in promoting London’s interests, from supporting the capital’s businesses to enhancing the image of our city around the world.”
Under the headline “Boris saves City Hall ‘embassies’”, the Evening Standard hailed the decision to retain the GLA’s overseas offices, reporting that the Mayor had decided to retain the offices “because they are a good way of promoting London abroad during the economic downturn”.
But it turns out that this was just eyewash. In response to my questions, Boris now concedes that the GLA’s representatives in Mumbai and Delhi “resigned last year and have not yet been replaced”, and that the offices will remain closed pending a decision on whether to reopen them. So much for Boris’s supposed commitment to promoting London abroad during the economic downturn.
Both Boris himself, and a spokesperson for the Mayor quoted in the Evening Standard report, have claimed that a review of the India offices is under way. They omit to mention that a review has already been held and that it came out unequivocally in favour of keeping the offices open. Boris has ignored the results of that review, mothballed the India offices and has now apparently launched a second review which he perhaps hopes will come up with a result more to his liking.
Some people take the view that Boris is a total opportunist who lacks any ideology other than a commitment to furthering his own political career. There is some truth to this. But Boris is not entirely without political principles. He remains an adherent of a Thatcherite free-market philosophy that deprecates state intervention and is concerned only with cutting the costs of government without any regard for the consequences. This has been exacerbated by Boris’s personal inclination to what might be politely termed a laid-back, hands-off attitude towards his duties as Mayor. It has resulted in a lethargic, non-interventionist administration which stands in sharp contrast to the energetic, proactive approach of Ken’s mayoralty.
As the scandal of the India offices shows, this combination of laissez-faire and laziness is proving seriously damaging to the interests of London.
February 10, 2010
Last week Boris Johnson became chair of London United, the organisation co-ordinating the capital’s support for the England 2018 FIFA World Cup bid. This after he stood down the previous week from chairing the Metropolitan Police Authority and the London Waste and Recycling Board. What does that say about his priorities?
Well, apart from breaking pledges he made to the London electorate in May 2008 that he would chair both the MPA and LWaRB, it shows that when the going gets tough Boris will leave it to others to get things going on major issues like crime and policing or building London a new waste management infrastructure.
Boris promised to chair the MPA as part of his scaremongering election campaign about crime in the capital, which was in fact falling overall and continues to fall. Nevertheless, last year faith hate offences in London were up by 46.7%, homophobic offences by 26.9%, rape by 24.2%, gun crime by 12.6%, residential burglary by 5.9% and personal robbery by 5.7%. So Boris can hardly claim to have got crime sorted during his brief stint as MPA chair.
With the new Waste and Recycling Board, it is crucial that it makes an impact now and doesn’t miss the golden opportunity to adopt new low carbon technology. But again Boris is walking away when needed.
By contrast, chairing London United is not a job Londoners elected him to undertake. But it is far easier position for Boris to entertain himself with, involving a lot of promotional events but not much actual hard work or attention to detail.
This is what we have come to expect from Boris. His is a mayoralty that gives precedence to photo ops and self-advertisement, but when push comes to shove on the big issues that affect Londoners, the Mayor is nowhere to be seen.
February 8, 2010
Boris Johnson started the year by hitting Londoners with record public transport fare increases of up to 20 per cent on a single bus journey and 18 per cent on some outer London tube fares. These are the biggest real-terms fare increases in the history of Transport of London.
The direct result of the London Mayor’s decision will be a big, late-recession hit on the finances of public transport users (especially those on lower incomes who spend a higher proportion of their incomes on travel).
People are rightly pointing out the injustice of public sector workers being urged to forego pay increases while Boris wades in with a massive 20 per cent hike in their bus fares. And what do commuters get for their increased fares? The Mayor who promised “more bang for your buck” is actually proposing a reduction in bus services by eight million kilometres. This is on top of his decision to start reducing the number of London’s police officers (455 fewer by 2012/13) and firefighters (16 less during 2010-11).
This is all in contrast to his natural, instinctive defence of those “masters of the universe”, the investment bankers on whom we have become dangerously dependent. Appearing oblivious to the public revulsion at the bonuses, excess and peril in which they placed our economy, Boris went in to bat for the City (leading figures from which helped fund his election campaign).
Obama has come out so strongly in favour of re-regulating financial services that the Tories nationally have realigned themselves with the United States government. But Boris is still “instinctively anxious” (David Cameron had to deny a split over the issue) and continues to warn somewhat hysterically that bankers could leave London in their thousands. This claim looks more dubious by the day as big firms cut their year-end payments as a result of Alistair Darling’s reforms and the property market looks up.
How Britain and the world emerges from the economic crisis and what regulatory shape our financial services take is set to be a key battleground in the coming months. Will Boris Johnson continue to rail against any Government action and increased regulation? The same City figures who financed his bid for the mayoralty also fund the Tory Party and may expect similar levels of support.
It’s clear that, in the capital, the Tory Mayor had no more hesitation in clobbering the travelling public with massive fare rises than he had in jumping to defend the financial services from any kind of Government action.
Is this what we can expect from the Tories nationally? In opposition, they have taken a populist line in support of Obama’s proposals. But let’s watch this space.
First published in Tribune, 31 January 2010
January 29, 2010
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